Like Excel but easier than Excel

[Luredbyapomegranate]

I need to create a document with multiple tables, which I would normally do in word.

What I’m after is a document where I can have multiple tabs like excel, but a simpler programme like word.

I know Excel isn’t hard, but there is no way in hell the team will learn to use it, has been tried many times.

Awaiting the brilliant ideas

* Not rude at all, and no I can barely use it.*

I think this is making you think excel is more complicated that it is

You can see examples of Trello templates here: trello.com/templates

Thanks everyone

I’m going to look at trello as first go, and one note also, or get our lovely finance guy to make a big bold spreadsheet

Over and out - and thanks again - really appreciate all the input.

@Gherkingreen @JoanThursday

Thanks both. It’s good to know you’ve been able to get the team on it, and yes agree that in a lot of sectors spreadsheets not used as widely as other people think.

I'm a big fan of OneNote as well. However it sounds as if you want to solve issues of version control - no individual piece of software will sort that out for you, unless you have some sort of access control to certain sections.

@Keeponmoving2213

They are in the creative industry 24

The creative industry especially photography is so tech focussed!

@Keeponmoving2213

It’s not a tech issue, it’s an organisation and brain type issue.

They are very visual and blank out at the sight of a trad spread sheet, they struggle with organisation, and they work insane hours. They are really good at their core jobs. But anything that involves admin needs to be very simple to succeed.

I do understand this is hard to understand if thou don’t work in this type of environment, but as you will see from a couple of PPs, it’s common. Especially start ups with no support staff. I’d also imagine it applies to getting other groups like doctors etc to apply systems.

[quote JoanThursday]You can see examples of Trello templates here: trello.com/templates[/quote]
Ah - excellent - thank you

Are you all based in an office or do you all communicate using TEAMS/Zoom etc?

There is something very satisfying when you see the trello cards shift right towards the 'done' column. I am a very visual person too - it works for me. Good luck!

@AlisonDonut

Are you all based in an office or do you all communicate using TEAMS/Zoom etc?

Based all over!

If we were all in the same office we’d just have 3 whiteboards -

@JackieCollinshasnoauthority... Or, you know, trained? I find Excel extremely unintuitive and difficult to use - no one at my workplace has time to show me, and I've really floundered on any tutorials. I'd benefit hugely from someone sitting next to me and showing me how the 'rules' of Excel apply to our spreadsheets but it's not happening. And this is for a low-paid, part - time position, so investing money into a private 'lesson' isn't feasible! I'm extremely good at the customer - facing part of my job, before you decide to write me off entirely!

One Note might do it. Or some of the apps within ms teams

or get our lovely finance guy to make a big bold spreadsheet

Finance guy might not be the best person to create if previous attempt was too complex. It needs sometime to think about the usability and workflow to engage your staff. Maybe a joint effort with your best admin person to reign in the complexity.

Sounds like you're really over-complicating this.
If you're only entering data, Excel is as easy to use as Word.
Doesn't sound like you want it to do anything complicated or use formulas.
You mentioned what you had made for you before was too small with tiny lines. Just resize it then. The functions for doing this are the same as Word in the ribbon at the top.

Increase the font size.

Increase the column height.

Use Bold.

Use wrap for text boxes.

Freeze from the header row.

They just add another row each time.

Ctrl-Z (undo) is their friend.

It's really, really easy to do.

As a general comment I'd be very wary of any employee at any level who deems themselves too creative or important for admin - especially 24 year olds. Every job under the sun involves some level of admin and it's what keeps businesses running efficiently. I've had to stamp this attitude out of new graduates and bite my tongue around senior academics - far too many people view admin as far too lowly or boring for them, someone else should do it (and then if that someone else exists they'll invariably be treated like shit).

@Luredbyapomegranate

It is kind of weird that people of that age wouldn't be able to do this though, sorry. This is the most basic functionality of excel and I would have thought it would be easy for anyone who can use a computer or smartphone etc, especially at that age. I know that comment makes me sound a bit of a dick though.

Excel is definitely the easiest for this. Things like Word and Trello will quickly become a mess and you'll spend time tidying it up all the time.

@JenniferBarkley

As a general comment I'd be very wary of any employee at any level who deems themselves too creative or important for admin - especially 24 year olds. Every job under the sun involves some level of admin and it's what keeps businesses running efficiently. I've had to stamp this attitude out of new graduates and bite my tongue around senior academics - far too many people view admin as far too lowly or boring for them, someone else should do it (and then if that someone else exists they'll invariably be treated like shit).

@JenniferBarkley

My work place is not yours. This is not the case at all. It’s a start up. They do very very long hours. They work very very hard. They are extremely collaboratively. It’s about making things as easy as possible.

I totally understand people not being able to use Excel easily. I find the way that it looks really difficult, I actually hate the tabs as I like to see everything at once, and it just makes my brain lock up. Put the same info in almost any other format and I'm fine.
DH is brilliant on Excel and can make it look nice and easy to use, and his work get him to do all their spreadsheets because of this, so I'm guessing it's quite common not to be able to use it well.

Would a Google form work? You set up the form that is a question & answer format - can have multiple choice bits, bits that require an answer, bits that are optional. They fill it in, submit it and the responses save to a Google sheet that you can control who accesses?

Or googlesheets generally, you can have multiple tabs and control which cells they can edit and which are read only/you need to enter a password to edit. You can edit the sheet so it doesn't "look" like excel, but like a blank table.

Some of us love creating stuff like this.if you tell us exactly what it needs to record, maybe someone could have a go at drafting something

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

Some of us love creating stuff like this.if you tell us exactly what it needs to record, maybe someone could have a go at drafting something

Yes we do!

@Luredbyapomegranate I'm a visual learner too; I use Trello to manage my daily tasks. I work across a lot of different projects, with different teams, at speed, and it really helps me keep track of my workload.
I can quickly show colleagues/managers where things up to if they need to know, using RAG coloured tabs on each task.
I used it recently to demonstrate how I would manage a brand new project - on the strength of my board, I was asked to lead the work - dead chuffed!
Excel is a really good tool to learn how to use, but in my personal experience it's not that intuitive and needs dedicated training to help ppl gain confidence.

During my OU degree whenever we had group work to do we had a 'wiki' which we could all type on to and then along the bottom were different tabs for different pages like in excel.

Unfortunately I have no idea where you would find this as it was built into the website, but perhaps someone else knows where you could access something similar.

So it’s a project management tool you need? One that’s easy to use and appealing to people who are reluctant.

If you are a “post-it note” organisation type business then Trello or Asana might work for you.

For parking ideas - if you use Teams or Slack then open channels where people can just pop them up as the thought comes to them.

Both of these can interact with other apps to sort stuff.

I’m the ideas person - rather than an organisation person and find that Trello works for me as I can just move things around easily.

Miro ?