Numbers

NOW I’m the first to admit I’m no great shakes when it comes to maths.

Some people have a talent for numbers, others don’t – and I don’t!

The advent of the pocket calculator was a great boon to me, for a spot of everyday counting, but when it comes to doing our annual accounts it becomes a bit of a longwinded chore.

Which is why I’ve decided to learn to use a spreadsheet program.

Windows Excel is said to make doing things like household accounts a snip!

This software is said to make the calculator a thing of the past.

Forget paper and pencil, they say, it can all be done on computer…

Yes, well…

Unfortunately, if you visit Microsoft’s website dealing with Excel and its uses, you find rather large blocks of information missing.

Such as how to set up the program for your needs; my first try ends up so muddled I have to scrap it and start again.

Then there are the curious idiosyncrasies of the program itself, such as why it sometimes insists on putting a dollar sign into the data cell. Every time you enter a number in the cell, up pops the blasted $ again.

So here I am, laboriously typing out long lines of numbers into the rows and columns and by the time I’ve checked and double checked each bit of data and somehow got the thing to cough up an answer, I’m wondering whether it wasn’t easier and quicker to stick with the old pocket calculator after all.