What Excel functions do project managers/analysts use most?

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adamt
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Hi,

I'm applying for grad project manager/analyst roles and wanted to find out which Excel functions are regularly used by project managers/support/analysts?

Which would you say are the top 3, and in order of complexity?

Thank you.
NickC
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When you say functions do you mean features of excel i.e. conditional formatting, filters etc, or formula based functions such as these?

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/excel ... 77524.aspx

Nick
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dhaughey
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A function I find useful as a project manager is NETWORKDAYS. It gives you the number of working days between two dates. This is the formula:

=NETWORKDAYS(start_date,end_date)

It's very handy for working out the duration of activities, people's holidays, total working days for a project etc.

Cheers,
Duncan
NickC
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Just to expand on the question a little.

How important is it that the PM has a high skill level regarding computer literacy such as the use of Excel, MS Project and other software?

I have recently worked with a PM who is struggling to adapt to MS project and other packages including MS Excel. Problem being that both are used extensively to schedule work packages, produce reports, run registers for issue control etc. This requires more than a basic knowledge of the software.

Is this system too dependent on people being good on computers, or is that just the way it is?
eelo
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I use a lot of filtering, sorting, and conditional formatting with the Project Management Tools I use. I'm not sure there are really any set of functions that get used more, when wearing the Project Manager hat. I suppose I use functions related to date manipulation, when planning projects, occasionally.
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