MICROSOFT EXCEL SOFTWARE OVERVIEW
According to the latest CFMA technology survey, 14% of construction contractors tap the capabilities of Microsoft Excel, a component of the popular Microsoft Office business suite, to create, manage and communicate construction estimates. Since so many companies already use Excel and the full Office suite as part of their day-to-day operations, startup and training costs are minimal when compared to custom construction estimating programs.
The latest iteration of the popular spreadsheet -- officially known as Microsoft Office Excel 2007 -- introduces the Office Fluent user interface, which makes it easier to build charts. Excel 2007 also features better support for tables, supports spreadsheets of up to 1 million rows and 16,000 columns, and lets users build customs report from an OLAP (online analytical processing) database and connect to external data sources using the Data Connection Library, according to Microsoft. Finally, Excel Services dynamically renders a spreadsheet as an HTML file, allowing other users to access the information using a Web browser.
Excel 2007's construction estimating capabilities do not end at what is available out of the box. On one hand, vendors are building and marketing Excel add-ins to address an array of vertical markets and functions. On the other hand, construction software firms are increasingly offering functionality that allows estimating, accounting and project management documents created in their applications to be exported to Microsoft Excel.
