For a college assignment, I was tasked with keeping track of all my accomplished tasks over one day. Then, we had to present our findings across three files created in three different Microsoft Office applications: Word (for word processing), Excel (for spreadsheets), and PowerPoint (for presentations). While these applications can work together in specific scenarios, they all serve different purposes, and each comes with its own benefits and shortcomings in certain contexts. I will use this blog post to discuss my experiences in completing my assignments across the Microsoft Office suite and will reflect on which application was most effective in achieving my goals.
Microsoft Word is a word-processing program that helps users create formatted text documents. Formatted text differs from a regular text file: programs like Word allow you to alter the makeup of the text (size, color, typeface) and alter paragraph & margin options, while a regular text editor will store only the text of your file with no formatting attributes. To showcase the different features of Word, I altered my file to slightly change the text attributes in each paragraph and used different text alignments throughout. Word and other word processors are best for creating an all-text document. In my journal entry, which I completed via Microsoft Word, I could fit every minute detail about my day in writing form, which would have seemed excessive in my Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation. Elements more frequently likened to those applications, such as tables and graphics, can also be easily input into Word documents. However, doing so should only be done on special occasions (i.e., creating a flyer or a long research document that requires visual aids).
Additionally, I created a spreadsheet to document my day’s agenda using Microsoft Excel. A notable feature of Excel and other spreadsheet programs is the ability to use formulas to compute and simplify data within your spreadsheet more easily. In my spreadsheet for the assignment, I used formulas to determine the exact percentages of how long I spent in my day doing a particular task. For instance, my work shift was five hours; using a formula to divide the cell with this data by 24, I made the spreadsheet reflect the percentage of time (21%) I spent working that day. Excel also allowed me to display my input data in chart form; specifically, I used a pie chart to visualize the time percentages I spent on every task. Spreadsheet programs are best used when a large amount of data, specifically small strings of text and/or numbers, needs to be easily computed or displayed efficiently. The finer details of my day, as explained in my Word document, would not make sense in an Excel spreadsheet, nor would the graphics you would find in a PowerPoint presentation. Data sets too large or dense for a spreadsheet would be more appropriate in a database, which can be created by another Office program: Microsoft Access.
Lastly, I created a PowerPoint presentation to visualize the data about my day. Presentations are the most efficient way to present basic data in a visual format. The PowerPoint program comes with many templates with various color schemes and graphics to help make your presentations more pleasing to the eye. As their name implies, presentations are best suited for presenting to an audience; data presented in a colorful PowerPoint will be more appealing in a demonstration context than simply projecting a Word document or Excel spreadsheet. After settling on a template that appealed to me the most, I used bulleted lists to break down the tasks throughout my day across three different slides (morning, afternoon, and evening). It is vital to be cognizant of your audience when creating PowerPoint presentations and to keep text data on your slides to a minimum so your audience is not expected to read paragraphs. If needed, PowerPoint allows you to keep notes within the file instead to allow you to plan the speaking part of your presentation; only the most essential data and talking points should appear on-screen. I used animations and transitions on each of my slides, which helped make my presentation more visually dynamic. If I were to do the assignment again, I would have taken better pictures throughout my day to have better imagery for my presentation. Nevertheless, my PowerPoint provides a simple, to-the-point, and visually appealing summary of my day’s schedule.
Using the Microsoft Office suite applications allowed me to approach my assignment from different perspectives. Each of my files presents the same data, but how my data needs to be presented would dictate the best application to use. That being said, the applications can be used in concert to create a more full-bodied understanding of your material and whatever it is that you are presenting. For instance, if I were showing my PowerPoint to an audience, I could use what I wrote in my Word document as a transcript of what I could say during my presentation. Furthermore, I found the pie chart I made in Excel to be an efficient visualization of my data and plugged it into my PowerPoint presentation as it would also be valuable in that context. Overall, I found Excel the most all-encompassing application for the data I presented in this assignment. In my spreadsheet, all my tasks were laid out in a sortable, easy-to-read table, and I could also visualize them using my graph. On this particular day, the specifics of what I did were not quite as suitable for a journalistic (Word) or completely visual (PowerPoint) context.
The Microsoft Office suite offers an eclectic mixture of options to present information regardless of your desired outcome. Word is best for entirely textual documents, Excel and Access are ideal for collecting & performing operations on vast amounts of data, and PowerPoint is most appropriate for presentations for an audience. Despite their differences, they can also be used together to provide a more complete view of the data you wish to present. For my assignment, I found that an unfussy presentation of my data was most efficient for what I hoped to achieve, and found Excel to be most effective in realizing my goals.
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