Case 3

The case is a nice exercise to get to know how to work with the SUM,MIN,MAX,AVERAGE, and IF formula. The Future Value (FV) formula is explained in more detials. The exercise also shows that sometimes you have to use absolute reference before copying the formula.

Online Tutorial: Financial Formulas

This tutorial shows us how powerful Excel can be for making business decisioins. It can help you to figure out the following things for example:

• How much you would need to spend on monthly payments such as mortgage or car payments.
  
• How much you would need to save in order to accumulate a specific amount by a certain point in time.
  
• How much of a down payment you would need to make, for monthly payments to equal a particular amount.
  
• How much you would gain over time on a specific amount of savings.
  

It explains also how to use the 'basic' financial formulas of Excel like:

• PMT
• NPER
  
• PV
  
• FV
  

I think that they should have mentioned also the RATE function in the tutorial. With these formulas you can find the answers to the above and to so many other business related questions. We also learnt in class that by conditional formatting it is also possible to automatically indicate the result/value that we are looking for.

We made a Loan Payment Calculator, Interest Table, and Amortization Table by just using 2 of these formulas. So you can imagine how important it is to know how to use these formulas.

Case 2

I learned nice ideas how to format a table in an Excel spreadsheet. The way you present financial information or statements are very important. So I'm happy about the exercise Case 2. I also really enjoyed what we did on Wednesday. It is very related to my finance major and it is also important for everyone who wants to manage his own money.

Online Excel Tutorials

From the first assignment I have learnt:


- how to add an icon/function to the Quick Access Toolbar. It is very practical like this you can add the icons that you use frequently so that you do not have to go look for them in a submenu for example.


- that with the ALT button you can use keyboard functions for every icon in Excel. It is helpful for when your mouse is not functioning or sometimes it is faster to use keyboard shortcuts than to use the mouse.


- the new features of Excel 2007, like: Safer files, Less risk of file corruption, Reduced file size, More useful data,...


- what the several extensions like *.xlsx, *.xlsm, *.xltx, *.xltm, *.xlsb, and *.xls (Excel 97 - Excel 2003 Workbook) stand for.




From the second assignment I have learnt:


- what #NAME?, #REF!, and ##### stand for. I always knew that it meant that there is an error in the cell but now I know to what kind of error it refers to.








The online tutorials are very good to get everyone in the class at the same level of Excel 2007 so that we can make more complex things, for example, like the Loan Payment Calculator that we did last class.

Case 1

It is still the basic stuff of Excel so I knew already everything. It is good that the first case is easy so that it helps you to get familiar with the CaseGrader.

Aryeh