‘Your Excel Skills Suck’: The Power Users Turning Spreadsheets Into a Spectator Sport
‘Your Excel Skills Suck’: The Power Users Turning Spreadsheets Into a Spectator Sport
“你的 Excel 技术烂透了”：将电子表格变成竞技运动的超级用户们
For many people, Microsoft Excel is to be avoided at all costs. Maybe you lied about being “proficient” with the spreadsheet program to pad out your résumé and have lived in fear of being found out ever since. Or it could be that you do have a grasp on a few basic formulas but find the interface too labyrinthine to truly master. 对许多人来说，Microsoft Excel 是能避则避的软件。也许你曾在简历中谎称自己“精通”这款电子表格程序，从此便生活在被拆穿的恐惧中。又或者，你确实掌握了一些基础公式，却发现其界面过于复杂，难以真正精通。
Still, like it or not, Excel remains an integral part of businesses, with Microsoft claiming “hundreds of millions” of users worldwide. But for a thriving community of content creators, Excel’s uses go far beyond practicality. They live for the thrills of ninja-like Excel efficiency, and they’re happy to impart their esoteric knowledge to those brave enough to seek it out. They amass huge fandoms by demonstrating their flair for unexpected productivity hacks and posting record times on “obstacle runs,” with some even competing in official Excel championships for prize money (and bragging rights). 然而，无论你喜欢与否，Excel 仍然是企业不可或缺的一部分，微软声称其在全球拥有“数亿”用户。但对于一个蓬勃发展的创作者社区来说，Excel 的用途远不止于实用性。他们追求如忍者般高效操作 Excel 的快感，并乐于将这些深奥的知识传授给勇敢求教的人。他们通过展示意想不到的生产力技巧和发布“障碍赛”破纪录视频积累了大量粉丝，有些人甚至参加官方的 Excel 锦标赛，争夺奖金（以及吹牛的资本）。
Vying for spreadsheet glory is just part of the fun, however. At the end of the day, everyone really wants to help each other get better. 不过，争夺电子表格的荣耀只是乐趣的一部分。归根结底，大家真正想要的是互相帮助，共同进步。
Dan Kidney, 32, in London, tells WIRED he “accidentally” leveled up his Excel skills while working as an insurance data analyst and building his own ecommerce company from scratch, though he never expected to teach others the tricks he’d picked up in that time. 现年 32 岁、居住在伦敦的 Dan Kidney 告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志，他在担任保险数据分析师并白手起家创办自己的电子商务公司时，“意外地”提升了自己的 Excel 技能，尽管他从未想过要教别人他在此期间学到的技巧。
“I decided to start using my spare time to post on TikTok as an experiment during a planned employment break,” he explains, first sharing videos covering the Excel functions a beginner should know. A few weeks in, Kidney posted footage of himself racing through the varied challenges of an Excel obstacle course he’d designed himself—and engagement suddenly exploded, pushing the clip to 1 million views within days. Commenters replied that he had completed each page before they’d even had time to read the instructions on it. “在计划的职业空窗期，我决定利用业余时间在 TikTok 上发布视频作为一种尝试，”他解释道。起初，他分享的是初学者应该掌握的 Excel 函数视频。几周后，Kidney 发布了一段自己挑战自创的 Excel 障碍赛的视频——互动量瞬间爆发，几天内点击量就突破了 100 万次。评论区的网友纷纷表示，还没来得及读完指令，他就已经完成了每一页的操作。
Today, Kidney has a combined 300,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok accounts, both called “Functional Excel,” and his speedruns have had a surprising impact beyond his own office. He says a schoolteacher in rural Germany saw his videos and assigned his students to practice Excel on his templates, leading to a class competition. 如今，Kidney 在 Instagram 和 TikTok 上拥有总计 30 万粉丝，账号均名为“Functional Excel”，他的速通视频在办公室之外产生了令人惊讶的影响。他说，德国农村的一位老师看到了他的视频，并让学生们使用他的模板练习 Excel，甚至还组织了一场班级竞赛。
“Your Excel skills suck,” says Jonathan Tristan, a 29-year-old content creator known as “Your Finance Brother,” in a video recently posted to his TikTok and Instagram pages. Like other influencers in the space, Tristan, who is based in Los Angeles and was previously an investment banker, advocates for dispensing entirely with the mouse and relying only on a flurry of keyboard combination moves to navigate Excel. And he goes one step further: “Pop the F1 key off your keyboard,” he instructs his viewers. “你的 Excel 技术烂透了，”29 岁的创作者 Jonathan Tristan（以“Your Finance Brother”闻名）在他最近发布到 TikTok 和 Instagram 的视频中说道。像该领域的其他网红一样，身处洛杉矶、曾任投资银行家的 Tristan 主张完全抛弃鼠标，仅依靠一系列键盘组合键来操作 Excel。他甚至更进一步：“把键盘上的 F1 键抠掉，”他这样指导观众。
