Most of my work didn’t need better tools—it needed better use of the tools I already had.
We all use tools we know exist—but rarely take full advantage of them.
In research administration, Excel is used for budgets, reports, and quick calculations. Much of this is repetitive and month-to-month.
I kept rebuilding the same processes each month.
Eventually, I realized I wasn’t solving new problems; I was repeating steps Excel was already built to handle.
Office Scripts
I discovered Microsoft Office Scripts while searching for ways to simplify recurring tasks. It’s available in Excel for the Web under the Automate tab. You can record actions or start from existing examples.
With so much focus on AI right now, it made me pause and ask a simpler question: what tools are we already overlooking?
Recognizing how often I missed these built-in helpers, I began experimenting.
Each month, I repeated a sequence: cleaning exports, adjusting formats, and setting up reports.
Office Scripts turns that sequence into something that can be repeated.
For example, I automated a monthly process to clean transaction data by removing unnecessary columns, standardizing formats, and flagging missing information. What used to take several minutes now runs in seconds. To start this automation, click the Automate tab in Excel for the Web, choose Record Actions, and perform your usual steps on a sample worksheet. Excel captures your actions, and you can save and run that script on new data whenever needed. You can also open existing scripts to tweak the code, giving more options to customize tasks as you learn.
While automation is powerful, not every solution needs to be high-tech. Some features simply enhance focus and efficiency.
Focus Cell Feature
This tool is straightforward but has a surprisingly big impact.
When working with large or dense spreadsheets, it’s easy to lose your place, especially when moving quickly across rows and columns.
The Focus Cell feature highlights the active row and column, making it clear where you are. You can enable it under View → Show → Focus Cell. As of early 2026, Focus Cell is a new feature in Excel for the Web, rolling out to some Microsoft 365 subscribers. If you don’t see it, update to the latest Excel version or check if your organization enabled it. Support varies by version and platform, including Excel Online, Windows, or Mac.
It doesn’t calculate or automate anything; it just removes friction.
With these practical improvements in mind, I turned my attention to dashboards—a simple way to bring clarity to complex data.
Simple Dashboards (What They Are)
This is actually simpler than it sounds.
By “dashboard,” I mean a place where key information is immediately visible.
For me, that typically includes:
- current balances
- monthly burn
- variances or trends
Before, I constantly switched tabs to get the full picture. The data existed—it just wasn’t centralized.
A simple dashboard doesn’t add data—it organizes what’s already there.
That shift alone reduces back-and-forth and makes it easier to catch issues early.
This practical perspective shaped how I built dashboards—prioritizing usability over complexity.
Building a Simple Dashboard in Excel (How to Do It)
Most of the time, the data you need already exists—it’s just scattered.
Once your data is structured (even something as simple as a clean table), building a dashboard becomes straightforward:
- Organize your data into a table with clear headers.
- Insert a PivotTable to summarize what matters.
- Add a chart based on that summary.
- Move those elements onto a single sheet.
- Use slicers for quick filtering and interaction. Slicers are interactive buttons in Excel that let you filter data or dashboard visuals with a single click, making it easy to focus on the information you need without scrolling or searching.
Even with just these steps, you create a live view that updates as your data changes.
What made the biggest difference for me was interactivity. Instead of searching across tabs, everything updates in one place.