Word vs Excel

People have a tendancy to use the software they feel most comfortable with. And I completely get that.
But...
Sometimes we make it harder on ourselve by trying to use a butter knife instead of an actual screwdriver.

Once of my students had a roster done in word. She had two issues.

1. Sorting her clients
2. Creating totals by type

First off let me just say you CAN sort and you CAN do formulas in Word. The formulas are pretty limited though. I'll post on that later. 
The tip to which software on this particular project is the totals. She needed to see how many clients were Current, Pending, New and Cancelled.
This is the original Word page. (Names have been changed)

My student was manually adding up her totals.
I took her list, a simple Copy and Paste, and put it into Excel for her.

I split her names up, Text to Columns feature in Excel, and added her totals at the top using the COUNTIF function.

This is how the COUNTIF function works:
=COUNTIF(range,criteria)
Think about it like this, 
what do I want to find (criteria)
where is that data located (range)
I listed all the types of status she wanted to track at the top, then put my COUNTIF beside it.
My criteria for Current became cell C3
And my range was the entire column of G
=COUNTIF(G:G,C2)

Sometimes you should just go find a screwdrive and leave the knives for cutting steak!
Blog ACME Clients.xls