Excel Macros: automating the boring stuff

Work Smarter – outsource the boring tasks to Excel

Excel macros are “Excel Apps”. Some smaller, some larger, but all of them are “Apps” that extend Excel native capabilities. And, like any other App for a Smartphone, Tablet or PC, they are software.

And what can they do for you? Well, automate the million time-consuming tasks that anyone using Excel do. Most specially, the really annoying, no value added, long and repetitive tasks, like manipulating data on 6000 rows every month. So, how far can it go? Well, I’ve seen cases like this: 3 days to 11 seconds. 

Most cases are not this extreme, but even if the macro takes some time to run, like 2 hours and locking Excel while running (no Microsoft Office application will run acceptably on the PC while the macro is running), it is running by itself. So you are free to do something else (maybe on another PC). Or leave it running unattended during lunch time or overnight and deal with the results when you’re back.

That’s it – you can start outsourcing some of your boring work to Excel and leave it alone to come up with the results.