Excelling at Excel: The spreadsheet world cup is anything but boring
By David Swan
Forget slam dunks, penalty shootouts or gold medals. The most nerve-racking competition you’ve never heard of involves cells, formulas and pivot tables.
The Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship is a high-stakes event in which teenagers and young adults travel from across the globe to Florida to demonstrate their mathematical prowess, their problem-solving skills … and their mastery of the most obscure Excel formulas and functions.
The Spreadsheet Champions (from left to right): Carmina Solares, Yvan De La Paix, Alkmini Gaitantzi and Mason Brainthwaite.Credit: Simon Schluter
And despite what one might assume, the tournament – run each year by certification firm Certiport – is a dramatic, tense affair and competition is fierce.
Contestants must solve real-world problems at speed: modelling financial scenarios, sorting massive data sets, and designing dashboards for a chance at glory.
If you think that sounds boring, the competitors strongly beg to differ.
“People usually think it’s just typing numbers and formulas,” says Carmina Solares, a 17-year-old mechatronics engineering student from Guatemala.
“But Excel is like a puzzle: maths, logic and design all rolled into one. The competition feels like solving a Rubik’s Cube while someone yells ‘Hurry up!’ in your ear.”
She is among six competitors from Greece, Guatemala, Vietnam, Cameroon, Australia and the US whose efforts in the lead-up to the 2023 event feature in the documentary Spreadsheet Champions, from Australian director Kristina Kraskov.
The group has been in Australia this month as guests of the Melbourne International Film Festival for screenings of the film.
Spreadsheet Champions is an 86-minute documentary that reflects the intensity and pressure-cooker environment of the event, as well as the volatility of adolescence. Shot across six countries with a two-person crew, the film also offers a compelling look at what it’s like to compete at the very top of your chosen field.
Documtary subjects Carmina Solares, Alkmini Gaitantzi, Yvan De La Paix and Mason Brainthwaite.Credit: Simon Schluter
Microsoft Excel has an estimated 1.5 billion users globally, so to be ranked as one of the best is an achievement. More than 400,000 students try to qualify each year.
Pham Trung Nam, a 22-year-old from Vietnam, discovered Excel through a school program and quickly rose to the top of his national competition. Braydon Tanti, from Queensland, is a laid-back high school student who admits he “just kind of winged it” at Australia’s national competition, and won.
For Alkmini Gaitain, a university student who started using Excel through a scholarship program in Greece, competing in formulas and spreadsheets is every bit as emotional as traditional sport.
“Anxiety, joy, sadness, pride … The emotions are the same as playing on the field,” he says. “People are surprised when I say it, but Excel really can feel like a sport.
“It’s a bit weird to watch yourself on the screen, but at the same time it’s beautiful and moving. I am grateful and happy for all of this.”
The film delves into the competitors’ quirks as well as their favourite formulas. Both Solares and Gaitain give the humble IF function their vote for “Best Supporting Actor”, describing it as Excel’s “drama queen” and “foundation of decision-making”. Braithwaite swears by XLOOKUP (“it makes spreadsheets flexible and dynamic”), while Melon Yvan De La Paix, from Cameroon, champions the unsung hero of macros: “The hidden engineers of Excel, working silently in the background.”
For Mason Braithwaite, an American competitor, the strangest part of the experience was the absurdity of it all.
“I went from meeting these brilliant minds from around the world to compete – in Microsoft Office?! – and then just sort of went back to normal life.”
And what about AI, the technology that represents a looming shadow over so many jobs, not to mention the future of Microsoft Excel itself? The competitors aren’t worried.
“AI is cool,” Solares says with a shrug, “but we still need humans who understand what’s going on.”
Melon Yvan De La Paix agrees: “Excel teaches you how to think critically. AI can spit out a formula, but if you don’t understand it, you can’t use it.”
Whether they go on to careers in engineering, teaching or coaching the next generation of spreadsheet athletes, each of the competitors agree on one thing: Excel isn’t just productivity software. It’s a sport, an art, and – at least for these six – a way of life.
The Melbourne International Film Festival is on until August 24. Spreadsheet Champions is also screening in Ballarat, Geelong and Sale – check the MIFF website for details.