The following compares making a journal entry in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. In the
essay that follows, the benefits and disadvantages of each application for the given task are discussed:
A Day in My Life
The following are tasks I was involved in throughout the course of one day:
· eating breakfast
· taking a shower
· playing golf
· eating lunch
· going to the gym
· studying
· watching television
· eating supper
· checking email
· getting on Facebook
· shopping online for electronics
· enjoying a late-night snack
· studying again
· sleeping
I woke up and ate breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs, and pancakes. This activity took half-an-
hour. I then took my normal fifteen-minute shower. Next, I played golf for approximately three
hours and carded a very respectable seventy-four. Following golf, I ate my lunch at Subway,
which was comprised of a spicy Italian double-meat sub on flatbread. Eating lunch took half an
hour. Subsequently, I went to Planet Fitness, my gym of choice, where I lifted weights,
performed cardio, and used the massage chair. This activity took one hour. I then studied
Tec101 material for five hours. Next, I fired up the grill, and ate supper which consisted of
grilled chicken, baked beans, potato salad, deviled eggs, and Frito Lays potato chips. I chose
cherry Dr. Pepper as my drink. Prepping and eating supper took approximately forty-five
minutes. Then, I watched television for two hours; namely, the New York Knicks playing the
Indiana Pacers in the NBA Eastern Conference finals. The Knicks won but still trail in the
series two games to one. I subsequently checked my e-mail from this course, my friends, and
First Solar, the place where I am employed for fifteen minutes. Following checking my email, I
shopped online for a black, wireless Dell mouse as I lost the USB insert that was necessary for
Bluetooth connectivity on my prior one. I selected Amazon as the retailer as I needed the mouse
in as short a time as possible, and Amazon could deliver the mouse the next day. This task took
only ten minutes as I found what I wanted quickly. Next, I ate a late-night snack comprised of
strawberries, shortbread, and milk. The preparation and eating of this snack took about twenty
minutes. I then wrote two replies for the discussion forum of TEC101. I chose to respond to
posts dealing with the google app and the other detailing the YouTube app. This task took about
an hour-and-a half. Subsequently, I played with my two dogs for an hour. I finally ended my
day by going to sleep for approximately eight hours.
The following is a PDF of the PowerPoint slides I put together comprising a journal entry:
PowerPoint Presentation Week #2 PDF GD.pdf
The following, for comparison, is the same journal article presented in Excel:
OneDayInMyLife GD.xlsx
Finally I composed an essay explaining my experience composing journal entries in Word,
PowerPoint, and Excel. I also included some brief commentary about Microsoft Access,
Microsoft's database application.
Role of Applications Reflection Essay
Greg Dennis
The University of Arizona Global Campus
TEC101: Fundamentals of Information Technology and Literacy
Ali Abedin
Monday, May 26th, 2025
The scope of this essay is four of Microsoft Office Suite’s applications; namely, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. Different situations in which each program excels and some of the features of each application will be discussed; additionally, a review of Microsoft Office 365 will be presented. The best application for chronicling a day in my life will be revealed.
Microsoft Word is a powerful word processor that traditionally excels at creating term papers, reports, advertising pamphlets, business proposals, personal letters, mass mailings, and literary works, among other things. Word allows the user to format text to make the document more visually appealing. Such formatting can take the form of choosing a suitable font, font color, aligning text to the left or right margin, centering text vertically or horizontally, making the text bold, italicized, or underlined, and changing paragraph or line spacing. In addition, to aid a writer in the editing process, Word offers an integrated spelling and grammar checker and allows for the setting of margins and tabs. Further, Word aids in in-text citations and the creation of a references page based on the reference style selected. Word even allows one to embed pictures, shapes, icons, 3D models, SmartArt, charts, online videos, equations, and symbols. Despite all the features Word contains, sometimes the reader can become uninterested in the pages of this word processor.
In contrast, where Word is primarily used for text-based applications, Excel is the better option when dealing with numbers. Excel, a spreadsheet program, allows for entry, organization, and analysis of data. Excel has many formulas used in simple and complex calculations and a wide array of charts. Bar, scatter plot, pie, and line charts allow the user to display data graphically to reveal trends. Excel is best used to create financial reports, business projections, and to produce accounting reports when the data is not so cumbersome as to warrant the use of more complex accounting software such as QuickBooks. In addition, Excel can create simple databases but fails when these databases grow in complexity.
