Ten Unusual, Sometimes Crazy, Sometimes Wonderful Uses for Excel

From a Drum Machine to a Roller Coaster Simulator

Fate has firmly tied me to PowerPoint, but when I think of Excel, my mind is thrilled by its brilliantness—an infinite table in the language of the universe, and infinite tables give infinite possibilities...

🖌️ Isometric Illustration 🥁 Drum Machine 🎞️ Spreadsheet Animation 📷 HDR Photography 🌊 Art 🕸️ Neural Network 🎥 Video Player 🎢 Roller Coaster Simulator 🕹️ Game Classics: Pac-Man, Tetris, Doom 🎸 Music Video

Isometric Illustration

Alexei Shelkovnikov creates cute three-dimensional-isometrical illustrations in Excel and tells you how to do it.

© Alex “ExcelArt” Shelkovnikov. Alex ExcelArt—3D Artist / Art Director. Behance.

© Alex “ExcelArt” Shelkovnikov. Alex ExcelArt—3D Artist / Art Director. Behance. Cinema 4D VS MS Excel ⌘↑

Drum Machine

Designed by Freepik. Dylan Tallchief made a drum machine in Excel.

Spreadsheet Animation

© 2012 MysteryGuitarMan (Joe Penna). “Stop-Motion Excel (Spreadsheet Animation).” YouTube video, uploaded August 2012. All rights reserved. Joe Penna made a stop motion animation in Excel. Please check behind the scenes video as well.

HDR Photography

Kevin Chen explains the algorithm on HDR imaging and implements HDR in a spreadsheet.

Art

© 2017 Christopher Jobson. “Meet Tatsuo Horiuchi, the 77-Year-Old Artist Who ‘Paints’ Japanese Landscapes With Excel.” This Is Colossal, December 4, 2017. All rights reserved. Pasokonga paintings by Tatsuo Horiuchi ⌘↑

Neural Network

© Diane Picchiottino. A close-up of a green liquid filled with bubbles. Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/a-close-up-of-a-green-liquid-filled-with-bubbles-HkRl0t6QUEA. License: Unsplash (free to use without attribution). A Neural Network implemented in Microsoft Excel solving a Travelling Salesman Problem of 10 cities in the United States