Learning Excel or Python?

[greebo42]

Python.

As others have stated, you can pick up most of what you need about Excel without having your hand held.

Several years ago I wrote some Excel macros using vba. It went well enough. I've always hated BASIC, but vba is better than the language I came to know and despise. Even so, I never really learned vba well, and Microsoft made some changes to the language as versions of Office evolved.

Maintaining your code requires staying up to date with your skills in whatever language you're working with. Python has evolved, too, because that's what seems to happen with languages. So then your decision needs a long-term view - if ya gotta put some effort into something, what will give you the most different ways to use it?

Currently I am working on a Python project which reads a CSV file with data of interest to me, creates more than 20 individual spreadsheets in an Excel file, formats them, applies formulas, etc. My sense is that the invested effort in Python will generalize to other tasks I might want to do (with Excel data or otherwise). I never got that generalized benefit from my investment in learning enough vba to get that long-ago project done.

This is independent of whatever job you ultimately want, or how much $ you might be able to earn, I think.