It is strongly recommended that you use Excel as a means of preparing your data in a spreadsheet for later use in a more sophisticated statistical package such as Minitab or SPSS.

Excel has its limitations as a statistical package. Some would advise you to avoid it altogether when it comes to statistical analysis.  However, it may be that you have some very elementary statistics to consider and that this package will suffice for your needs, so in such instances, lets not throw out the baby with the bath water.

Also, whatever the level of statistics you anticipate will be appropriate for your research, forewarned is forearmed when it comes to recognizing some of the things Excel cannot do.

Hence it is recommended that you at least take a dip into the University of Reading resource Using Excel for Statistics: Tips and Warnings .

Using Excel for Statistics: Tips and Warnings by Margaret MacDougall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.