Application Reflection
The Microsoft Office suite of applications is a standard
for many reasons. The more used applications in a professional day to day are
Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Word is a word processing application which allows
the writing and formatting of documents. There is functionality in creating
tables, manipulating formats and fonts, and tailoring the look of your document
to meet your needs. Excel has similar word processing capability; however, it
adds the complexity of being able to calculate formulas and easily keep track
of tables of information. In addition,
Excel does have the capability to be used as a basic database to store
information. PowerPoint provides a way to present information in a much more
visually pleasing format than both Excel or Word. It allows for clear animation and the ability
to present information through a slide show or deck, that would be easier when
presenting for an audience.
It
would be possible to do many of the same things within the different programs,
but each offers different capabilities that are more suited to specific tasks. For example, you could document your day as a
journal entry in PowerPoint, however many of the word processing formats would
not be available to you. In contrast,
you could create a presentation in Word, however the animations and things that
make a presentation more engaging would not be available.
Word
offers the ability to format and design documents both large and small for many
purposes. The program offers options to help format to certain things and
create templates based on many others best practices. It is an industry standard and is easily read
and used among many computing platforms.
As developed as Word is, it is not the most complex and it doesn’t have
the most capability in designing documents. While you could design an effective
flier or white page in Word, many designers and advertisers would prefer the
enhanced ability something like Adobe Illustrator would offer.
Like Word, Excel is an industry standard in spreadsheet
applications. It has robust capability
mixed with more ease of use than some other programs. Excel offers feedback on how to make a
formula work if it isn’t working and provides easy one-click ways to sort,
calculate and organize data. The drawback to Excel, however, is that there is a
lot of functionality that takes awhile to learn. While it has a user-friendly interface, in
order to perform some more complex functions a user would need to look up how
to do things or take a class. Excel has
the flexibility to serve as a basic database as well, but I have found in
working with it in this capacity, the more information that is entered it can
get glitchy or start corrupting.
Like Word and Excel, PowerPoint is the standard in
presentation software. It has strong capabilities
to make presentations engaging and pleasing to watch. It allows for design templates and offers
suggestions in formats based on the information that is being presented. It also allows the user to have notes and be
able to present that information without it being visible on the screen and it
allows for fliers of the presentation with notes columns to be
distributed. The drawback to PowerPoint
can be its multitude of functionality.
Many times, a user can feel the need to incorporate way too many
animations or engaging things on slides, making a presentation very busy and
almost tiring to watch.
In documenting my day, I think that Word is the most
appropriate application. It allows me to
list out my tasks and see which things I am engaging in on a day to day
basis. That being said, there are
benefits to documenting my day in both Excel and PowerPoint, depending on my
desired outcome. If I am looking at just a personal journal of my day, Word
more than fits the bill. However, if I
want to see how much time I am spending on tasks or need to see where I can
find some time to complete other tasks, the functionality of Excel might be
more fitting. Lastly, if I am trying to
illustrate to others what my day looks like and how I am spending my time,
PowerPoint would likely be the more effective format to present that
information.
The Microsoft Office suite offers a lot of
functionality. Word can be used for
documenting my day but is also an effective tool to format notes from a team
meeting that I can send out. It is also a good application for typing up essays
and reflection papers, like this one. Excel is a great application for basic
calculations and I often use it as a quick calculator, but it is also a robust
tool for reporting and comparing information.
I use Excel daily to report back financials on clients and partners and
the create charts to visualize the information. PowerPoint is an effective
presentation software to present information in a meeting or similar forum. The
cross compatibility of the applications allows charts from Excel to be copied
into PowerPoint to be displayed. I use PowerPoint almost daily in presenting
the reporting and information from Excel to the interested and appropriate
teams. I am also currently using PowerPoint
to build out a strawman depiction of a SharePoint site I am working one and I
frequently use it to create flowcharts and simple process flow diagrams.
Overall, the Microsoft Office suite of applications offers the functionality I
need to complete my day to day tasks.
References
Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2017). Computing
technology for all.
Retrieved from zybooks.zyante.com
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