Uncommon Microsoft Excel

When we invite our clients to courses on Microsoft Excel or Excel in conjunction with BI, we often hear two typical answers. The first say that they know Microsoft Excel and their level of knowledge is sufficient for work. Others are sure that Excel, and even more so Power BI, is needed at least by analysts and, at most, by financial and sales managers. But not to them: marketers, accountants, IT specialists, logisticians, etc.

But is this really so, and Excel, for example, is only designed to work with numbers, reports and accurate data?

Late last year, musician and YouTube blogger Dylan Tallchief recorded his first video on creating music in Microsoft Excel. Of course, the program itself is not intended to create sound and its main task is to work with tables. But the tables themselves act as a MIDI controller - the sound starts in the sequence specified in the Excel table. Using the X markers, Dylan placed them in the boxes attached to a particular instrument. As a result, the musician got a kind of drum machine successful architects.

And although Excel is not intended for creating music and, according to the blogger himself, is not the most convenient program for this purpose, it has functionality similar to specialized software products for creating music. Of course, we will not compare this office software with either Ableton or FL Studio. We only offer to look at this program from a different, new angle.

Earlier this year, Dylan Tollchief made another attempt at creating a music track in Microsoft Excel - he wrote a cover of the hit "Take On Me" by the Norwegian group a-ha. It turned out, by the way, quite decently.

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The work of Tatsuo Horiuchi, an 80-year-old Japanese artist, is also proof that there are no boundaries for creative expression and even non-obvious tools like Microsoft Excel can be used.

The topic that a huge number of programs have been created for drawing and that Corel Painter or CorelDraw, Photoshop and, finally, ordinary Paint would be more suitable for creating pictures can be discussed for a long time.

Painting by Tatsuo Horiuchi in Excel

We repeat, perhaps Tatsuo Horiuchi chose not the easiest path, but there is hardly anyone who is willing to argue that his pictures, created in Microsoft Excel, are beautiful.