Microsoft Word is a word processor, a computer application for electronically writing

and storing documents of every kind. According to tech website PC Pitstop, Word is
Microsoft's second-most popular software application, behind Internet Explorer.
Word is available for traditional desktop and laptop computers, and also comes in a
special version for mobile devices like tablets and phones as well, allowing you to
get some writing done whenever and wherever you like.

Writing Documents
Almost anybody who has a writing task, including workers, writers, students and professionals,
can benefit from the speed, convenience and reliability of a word processor like Microsoft Word.
Some of the kinds of documents you can write include reports, letters, stories, poetry, essays and
blog posts. With Word you can save your documents onto your hard drive or a remote server, and
then return to them later. You can also check your spelling and grammar, insert special data
structures like charts and tables, save your work in a variety of file formats and print them out on
any kind of paper that your printer supports.

Formatting Documents
Microsoft Word offers many formatting tools to change and control the appearance of your
documents. You can make newsletters with a column format, or create personal stationery with
graphical headers. You can design envelopes and greeting cards. If you're writing a book, Word
lets you insert a table of contents, page numbers and appendices. You can change the font of your
writing, as well as the color and size. You can use formatting effects like boldface, italics,
underlining and strikethrough. You can even adjust fundamental document settings like the size
of the margins and the spacing between characters, lines and paragraphs. Word also lets you
insert hyperlinks to other documents or websites, and internal links to move around quickly
inside the same document. For many of the more common formatting tasks, Word offers
templates that do some of the easy work for you, allowing you to work more efficiently.
(techwalla.com, 2016)
Excel
Microsoft Excel provides a grid interface to organize nearly any type of information.
The power of Excel lies in its flexibility to define the layout and structure of the
information you want to manage. Basic tasks require no special training, and Excel
allows you to work with text, numbers, and date information in a relatively open and
unstructured way. Nearly 30 years after its initial introduction, Excel remains the
worlds leading spreadsheet software.
(openGate software inc., 2016)

This brief article provides an introduction to Microsoft Excel, major uses, and key
features every Excel user should be aware of.

Major Uses for Excel

Excel is used widely in any financially-related activity. The ability to create new
spreadsheets where users can define custom formulas to calculate anything from a
simple quarterly forecast to a full corporate annual report makes Excel highly
appealing. Excel is also used widely for common information organization and
tracking like a list of sales leads, project status reports, contact lists, and invoicing.
Finally, Excel is a useful tool for scientific and statistical analysis with large data
sets. Excel's statistical formulas and graphing can help researches perform
variance analysis, chi-square testing, and chart complex data.

How Excel Works

An Excel document is called a Workbook. A workbook always has at least one
Worksheet. Workseets are the grid where you can store and calculate data. You
can have many worksheets stored inside a workbook, each with a unique worksheet
name.
Worksheets are laid out in columns (vertical) and rows (horizontal). The intersection
of any given row and column is a cell. Cells are really where you enter any
information. A cell will accept a large amount of text, or you can enter a date,
number, or formula. Each cell can be formatted individually with distinct border,
background color, and font color/size/type.

Excel Formulas
You can create simple and complex formulas in Excel to calculate just about
anything. Inputs to a formula may be other cells, the results of other formulas, or
just straight-forward math (5*2+3). Excel includes a formula library for calculating
things like Net Present Value (NPV), standard deviation, interest payments over
time, and other common financial and mathematic formulae. Excel's formula bar
includes a feature to help you search for a formula you need, and also helps you
select the appropriate cells in your workbook to calculate the formula.
(openGate software inc., 2016)

(openGate software inc., 2016)

Excel Charting
Excel offers a wide array of charts to visualize data. They range from simple line
graphs to bubble and radar charts. Excel has two main tools for charting: standard
charts and pivot charts.

A standard chart is relatively static one you create it. As you change data in your
spreadsheet, related cells will refresh the chart to show the new updates. A pivot
chart is more dynamic, allowing you to "slice-and-dice" your data in several different
ways by choosing which columns contain the information you want to group by, or
apply mathematical operations (sum, count, average, find the maximum, etc).