SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 14 — Employees often agree that Excel and PowerPoint are extremely complicated. Fortunately, TikTok is full of tutorials to help them understand the workings of these typical office tools, which many find intimidating.
Some 30 years after their creation, PowerPoint and Excel are still widely used in business, whether for producing visual aids for meetings or spreadsheets. But that doesn’t mean they’re mastered by everyone, especially young people. Millennial and Gen Z workers often feel uncomfortable using these programs, even though they may claim to have a perfect mastery of them on their resumes. Nor do they dare ask their more experienced colleagues for help, for fear of being seen as incompetent in this field.
While the most cynical might be tempted to see this as some form of justice, this aversion to Excel and PowerPoint is, in fact, indicative of “tech shame.” This expression, coined by the American computer and printer manufacturer HP, refers to the fear of office tools among young professionals. Fortunately for them, “tech shame” is not without remedy. All it takes is a visit to TikTok, young people’s favorite social network, to brush up on IT skills.
In fact, the platform hosts an impressive number of video tutorials detailing, in a matter of minutes, how these two programs work. They explain, among other things, how to automatically adapt the column width of an Excel spreadsheet to its content, or how to make polished PowerPoint presentations that will be enough to convince your supervisor to give you a raise. As a measure of their success, the associated hashtags #Excel and #PowerPoint have been viewed 8.3 and 4.9 billion times respectively on TikTok.
Spreadsheets and presentations for all
Such is the popularity of Excel and PowerPoint tutorials that some users of the platform have specialised in this type of content. They share their tips and tricks with thousands — if not hundreds of thousands — of followers eager for advice on how to become pros in the game. Examples include @miss.excel and @excel4thewin, the English-speaking world’s queen and king of Excel on TikTok. The owner of the @miss.excel account, an American user by the name of Kat Norton, has 929,700 followers, compared with 503,800 for her counterpart @excel4thewin. This impressive community has enabled her to launch her own IT training company, charging between $297 and $397 to benefit from her wisdom.
PowerPoint, meanwhile, has its own gurus, such as @jacobppt, @lourrutia.ppt and @marketer.s_diary. Like their Excel-savvy counterparts, these PowerPoint specialists use effective teaching methods, and sometimes humour, to show internet users the various functionalities of Microsoft’s software.
Indeed, PowerPoint isn’t just a business tool. It can be used to create slideshows for academic purposes, but also for more personal and entertaining ones. In fact, TikTok users like to use this software to make presentations designed to win back an ex-lover, or to convince anyone who will listen that Ross is the best character in the TV show Friends. This kind of use shows just how much presentations, PowerPoint or otherwise, can be stressful for those delivering them.
@beeefqueeef Honestly a best party theme #friends #presentations #fyp #foryoupage Them Changes - Thundercat
However, it can also be a sign of the blurring of the boundaries between our personal and professional lives. It’s one thing to use Excel and PowerPoint in the office, but quite another to use them to plan a vacation or organise a shopping list. The Financial Times has dubbed this phenomenon “the tyranny of spreadsheets.” Be that as it may, the craze for these two office software programs on TikTok shows just how much they’ve become part of the mainstream — at work and at home. — ETX Studio
