Basically it will read a cell value and ask itself if this happens then do that. You can ask it simple things like look at a given cell and ask if it is less than or equal to a value or another cell. If it meets a set of criteria, you can ask it to look up values from a chart . The possibilities are endless.
I was pretty good at Lotus 1-2-3, but to this day I still struggle with Excel. With my boys it's the other way around. With one two three, I did estimating, job costing, payroll, profit sharing, and literally a hundred other things. I even did one on building an engine using variable parameters for bore stroke piston speed displacement etcetera. If you're into mechanics, gear ratios can be interesting. A while back I did one on our 25 horsepower dust collector because it was drawing a tad too many amps. It required changing the pulleys on the motor and the blower and I had to get it exactly where it needed to be, because the huge pulleys and belts get very expensive to change out. When it was all said and done I got the exact results that I wanted.
Long story short, learning Excel will be the single most important software that you could learn to be successful in business. I was lucky enough to be told the exact same thing by my accountant at the time, and also a small Builder that I was doing work for at the time. You can learn the fundamentals fairly easy if you just spend the time on it. I did it by reducing the amount of TV that I watched. Once I got going it was a lot of fun to produce all the different types of worksheets.
