Documenting a Day

 

Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint are very effective productivity tools that are popular in the workplace and at home. They not only allow you to create documents and spreadsheets but serve as a great asset in presenting new ideas to audiences. In the midst of this pandemic a lot of people have resorted to working remotely and are using these applications more heavily now than ever. The topics that will be explored are as follows: the functions between Word, Excel and PowerPoint, the pros and cons between them, real-life scenarios applications to daily life in work or personal life.

Microsoft Word has plenty of functions to offer and is a great tool to take notes for personal or to use as a word processor for things relating to work or school. As mentioned by Vahid & Lysecky (2017), “a word processor is a common computer application for creating formatted text including and in reference to the features of a document like margins, text size, bold, italicized or colors” (Section 5.1). The advantage of Microsoft Word and any other processor is the ability to record and save anything that is being typed this is very useful especially when taking notes for school or work and making this information readily available. The one disadvantage of using a word processor is the limited ability in creating tables or graphs.

Besides the use of word processors, spreadsheets are also great tools in organizing information and being able to digest that information quickly to make decisions. One of the biggest advantages of using Excel is the ability to make tables with information and taking that information to produce visually stimulating data in the form of graphs or pie charts. This is advantageous for anyone who is a visual learner. Excel is a great tool that I use at work to create tables showing my employees their goals for the month, I then use a pie chart function as well so that they can visually see how they are doing in relation to their quota. In contrast to the advantages of Excel, one disadvantage to using Excel is that the functionality of this application is to robust that it takes time to learn in order to gain the full benefit of using it.

Lastly, Microsoft PowerPoint is a great asset to have in presenting ideas or memories to anyone in your personal or work life. For instance, with PowerPoint anyone is able to procure a professional looking presentation since the application houses a plethora of slide themes and layouts to choose from that fits the occasion. This versatility in displaying slides and the customizability in choosing graphics, layouts, themes or animations is what makes this presentation tool worth every penny to use (Section 5.3). One of the disadvantages of using a presentation application such as Microsoft PowerPoint is the sizes of the files when they are saved. For instance, when a presentation was created for my workplace, animations and graphics increased the amount of storage the file was taking and hence making it difficult to send to other coworkers via email since there is a limit to how big a file or attachment is.

In conclusion the advantages of these productivity applications far outweigh the minuscule disadvantages they offer in helping one in their work and personal life. The application that I personally use the most is Microsoft Word. Whenever I have conversations with my employees, I make sure I record them through the word processor app so that we can recall and recap those conversations in the end of the month when we are going through their results. Also, I use Microsoft Word a lot with school in making sure I store all my essays, assignments and discussions that I type throughout each course. The ability that Microsoft Word has in integrating with cloud services gives me the advantage of accessing my work anywhere I go.

Reference

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2017). Computing technology for all. Retrieved from zybooks.zyante.com/