I Can Make That: The Excel Story

I've reached this point where I see things and think, I can make that. I might have blogged about this in relationship with knitting and (now) sewing. Although, let's be honest here: When it comes to sewing, it's probably wishful thinking. Knitting is another story. As long as I have a pattern, I'm confident I can make it. Somewhere along the line, I became an intermediate knitter.

There's another area of my life where I always think, I can do that and it's computer related.

I already bought a planner for my day job, but I thought it would be nice to have it online, too. That way I could have it with me whether I was working from home or in the office. That would keep me from needing to put the spiral-bound version in my bag.

I don't want a digital planner. I've had one of those and it didn't work for me.

My first thought was maybe there was an online kind of thing available. Um, the closest I found to what I wanted was for students to plan classes, homework, papers, and exams. (Think college student.) I could probably make it work, but I didn't want to pay for it.

Then I thought about using the online kanban board service I bought a while back. I logged in, and yes, I could use it, but then I thought, Excel spreadsheet! Perfect!

I headed over to Etsy because I'd found some pretty impressive spreadsheets over there for personal use. There were a number of hits on my search, but they were either too simple, too complicated, too geared toward traditional project management, or they were in Google Sheets. I don't want Google Sheets, I want Excel. The two programs are not completely compatible.

And then I found one I was pretty sure would be close enough to what I wanted, but it was $20 and I was like, really? I already bought a 2022 planner, this would be like buying two of them.

I did some online searches to see if I could find something online that wasn't Etsy, but while I found other things that were cool and discovered that as an Office 365 subscriber, I could download premium templates, I didn't find what I was looking for.

This is when the light bulb went off in my head. I'm pretty good with Excel. I bet I could make one.

YouTube, here I come.

One of the first videos I found looked promising. I started watching it. I had to back up again and again and again. I slowed the speed down. And I had to back up again and again and again.

This guy knew his Excel backward, forward and upside down, but because he knew it so well, he was flying through everything. And I realized that while I'm competent at Excel, I am not good at Excel. And formulas? Yeah, go really slowly, please.

The image at the top of this blog post is the calendar I made. This was the simple part of the video. The planning part was barely covered and appeared far beyond my skill level.

Now I'm thinking I should just pay the $20 for the one I found on Etsy.