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10x your productivity with Onur Yilmaz

What's the #1 thing that every Excel user should learn to 10x their productivity? Part 4 with Onur Yilmaz.

May 26, 2020

10x your productivity - Part 4 with Onur Yilmaz of Someka Excel Solutions

Our next response to the question "How can you become the most productive Excel user on your team?", comes from Onur of Someka Excel Solutions. With a background in engineering and business analysis, Onur founded Someka and has poured his business know-how into professional, unique and ready-to-use Excel templates. He's received an Excel global championship award from Microsoft and his templates are used by well-known companies and institutions around the world.

Our 1st question to Onur was, What's the #1 thing that every Excel user should learn to 10x their productivity? He responded:

"If you ask me to choose only one, I would go for learning pivot tables. It is a game changer and will definitely improve your productivity many times for your daily Excel usage."

Our 2nd question to Onur was, What's the #1 thing that will make their excel spreadsheets stand out and look professional? He responded:

" Great question and I would love to answer this!

If one thing stands out regarding the professionalism of your Excel spreadsheets, it is the UI and Ux of your workbooks. It is easier to find Excel geeks than finding someone with a "good eye" and can develop nice looking Excel workbooks that provide a good user experience.

I am quite obsessive about the look of our Excel workbooks and we have design standards for our templates. We've even built a VBA based tool to check our own templates to ensure the functional and visual details meet the expected requirements before we publish our templates. (such as the gap between buttons, font sizes, pivot settings, links, row heights etc.)

Excel is not built to be a stylish tool, correct. But that's not an excuse to develop super ugly and confusing workbooks. As much as possible, your dashboards, tables, and connections should be user-friendly. "

Our 3rd question to Onur was, What's the most common mistake you see people make in Excel? He responded:

" I have a saying: "If you find yourself making a repetitive work in Excel, there should be an easy way for this!" 1.5 billion people on the planet are using Excel according to Microsoft. You cannot be the only person having that issue with your workbook, right? Just be a little bit curious and make a search how to write a formula, or automate your job, or solve the issue, etc.

I see many people using Excel for years and still make the same mistake. I sometimes ask them "why do try to do it this way. Isn't it quite impractible" and they answer "is there any other way?" Of course there is! "

Onur is an active member of the Excel community online and has provided guidance to many developers. The attention to detail him and his team show in his templates are clear, and no doubt a big reason for the accolades they've received.