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> This question is on behalf of a friend who had an interview yesterday for
a
> Documentation Specialist. The job responsibilities include: creating
online
> Help, writing user manuals, and designing process flows. The hiring
manager
> stated she wanted to verify my friend's competency using Office,
therefore,
> she requested writing samples of technical documentation using Microsoft
> Excel. Does anyone have any suggestions or experience creating technical
> documentation using Excel? In my years of work experience, I've only used
> Excel to assist programmers with requirement matrices. Any suggestions are
> appreciated.
> Thanks,
> Ashaki
Some folks in management at my company have used Excel to create documents
consisting solely of a table, such as for product codes, address lists, and
the like. Excel was also used to make timesheets, maintain the network
connection library, and maintain corporate forms (like travel
reimbursement). These are more administrative than "technical writing," but
sometimes it's been used within large software projects - client logs,
deliverable status updates, scheduling, and for documents that are extremely
long tables of data. Excel works very well for this.
Is it the best tool? Well, it does seem more stable at times than Word.
High praise indeed... If your friend is going to be involved in Process
Flows, it's certainly possible that Excel might be used.
Paul Strasser
Ennovation, Inc.
2569 Park Lane, Suite 100
Lafayette, Colorado 80026
Phone: 303-468-1164
FAX: 303-926-1510
E-mail: paul -dot- strasser -at- ennovationinc -dot- com
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