Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program. That means it's used to create grids of text, numbers and formulas specifying calculations. That's extremely valuable for many businesses, which use it to record expenditures and income, plan budgets, chart data and succinctly present fiscal results.

Microsoft Word is a word processing program designed to make it possible to create a variety of documents that will look the same between different computers and similar on the screen to how they appear on paper. It's used by businesses and individuals to write personal and professional letters, reports for work and school and to take notes on conversations and in seminars and classes. Because it's so widely used, many businesses appreciate that it's possible to send documents created in Word to clients, employees and other business associates without worrying about whether or not they'll be able to open them.

But, unlike MS Word, Excel organises the data into rows and columns, the intersection of which is called a cell. A cell can contain various data forms such as numbers, alphabets, dates, or formulae. It is an efficient tool which helps to organise the data and analyse it with the help of charts, bar graphs, pivot tables etc.

In today’s world, Excel is prominently used in every aspect of life, be it, maintaining personal expenses, or organising a large set of data in an organisation. With the efficiency it possesses, excel has become a necessary tool in every organisation, and every person should have a knowledge of it.