I really do love Excel. In fact it is seems it’s becoming an addiction. My mind is endlessly fixated on finding new ways to work with Excel and every shout of eureka comes with a new challenge concocted somewhere in mind.
It’s like I’m in an endless loop, a never ending circular reference. My work does not offer much help either as I spend most of my day “making love” to Excel from sun-up till sun-down. And as they say; Acceptance and admittance of a problem is the first step to recovery. I admit my addiction. But the truth is I DON’T WANT TO BE CURED.
Let me take you back to how it all started, I remember so clearly. It was sometime in 2003 as an undergrad. I was on holiday with my older cousin, an Estate Management Consultant. I remember seeing him so confused as he looks into his cathode ray tube monitor. In curiosity, I moved closer. The screen was filled with numbers in small boxes and on the top right corner of the screen was a beautiful pie chart. Then the most amazing thing happened, he changed a number in a cell and the shape of the pie chart changed, he hit another button the shape shifted again, he fidgeted with some icons on the screen and the pie chart changed into a bar chart. I asked what he was doing; “I am carrying out a financial analysis and valuation of a project for my company” he replied.
That was how it all started. Every day during my vacation I would play around with numbers, cells, functions and formulas for hours, and when I found out what F1 does, it became my genie in the lamp. Afterwards saw me through the waters of self-education – delving into the deeps, skiing the surface and exploring shore to shore of Excel.
I printed out almost all the help topics and took it back to school with me. During school sessions, I would peer over the pages with so much passion, working on memorizing as much as possible; hoping to put to practice all I have read when I get back home and during the holidays. That’s how it went for the next two years – dating Microsoft Excel.
Fast forwarding to year 2006, my first job position was that of an accounting officer. I was responsible for bookkeeping of sales and inventory. Shockingly, it was done manually with pen and paper. Being a “lazy person” – wanting to do more with less – by nature, I wanted an easy way out of the drudgeries. I just hated the monthly reconciliation stuff. So one day, it happened that I failed to turn in one of my monthly reconciliation at the time my boss needed and asked for it. I had the boldness to tell him I was developing and excel workbook that would make it easier and reduce the pen and paper “wahala”. He was excited and he liked it. Of-course I was so full of shit, I knew excel could do it but I was not sure how to go about it and I didn’t even know google, moreover internet was a luxury then. About a week later with the help of F1 I had a functional inventory workbook made up of just basic operands (+,-,/,*), I think AVERAGE was the only Excel function I had used.
Day after day I would spend hours improving it; always thinking of ways to make my work easier – evolutionary development you may say. Before long, I extend it to sales and then purchasing. I became the in-house Microsoft Excel Consultant. I was always seeking out where I could apply my basic Excel skills
About a year later, I found myself in banking, for about a year, I didn’t see much need for excel, but yearning to know more about excel never waned. Then came the turning point in my quest for “Excel-knowledge”, I meet Google. Everyday after work I would think up a problem, google it up and save as much references I could on them, practice and recreate them.
Then came 2008, at the height of the stock market boom, my office responsible for managing various dividend and IPO accounts, it was a crazy time, but it was the time for the “Excel” in me to shine through. I became a “data analysis guru” ; not that I was one, but like they say “in the land of the blind a one-eyed man is the king”. With the help of Excel I was able to stop a lot fraud.
2008, 2009: I started experimenting with Macros, as usual the lazy me always seeking ways to make it my job easier. I started developing bits of VBA. I would record a series of steps get my VBA sources and tweak it up to make it dynamic. I’ll google-up references and adapt them to make them suitable. The highlight of 2009 was when I developed an automated Fixed Asset Register with forms and interface. It had it all, you could create asset classes, automated depreciation, accumulated depreciation, disposal etc.
2010: It was the year of Financial Modeling. By some chance, while googling I came about these words. They have become my Mantra since then. With the help of the internet I kept learning more about financial modeling and also got some books on financial modeling. Highlight of 2010, I automated most of tasks and reports.
2011 : I got to put my financial modeling skills to use. My Dad was involved in some Project Finance consulting and I helped with developing the models for the projects. Looking back they were basic and rudimentary, but they paved the way into my world of financial modeling. The highlight 2011, I developed Credit Analysis Workbook. I had noticed that a lot of the banks marketers especially in my branch had problems analyzing their credit requests, my intention was for it to be a first level analysis tool to help the understand the business. It did vertical and horizontal analysis, the ratio, it had a very dashboard for charts. I also developed a VBA application for ATM reconciliation, it remains the most complicated VBA application I’ve ever built. It was able to identify unique transactions in rows of hundreds of thousands of data. At that time ATM reconciliation for a major “pain in the backside” for the staff.
2012- to date: Was the Corporate finance year filled with financial modeling, valuation, budgets, forecasting, probability distributions, Monte Carlo and yaddaa yaddaa. I am not so much into writing long and complicated formulas any more, VBA is almost a thing of the past except occasionally when I need it for data analysis, I am now a novice in VBA, but I still have my friend in Google.
So there you have it my journey with Excel. Its been fun so far and I’m not ready to part ways with her.
You may wonder what this site is about, I am not sure my self, I guess I just want to share some of what I know although It’s not much. I also hope it would be a platform for Nigerians to share our thoughts and ideas and help others; Like others before us did.
Please share your Excel journey let’s read how it all started.
adamolekunolajide's website 
Wow!
Seems most Excel Gurus followed the same path.
I won’t forget the days I couldn’t sleep at night, when I closed my eyes I saw Excel spreadsheets of the reports I was battling at work. I was getting scared and told my boss at work, and he said, “Shet Michael! That’s serious!”
Like you, I learned mostly from projects and Google.
Thanks for sharing.