Microsoft Excel as a tool for digital forensic accounting

Enron and Worldcom - both companies were top of the world once upon a time but have filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and 2002 respectively. Both companies were responsible for perpetrating accounting fraud to the amount of almost 20 billion dollars. It must have been a daunting task for the external auditors investigating the mess. Both companies used different accounting software and the auditors must be skilled with the respective accounting software to unravel the complex accounting deception. The question is what is the accounting software used is not well known such as SAP and time is limited to determine the extent of the accounting fraud. The answer is to convert the accounting data to a universal format such as Comma Separated Value (CSV) and load the CSV file into a familiar tool that everyone is familiar with such as Microsoft Excel. Once in Microsoft Excel, the data can be manipulated and analyze to check for accounting fraud.