What’s your level? Six levels of spreadsheet user sophistication
Sep 14, 2018 · 2 min read
This article has also been published on the GRID Blog.
In preparing everything from the product features and UI to the go-to-market plan and messaging for GRID, we have realized that it will be helpful to look at users’ spreadsheet knowledge by levels of sophistication.
Through conversations with spreadsheet users, expert consultants and through deep analysis of a corpus of more than 100 thousand spreadsheets (more on that later) we have come to the following conclusion.
We’d be interested to hear if these levels make sense to you and which level you believe you belong to:
- Spreadsheet consumer
Has Excel installed (or has logged on to Google Sheets)
Opens and views files provided by others - Spreadsheet basic user
Creates new Excel files (or Google Sheets documents)
Enters data and basic formulas +, -, *, /, SUM(), AVERAGE(), ROUND() - Spreadsheet intermediate user
Uses more sophisticated functions such as IF(), FIND(), NOW(), SUBTOTAL(), …
Uses - but does not create - pivot tables
May name cells and ranges - Spreadsheet pro
Uses VLOOKUP() (and soon thereafter INDEX(MATCH()) )
Creates pivot tables
May use Data Tables - Spreadsheet developer
Has the Developer tab turned on
Creates forms (Excel) or uses Google Forms
Records macros - Spreadsheet scripter
Writes VBA code (Excel) or Apps Scripts (Google)
Uses PowerQuery and PowerPivot
