First of all, thank you for taking the time to reply! I tried to quote your text, however something very funky has been going on the past few days with reddit markdown editing, so I will just reply in paragraphs.
>Thanks for the additional info!! I've got a few points/suggestions for you:
>
>First of all, I'd like to suggest encouraging your team to learn PowerBI instead if you can; it's a MUCH better tool for what you're trying to do, and is MUCH safer to use. If you can't use a free version for whatever reason, there are still MUCH better alternatives available (personally, I'd recommend R Commander).
We certainly do encourage the use of PowerBI, however it is one of those applications you can't just jump in and out of, where the scale is:
Tableu: Need use of 100% of the time to remain proficientAutoCAD: Need use of 60% of the time to remain proficientPowerBI: Need to 30% of the time to remain proficientExcel: Need to use is 10% of the time to remain proficient
Considering that our people spend most of their time in AutoCAD and other specialist apps, the above is the reason for choosing Excel as the weapon [ahem] of choice - not the best, but accessible.
>Second, dataset size isn't really the concern I had in mind with using it. The numerous problems Excel has with data are more about how it sometimes subtly, covertly, or even catastrophically can CHANGE your data, without you knowing. I cannot begin to tell you how many reports I've had to make in Excel that I had to then retract, recreate from scratch, and re-send to people because Excel decided to do some stupid thing or another to my data that I never asked it to.
Been there :|
>Third, it sounds like what your team REALLY needs is a couple of courses on data VISUALIZATION and/or data analysis. There are numerous tutorials for both of those, even using Excel, but I'd again caution you to use a program better designed for your needs.
Funny you should mention that - it was really at the core of my question - ie, Excel for Data Visualisation - yesterday we had a team session in which we identified, along with some great tips here, a shortlist of course:
>If you're using CAD, I'm sure you're probably familiar with how horribly things can go wrong when you use the wrong tool for the wrong task, and Excel is almost definitely the wrong tool for this task.
Definitely
>Honestly, try going on Google or going on YouTube and search for "Data visualization tutorial in [PowerBI/Excel/R Commander/etc.] for [Whatever industry or type of analysis you're doing]". Unless your industry or type of analysis is REALLY obscure, you'll almost definitely find something helpful.
I might rely on above as a slightly more reliable source
>I'm not sure how much civil engineers tend to be trained in or familiar with statistics, but it might be worth taking some classes on that as well; strong statistical understanding can go a LONG way towards figuring out what the best, most impactful visualizations would be for any given problem.
That's an excellent point - I will find some refresher courses
Thanks again!