Excel and PowerPoint Macros and Add-Ins review

It looks like there's a new post every 6 months or so discussing everyone's favorite macros and plugins, so I figured I'd consolidate my notes on this and share them here. Hopefully, it's somewhat helpful for those either entering their internships (especially in the boutique space where you may not have firm-specific tools) and exiting interns who will surely miss their favorite excel shortcuts once they are back on campus. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so feel free to post your own thoughts below.

Excel Add-Ins

TTS Turbo Macros Link: https://trainingthestreet.com/macros/

• (9/10) This free toolkit has been my favorite over the years

• Cost: Free

• Key features: Toggle number formatting, colors, background, alignment, and borders; good precedent tracer

• Nice to have: Auto-color (auto color input, formula, and external links; great for auditing spreadsheets you receive which may not have been prepared with external users in mid), Zoom shortcut, disable F1 key Pros: Relatively easy to set up and use, sufficient discussion on forums to troubleshoot common issues

• Cons: May occasionally lead to issues, precedent tracer not always stable (specific sheet macros may break it or cause your excel to force-quit), unfortunately, new development has been discontinued as of Dec 31, 2019 but TTS website still allows

Macabacus Link: https://macabacus.com/downloads

• (7/10) This depends largely on personal preference and willingness to pay, Macabacus certainly has a ton of functionality if you go for the paid version

• Cost: Lite (free), $10/m (Excel or PPT only), $20/m (Excel and PPT)

• Key features: Excel: Toggle formatting, formula proofing ; PPT: presentation proofing, automatic agendas

• Nice to have: Extensive customization, workbook optimization (Excel), shared libraries (Excel and PPT), quick arrange shortcuts (PPT), and many more

• Pros: A lot of nice-to-have features, including for collaboration; good documentation and expect better support since it's a paid product

• Cons: Need the paid version and spend some time customizing to get the most out of the tools

Capital IQ Link: through your company

• (6/10) I mostly use it as a backup for precedent tracer if/when TTS crashes

• Cost: Included in CapIQ subscription, which I assume you are not paying out of pocket for

• Key features: everything above, and then some

• Nice to have: out-of-the-box shortcuts for CapIQ-specific tasks

• Pros: Really extensive functionality if you spend time getting used to it, good support

• Cons: Required CapIQ ($$$), pretty resource-intensive on your computer

PowerPoint Plug-ins

Efficient Elements Link: https://www.efficient-elements.com/powerpoint/ Free with EDU credentials: https://www.efficient-elements.com/education/

• (8/10) Lightweight PPT plugin, apparently pretty standard across the consulting world

• Cost: $140/y, free for students, faculty, and researchers

• Key features: Align shapes, smart elements, auto-size

• Nice to have: Format templates, can be customized to your needs

• Pros: Easy to set up, free for students

• Cons: pretty costly for individual use

Think-Cell Link: https://www.think-cell.com/en/

• (6/10) Better for organizations as you can get something cheaper for personal use

• Cost: ~$250/y, free for academic and nonprofit organizations (though I'm not sure if this has to be done at org level or if individual users, i.e. students, can sign up themselves)

• Key features: Lots of chart presets, "smart" text boxes, automatic data rounding for charts

• Nice to have: chart data rounding, lots of customization

• Pros: More useful if deployed consistently throughout a large organization

• Cons: Pricey compared to alternatives, need to spend time setting it up to get the most out of it

Empower Link: https://www.empowersuite.com/en/

• (6/10) A bit slow, but get's the job done

• Cost: I recall this being a pretty meaningful cost when a former employer had this implemented, they offer "empower express" for teams smaller than 10 people

• Key features: typical formatting shortcuts, layout tools, and the ability to build extensive slide libraries

• Nice to have: Probably the most extensive functionality to manage "brand compliance"

• Pros: Great for keeping consistent presentations across the entire firm, can update slide versions (e.g. intro & team slides) across many presentations

• Cons: Resource-intensive, a bit slow and not always reliable when I last used this (although this may have been fixed in recent updates)