Excel Facts & Statistics: Original Research
Contents
To inform how we teach our Excel training courses, we have conducted new, original research.
We wanted to know just how many people are using Excel, and how confident they are with it.
For full details of our sample size and methodology and data analysis, see the bottom of this article.
Key Takeaways: Excel User Facts & Statistics
- 66% of office workers use Excel at least once per hour.
- 38% of office workers’ time is spent using Excel.
- 12% of spreadsheets contain serious errors.
- Only 48% of people have ever received any formal Excel training.
- 12% of people have seen an Excel mistake cost >£10,000
- People need help from colleagues twice per week with an Excel issue.
- The average Excel problem takes 8 1/2 minutes to fix on average.
- 11% of people think they are Excel beginners.
- 57% think they are intermediate Excel users.
- 27% think they are advanced Excel users and 6% Excel experts.
This article will contain a breakdown of 3 areas of Excel research – use the Table of Contents to navigate around!
First things first, we looked at how competent people believe themselves to be at Excel.
How Good Are Peoples Excel Skills?
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- More than 4 in 5 (83%) people rate their Excel skills as intermediate or advanced.
- More than 1 in 10 (11%) people rate their Excel skills as beginner.
- Older workers (>54 years old) have the lowest level of Excel skills. 17% rate themselves as beginner-level.
- Workers 35 – 44 years old have the highest level of Excel skills. Just 7% rate themselves as beginner-level.
“How Good Are Your Excel Skills?”
More than half (57%) of people put their Excel skills at intermediate.
This would include having key skills like knowing conditional formatting.
Another 27% of people rate themselves as advanced, meaning that 83% of people think they are either intermediate or advanced Excel users.
At the extremes of the spectrum, just 6% of people rate themselves as experts and 11% of people think that they are beginners.
The experts would be confident in advanced skills like data analysis in Excel.
Given how widely Excel is used, it is a shame that over 1 in 10 people feel that they only have beginners Excel skills.
This would mean just knowing basic skills like how to create charts.
Looking at the data in detail, it was encouraging to note that men and women reported the same levels of Excel skills.
Excel Skills Split By Age
Looking at the data by age group, we did find some interesting things.
Older workers (>54 years old) have lower average levels of Excel skills, with just 2% rating themselves as expert Excel users and 17% rating themselves as beginners.
By contrast, workers in the 35–44 years old range had the highest average level of Excel skills, with just 7 % of them rating their Excel skills as beginner.
Categorising Levels Of Excel Skills
The following skills represent the levels of Excel skills.
Beginner:
- Carry out simple data entry.
- Format text and numbers as desired.
- Create simple charts
- Create absolute and relative cell references
Intermediate:
- Use Quick Analysis Tools (QATs) to visualise data
- Use filter and sort when working with data tables
- Use conditional formatting
- Use basic formulas and functions
Advanced:
- Use logical functions like =IF
- Use lookup functions and data validation
- Use Pivot Tables
- Use controls
Expert:
- Record macros
- Use VBA to control Excel
After establishing a baseline of people’s perceived Excel proficiency, we had a look at how much people are using Excel at work in 2022!
How Much Do People Use Excel At Work?
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- People have 2.6 spreadsheets open on their computer at any time, on average.
- People look at a spreadsheet every 16 minutes, on average.
- People spend 38% of their time working in a spreadsheet, on average.
How Many Spreadsheets Do You Have Open At Any One Time?
This question was a very simple one.
We wanted to understand the number of spreadsheets people have open on their computers at any one time.
As can be seen, the most popular answer was two or three spreadsheets, with almost 2/3rds of people saying this was the case for them.
The average number was 2.6 spreadsheets.
Remarkably, almost 1 in 20 (4.8%) people said that at any one time they would have more than 5 spreadsheets open on their computers.
Statistics like these explain why people sometimes say that they ‘live in Excel’!
Especially without a good page layout, Excel can end up taking a lot of space!
How Many Times Per Hour Do You Look At A Spreadsheet?
This is a similar question to question 1 above. It is just trying to assess the amount of time people spend working in Excel.
In this case, the average and the most popular answers were quite different.
The average number of times people reported looking at a spreadsheet was 3.8 times per hour, so 16 minutes.
However, the most popular answer was ‘I look at a spreadsheet once or twice per day’ but heavy Excel users have dragged the average up substantially.
Just over 1 in 25 (4.2%) of people reported looking at a spreadsheet more than 20 times per hour!
Again, this just emphasises how much time people spend working in Excel at work.
What Proportion Of Your Work Involves A Spreadsheet?
Again, this is a question to look at the amount people use spreadsheets from a different angle.
This question asked people to estimate the proportion of their work that involved a spreadsheet.
As you can see, the most popular answer was 20% to 40%.
The average proportion of people’s work that involved a spreadsheet was 38%.
As with the above questions, there is a long tail over very heavy Excel users.
In this case 1 in 25 (4%) people work in Excel 80% or more of their working time!
For our last section – we took a look at how many people had specific Excel training.
How Many People Have Had Formal Excel Training?
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Less than half of office workers (48%) have ever received formal Excel training.
- 38% of people who spend the majority (>50%) of their time working in Microsoft Excel have never received any formal training.
- Expert excel users are 400% more likely to have received formal Exce;l training.
- Beginners are 280% less likely to have attended any formal Excel training.
Have you ever received formal Excel training?
This question was a very simple one. It just asked if people had ever received any formal Excel training.
As you can see, just under half of people have ever received any formal Excel training.
We then analysed the answers to other questions like “What level are your Excel skills ?” to see if anything interesting came in light of this answer.
As you would expect, it showed that expert Excel users are approximately 4x (400%) more likely to have received Excel training and beginners are 2.8x (280%) more likely to have not received any Excel training.
Finally, we analysed the answers to this question in light of our question about the proportion of time that people spend working in Microsoft Excel.
Again, the answers followed broadly what we would expect.
Namely, that people who have received Excel training are more likely to be advanced Excel users and people who have not received Excel training are less likely to be heavy Excel users. It also highlights how low the level of Excel training is.
As mentioned above, this analysis does show that 38% of people who spend more than 50% of their time working in Excel have never had any formal training.
Given that they spend around 20 hours per week using Excel, if a one-day course speeded up their work by just 5% it would save them over a week of work each year.
Although, it looks like there is a reduction in the level of Excel training for people who spend more than 80% of their time, this is open to question because the sample size at this level was so small. It is also possible that people who work intensively in Excel are self-taught – that is a question for a future survey.
Appendix: Research Methodology
The research for these Excel statistics was carried out during January and February 2022 using Pollfish.
1,000 office workers who work at a computer between the ages of 18 and 65 were surveyed.
The respondents were split evenly between males (53%) and females (47%).
