advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

Make Excel dance – 3 things you never knew a spreadsheet could do

The clock is counting down to the closing date for entries into this leg of Microsoft’s Excel Champs competition: April 25th is now just under two weeks away.

The competition is unusual to say the least: in it, Microsoft is setting challenges for hackers to solve problems creatively using Excel; should you rise to the challenge and solve those problems correctly, you will make it through to the next round.

If you’re looking for a little inspiration as to how to make your entry stand out, we’ve put together this quick round-up of surprising projects that were all built in Excel using cunning macros and formulas.

An Excel version of 2048

2048_game

There’s a simple but tough (and addictive) game called 2048, that you may have seen linked to online before. It challenges players to combine numbered tiles to reach the number 2048; it’s a standalone game by Gabrielle Cirulli, and it’s playable in a browser by clicking here.

2048 has been 100% re-made in Excel by the smart folks over at Spreadsheet1.com, the only real difference is that this version lets you track your moves so that you can examine your strategy retrospectively. You can also save your progress simply by saving the workbook as you normally would any other.

It can be downloaded for free here, and can be played in Excel 2007 or later.

 

Monopoly

monopoly1

Sometimes, the best ideas strike at the oddest times. Andrew Werner says he was playing Monopoly with his wife and friend when he started thinking of all the different ways he could possibly win.

Using his Excel-fu, he spent around 14 hours creating a Monopoly simulator that runs on Excel using Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications programming language. Eventually, he ended up with a four-player version of the game which can even accommodate a mix of human and AI players.

 

A sudoku solver/generator

sudoku

Love puzzles? Love Sudoku? It was almost inevitable that someone would build a version of the number-line game that can be played in Excel, and that someone is  Bruce McPherson. His sheets both create and help to solve Sudoku puzzles, which are perfect for a small break here and there or for helping you solve a particularly difficult puzzle. It’s just an .xlsm file, but it’s more polished than many of the Sudoku apps available in mobile phone stores.

Those three projects are just a small sample of the amazing (and strangely un-spreadsheet-like) things Excel can do in skilled hands, making it the perfect way to test out the skills of our local Excel experts.

 

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement