Microsoft Excel is one of the oldest pieces of software we still use today, and one of the most important, too. Some may have you believe that there are far better ways to do the things you can do in Excel, but this tool that was first crafted all the way back in 1985 is still the king when it comes to spreadsheet management and everything you can do with it.

In ts nearly 40-year history, Excel may have sometimes had more of a negative reputation, but its sheer capabilities and flexibility make it a tool that anyone should still know today. And in fact, the usefulness of Excel is likely not going away anytime soon.

5 It's still the best way to manage databases

Straightforward but incredibly capable

Many solutions may exist for managing large databases with tons of information, but when it comes down to the brass tacks, Excel is still the way to do it all. Have to manage client information? Excel can store thousands upon thousands of clients with multiple fields for each. Want to manage your budget for the holidays? You can track your expenses in Excel for each month and year, too.

Almost any information you may want to compile into a database can be put into an Excel spreadsheet and it becomes workable in a wide range of ways. If you need to add numbers to calculate the total cost of something, for example, Excel can do that. You can easily calculate an average for a given field, or even quickly find the highest or smallest number in a set if you need to spot outliers.

It's a great way to visualize that data, too. If you need to graph the data you have, Excel offers dozens of ways to put it all together in a nice chart so you can easily understand the results.

4 It's useful in almost every field

Wherever you work, Excel is probably there

A program like Excel may seem like something only accountants or data analysts need, but really, Excel is a tool that can be (and is) almost always useful in basically every field you can imagine. Any situation where numbers get involved, Excel is probably going to be an important clutch, and any business (and even many personal aspects of your life) deals with numbers at some point.

I am far from an Excel aficionado, but even when I wanted to write the Apple M4 performance comparison article a few weeks ago, Excel was what I used to produce the comparison graphs. I also have a decently large spreadsheet with benchmark results from basically every device I've reviewed in the past couple of years to make comparisons easier.

And again, that's just a very simple use case. Depending on what you're doing, there's so much more you might want to use Excel for. Personal finance management and budgeting, project management, and so much more are all things Excel can do in different fields. If you're a student, learning Excel now can increase your value on the job market no matter what you end up working in. It's one of the skills I learned in my somewhat generic administrative assistance college degree, too, which shows just how widely used it can be.

That versatility makes Excel almost like a universal language, too. Sure, there are personal finance apps, and more dedicated database apps that may do a better job than Excel in certain cases. But Excel can do all of that in one place, no need to switch environments, and that makes its capabilities not only useful, but universal. It's very likely that wherever you end up working uses Excel already, so bringing that knowledge with you is an instant advantage.

3 High skill ceiling

Easy to learn, hard to master

The thing about Excel is that it's such a commonplace tool that it might be easy to overlook just how important it is. You might think "everyone knows Excel anyway, so why bother investing too much into it?", but in reality, the things you can do in Excel with the right skills could blow your mind.

A simple database to manage is nothing compared to what some people have achieved with Excel, and tools like VBA and macros can completely change how Excel works. Heck, we've seen people do some crazy fun projects in Excel, too, including building a CPU on it.

If you put the time into learning the more advanced features and mechanics of Excel, you can become extremely valuable in a job position. You'll be surprised at how often Excel might be needed for something, and how good of a job you can actually do with it once you have full knowledge of its capabilities.

2 It's not going anywhere

It's the quintessential tool

The rise of new alternatives to popular software can sometimes shake people's confidence in those old tools, especially when they do come with advantages like being a bit easier to get to grips with for new users. But Excel is an absolute juggernaut, and it's incredibly useful to this day.

A 40-year-old tool isn't going to just be phased out or discontinued out of nowhere, and even if alternatives exist, it's extremely likely that Excel will be your first fallback if anything goes wrong. A lot of the more modern tools may seem cool, but they often come with the downside of unpredictability. Tools may get acquired and subsequently killed off or simply change their model too much to be useful.

Excel is something of a monolith in that sense, and it will continue to be reliable for many years to come, so it's important to be prepared to use it.

1 Competing apps are still heavily based on Excel

Google Sheets is just Google's version

Finally, there's the fact that even if you don't like Microsoft, at the end of the day, every Excel competitor is essentially a skin for Excel, often with fewer features. Sure, you may like how Google Sheets looks more or prefer its UI, but functionally, it's just what Excel does, but less. And all the other Microsoft Office alternatives are the same thing.

It's no coincidence that all these tools make sure to support Excel files at least to some extent, and anything created in those apps can generally be opened in Excel too. Even if you use an alternative, the knowledge from Excel will carry over to all of those apps, and if anything, you'll probably be more limited using those apps, which makes Excel a more appealing tool.

Excel has defined the way we work

No matter how much you might want to hate Microsoft, Excel has become such a core component of everyone's workflow that it remains a valuable skill in today's world, and will likely remain that way for years to come. If you're trying to enter the job market soon or want to greatly increase your chances of finding success, you should definitely put some time into learning Excel.