Excel’s power users end up with “stylistic preferences,” Tristan says, and ditching the F1 key is an example of a choice that is both practical and something of a flex. “A really common shortcut you’ll use is that you’ll basically toggle between the Escape and the F2 key to see what your formula is doing in Excel,” he explains. The problem is that if you accidentally hit F1, which sits between those keys, it brings up a help menu, slowing down your work. (Plus, would a genuine operator ever need help?) Tristan 表示，Excel 的超级用户最终会形成“风格偏好”，抠掉 F1 键就是一个既实用又带点炫技意味的选择。“你经常会用到的一个快捷键是在 Escape 和 F2 键之间切换，以查看 Excel 公式在做什么，”他解释道。问题在于，如果你不小心按到了位于这两个键之间的 F1，它会弹出帮助菜单，从而拖慢你的工作速度。（再说，真正的操作高手怎么会需要帮助呢？）
Tristan, who has shared his own impressive Excel speedruns, says he imparts this kind of wisdom to his approximately 700,000 followers because every minute counts when you’re working around the clock on Wall Street—going 10 percent faster if you spend 10 hours a day in Excel, he says, is the difference between “getting five hours of sleep versus six hours of sleep.” 分享过自己令人印象深刻的 Excel 速通视频的 Tristan 说，他向约 70 万粉丝传授这些经验，是因为在华尔街没日没夜地工作时，每一分钟都很重要——他说，如果你每天在 Excel 上花费 10 小时，效率提升 10% 就意味着“能多睡一小时觉”。
Of course, apart from wanting to clock out earlier, Excelheads are increasingly motivated by a sense of friendly rivalry and the prestige that comes with flawless control over their screens. 当然，除了想早点下班，Excel 狂热者们也越来越受到友好竞争意识以及对屏幕进行完美掌控所带来的成就感的驱动。
“The obstacle courses and speedruns have added another layer to that since you can directly compare times, find better ways to accomplish the same task, and directly compete against each other,” says Drew Koontz, 29, the data analyst behind the tutorial website Encyclopedia Excel. He points out that Excel has become an unlikely esport: Last December in Las Vegas, Diarmuid Early of Ireland—described by some as the “LeBron James of spreadsheets”—won the 2025 Microsoft Excel World Championships, fending off Andrew Ngai of Australia, who won the tournament three times in a row from 2021 to 2023. “障碍赛和速通为这一切增添了新的维度，因为你可以直接比较时间，找到完成同一任务的更好方法，并进行直接对抗，”29 岁的教程网站 Encyclopedia Excel 背后的数据分析师 Drew Koontz 说道。他指出，Excel 已经成为一项意想不到的电子竞技：去年 12 月在拉斯维加斯，来自爱尔兰的 Diarmuid Early——被一些人称为“电子表格界的勒布朗·詹姆斯”——赢得了 2025 年 Microsoft Excel 世界锦标赛冠军，击败了曾在 2021 年至 2023 年连续三次夺冠的澳大利亚选手 Andrew Ngai。
According to Koontz, speed is far from the only way to distinguish oneself in the Excel community. He shouts out engineer George Lungu, the administrator of the web page Excel Unusual, where he demonstrates how the program can be leveraged to create sophisticated animations and more. It’s “probably the most impressive collection of Excel works on the internet,” Koontz says. “He’s built fully working flight simulators, physics engines, roller coasters, planet simulations—it’s crazy.” 据 Koontz 所言，速度远非在 Excel 社区中脱颖而出的唯一方式。他特别提到了工程师 George Lungu，他是网页 Excel Unusual 的管理员，在那里他展示了如何利用该程序创建复杂的动画等内容。Koontz 说，这“可能是互联网上最令人印象深刻的 Excel 作品集”。“他构建了功能齐全的飞行模拟器、物理引擎、过山车、行星模拟——简直太疯狂了。”
Ask an Excel influencer to name someone they credit with expanding the scene, and they’re more than likely to mention Ryan Park. Through his Excel Obstacle Course tutorials and videos, the Cincinnati-based father and data scientist, 49, estimates that he has helped “tens of thousands” of people improve their Excel productivity by gamifying the program. 问任何一位 Excel 网红谁对推广这一领域贡献最大，他们很可能会提到 Ryan Park。这位 49 岁的辛辛那提父亲兼数据科学家通过他的 Excel 障碍赛教程和视频，估计已经通过游戏化的方式帮助“数万人”提高了 Excel 的生产力。
Park’s Excel expertise came from years of correcting 401(k) data for a company whose clients all had their own methods of arranging spreadsheets. “The processors had to get good at cleaning and reorganizing data with 100 percent accuracy and as fast as possible,” he says. “I loved playing video games like Street Fighter II as a teenager, because learning the ‘special moves’ was so satisfying. That’s how I view the shortcuts I teach—they are the ‘special moves’ of Excel.” Park 的 Excel 专业知识源于多年来为一家公司校对 401(k) 数据，该公司的客户都有各自整理电子表格的方法。“处理人员必须擅长以 100% 的准确率和尽可能快的速度清理和重组数据，”他说。“我十几岁时喜欢玩《街头霸王 II》之类的电子游戏，因为学习‘必杀技’非常令人满足。这就是我看待我所教授的快捷键的方式——它们就是 Excel 的‘必杀技’。”
It wasn’t until his coworkers began to comment on his speed that Park realized he was a bit of a savant. “I think there’s something hypnotic about watching someone use Excel without the mouse,” he says. “The clicks and cells flying around have this weird universal appeal.” 直到同事们开始评论他的操作速度时，Park 才意识到自己是个天才。“我认为看着别人不用鼠标操作 Excel 有种催眠般的魅力，”他说。“点击声和飞速跳动的单元格有一种奇特的普遍吸引力。”