In comparison, a program capable of producing relatively complex databases is Microsoft Access. Access, which requires a fair amount of technical expertise to use, allows the user to query a database and produce reports based on these queries. The construction of the database entails creating tables that are linked together by establishing referential relationships between primary and foreign keys. Also, Access allows for greater data integrity by permitting the designer of the tables to specify what type of data can be entered into columns. Forms take responses from individuals and these responses, in turn, are used to populate the applicable table. Forms are convenient and prohibit the user from directly interacting with tables and possibly introducing an error within said tables. Forms also meet the needs of users who are unfamiliar with SQL (Letkowski, 2014).
Another program, like Access, that is part of the Microsoft Office Suite is PowerPoint. PowerPoint is used to create presentations based on the slides created by the user. Similar to Word, PowerPoint allows the designer of the slides the option of inserting pictures, SmartArt, 3D models, and/or graphs into the content. This time, however, the media isn’t inserted into a document, but, rather, a slide. PowerPoint comes with preformatted slides such as title, title and content, and two content slides that the user can fill with text, pictures, or other media. The big advantage of utilizing PowerPoint for presentations is its ability to capture the audience’s attention; thus, PowerPoint is widely used as a teaching device in education and seminars. Pupils and attendees become transfixed on slides that come to life with media, transitions, and animations. A major drawback of utilizing PowerPoint is the small amount of text that can be displayed in the text boxes. Another potential disadvantage of using PowerPoint is that viewers become entranced by the animations and transitions, thereby not concentrating fully on the topic of the slide show. To overcome this possibility, only a few animations and one type of transition should be employed in a show.
An idea not mentioned above as a use of PowerPoint is to create and edit ideas for a book, business report, or other document. The thought behind this approach is the fact that slides can be freely moved around in a slide show. This movement of slides allows concepts to flow freely without considering the organization of said thoughts. Because the text is to be circulated in print form for editing or collaboration, the slides can contain a great deal of prose, unlike in slide show presentations. If the writer wants to limit the scope of a given topic, he or she can simply choose the font size to permit only the allotted number of words in the text box. Once the ideas are on the slides, peers or editors can write suggestions or comments on the slides. After collaboration, the slides can be rearranged, and a first draft and subsequent drafts can be written in Word (Duarte, 2015).
I, like Duarte, found an uncommon use for PowerPoint. I chose PowerPoint as my preferred application when describing a day in my life. The rationale behind this choice is threefold: there were very few words describing my daily activities, I could include clever transitions and animations to capture my audience’s attention, and I could have chosen to include the chart illustrating the relative time spent on each task created in Excel. From an illustrative standpoint, PowerPoint is without question the winner. A journal written in Word was just too dull and boring when compared to the multimedia powerhouse; namely, Microsoft PowerPoint.
Yet another instance of collaboration, a process Duarte strongly recommends, in the digital age is Microsoft 365, Microsoft's cloud-based Office Suite software. This software offers users from as close as the office to users around the world the opportunity to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, slideshows, and databases. This software has surely made the world smaller and allows users the ability to work from home. Controls can be set to allow users to perform only certain actions, such as reading or both reading and editing the content in the cloud.
In conclusion, the Microsoft Office Suite offers different software options to accomplish different objectives. Word is more suited to personal and academic writing. On the other hand, Excel is the ideal choice for producing a spreadsheet that contains numbers and needs formulas to process these numbers. PowerPoint, when coupled with the spoken word, is an excellent tool to give academic and business presentations. In turn, Microsoft Access is the software of choice when creating small databases that will generate reports from queries. A variant of The Microsoft Office Suite, Microsoft 365, is an excellent tool to foster online collaboration.
References
Duarte, N. (2015, July 27). Why I Write in PowerPoint. Harvard Business Review. https://www.hbr.org/2015/07/why-i-write-in-powerpoint
Letkowski, J. (2014). Challenges in Database Design with Microsoft Access. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, 15, 1-15.
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