Editor's note: Be sure to vote on the Data Analysis and Other Features match-ups in our second Excel March Madness post.

The season of brackets is once again upon us and this year we've opted for a tournament that will touch every number cruncher out there — Excel Madness. With so much utility in one application, it's bound to be one of the most competitive March Madness brackets you'll see anywhere this side of the Internet.

Our resident Excel wizard, David Ringstrom served as our selection committee and he has developed the mother of all Excel tournaments. Sixty-four functions, shortcuts, features, tools and everything in between will vie to determine, once and for all, what Excel feature reigns supreme in accountants' universe.

To start off, let's go over a few things about this tourney.

Ringstrom made the selections and seeded them as you see them below. If your favorite Excel doodad is missing, then email us with your concerns so we can delete them.

The four regions are as follows: Functions, Key Shortcuts, Data Analysis, and Other Excel Features.

We linked to a lot of David's Excel posts on AccountingWEB and webinars as well as other Excel posts from AWEB UK below so if you don't recognize something then you might just learn something new. See? Our bracket is fun and it could help you get better at your job. You're welcome.

This is a traditional 64-seed bracket because 68-seed brackets are dumb.

We recommend that you read David's post on how to use Excel to manage your March Madness bracket from last Friday to make life easy for yourself for this bracket and any other bracket that you encounter this bracket season. BRACKETS!

Anyway, let's take a look at the Excel field, shall we? Stonewall Thomas, our tech savvy youth, gets credit for the image above.

Functions Region

1. MATCH/INDEX

2. IFERROR

3. SUBTOTAL

4. TRIM

5. OFFSET

6. SUMIF (and another SUMIF post)

7. SUM (and even more fun with SUM)

8. SUMPRODUCT

9. PMT

10. VLOOKUP (and here's playback for last month's webinar on VLOOKUP)

11. INDIRECT

12. DATEVALUE

13. LEFT

14. CUMIPMT

15. DATEDIF

16. ISERROR

Key Shortcuts Region — Check out this post for 14 Excel key shortcuts . You'll note that a couple were on the bubble and didn't make this tournament.

1. Ctrl-S

2. Ctrl-Z

3. Ctrl-Home

4. Ctrl-Tab

5. Ctrl-Page Up

6. Alt-=

7. Ctrl-A

8. Ctrl-Minus

9. Ctrl-Enter

10. F3

11. F5

12. Ctrl-Shift-1

13. Ctrl-0 (zero)

14. Ctrl-Shift-_

15. Alt-Down Arrow

We'll start with the Functions and Key Shortcuts regions today so vote below and on the next page. The polls for these two regions will close on Wednesday at 11:59 PT so do not put this off. IT'S IMPORTANT. If you'd like to split hairs over the seedings, please, be my guest but kindly take it over to Open Items's Productivity section. Leave this post to predictions, Excel war stories and so on.

Now get to voting, spreadsheet enthusiasts.

FUNCTIONS REGION

Which Excel function is better? Which Excel function is better? Which Excel function is better? Which Excel function is better? Which Excel function is better? Which Excel function is better? Which Excel function is better? Which Excel function is better?

Be sure to click over to the next page to vote on Key shortcuts!

KEY SHORTCUTS REGION