Excel is more than just boring numbers and tedious calculations. You’ll be amazed at what it’s capable of. Here are six incredible projects to give you an idea of just what it can do.
1. Japanese Art
Tatsuo Horiuchi saw colleagues using Excel at work and decided to see what the software was really capable of. This 74-year-old artist has produced stunning Japanese art works from mere spreadsheets, displaying everything from blossoms and trees to people and beautiful landscapes.
- Pop-Culture GIFsHoguemr, a Reddit user, has paid homage to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in an animated GIF created in Excel when he had time to spare, saying that work was slow that day. Tremorized on Imur has showcased his skills with an Excel-created feline work of art, making the infamous Grumpy cat out of spreadsheet cells.
3. An Entire ‘Breathing City’
DarkHorse Analytics have created a beautiful colour-coded living map of Manhattan, showing the population of the borough at work and at home changing every hour over a 24-hour period. Population changes light up on the map, crafted by tiny cells and conditional formatting, after which each GIF frame was produced from an Excel screen grab.
4. Stop-Motion Animations
Joe Penna, the man behind YouTube’s MysteryGuitarMan, went viral with his 2012 stop-motion music video animation. 730 Excel spreadsheets were utilised to represent every frame of the video.
5. Traffic Fatalities Analysis
‘Five Years of Traffic Fatalities’ by John Nelson at IDV Solutions shows a breakdown of traffic fatalities based on different time and day specifications and whether weather or alcohol were factors and showing those involving pedestrians. In addition to charts, the data has been visualised on maps of the United States, based on data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and made via Excel pivot tables. It’s now possible to convert PDF to Excel – see https://pdftables.com/convert-pdf-to-excel– to make conversion of data and concepts far more versatile and convenient, opening up the limitless possibilities of Excel.
- Video GamesShowing just how fun spreadsheets can be, Arena.Xlsm was created in Excel by accountant Cary Walkin in just five months. This role-playing full-length game was released in 2013 and has four different endings and 2,000 possible enemies to compete with, showing that it’s anything but a simple casual game.