Text Editors and Excel

When I have a problem that needs to be solved, I open a text editor. Plain text¹ is great for almost everything. It's great for writing down basic ideas, notes, random thoughts. It's great for organizing all sorts of information. It's easy to find the information later with a simple search. There's no worry about future compatibility - if a future computer can't read my plain text files, then we're all screwed anyway.

When a text editor can't solve my problem, I open Excel. Excel is my workhorse. Need to do any math? Excel. Create an invoice? Excel. Figure out how much this loan will really cost me? Excel. Calculate projected cost / profit on a project? Excel. Create a form? Excel. You get the picture. If plain text can't handle it, I use Excel.

Excel isn't the right tool for a lot of things that I do, but it's comfortable. I'm really good with Excel, at least compared to a normal person. I suck compared to Excel Wizards, but I'm pretty sure they aren't actually human.

I never use Pages. I never use Word. They have no place. Most of the time, plain text is a better choice. If I must have fancy formatting, guess what? I use Excel.

Use what you know.