# Recommended Excel knowledge for an administrative assistant?



## JFO_MXF (Jan 5, 2014)

Hello, everyone!

I am training myself to be a proficient  administrative assistant, and I am looking for some advice from  experienced Excel users as to  what they believe would be the most useful Excel knowledge for my job  level. Many job postings for this type of position require advanced  Excel skills; however, my recent temp assignment (which required "great  Excel skills") only included data entry and some conditional formatting.  For this reason, I want to guide my practice so I can focus on the most  important aspects and avoid spending too much time on skills that would  go unused. 

As I said above, I am currently training myself, but  it is difficult because I am unaware of many Excel features and those  which are worth studying the most. 

I will try to detail my current knowledge the best that I can:

- Shortcut keys (I have them printed )

- Comfortable with backstage view and its uses

- Home: comfortable with clipboard, font, alignment, number, custom number format, styles, cells, and editing.

-  Insert: comfortable with standard tables, illustrations, charts,  sparklines, links, texts, and symbols. I have to improve my  understanding of PivotTables, PivotCharts, and Slicers

- Page Layout: comfortable with themes, page setup, scale to fit, sheet options, and arrange.

-  Formulas: comfortable with defined names, formula auditing, and  calculation. Some of the formulas that have helped me are CONCATENATE,  VLOOKUP, IF, DAYS360, RANK. I am unfamiliar with many formulas so I  often try to experiment and learn new ones; I would be very interested  in hearing about any formulas that you find to be indispensable. 

-  Data: comfortable with sort and filter, data tools (currently studying  What-If Analysis), and outline. I have not yet learned about data  connections and getting external data.

- Review: comfortable with proofing, language, comments, and changes.

-  View: Comfortable with workbook views, show, zoom, and window. For  macros, I can only record basic macros; I do not know Visual Basic. 

These are the tutorials that I am working on / have yet to complete:
- What-If Analysis
- PivotTable
- PivotChart

I  apologize for the tedious list, but I just wanted to give the most  complete information that I could. I look forward to any suggestions and  advice. I always enjoy being enlightened by how a seemingly cut-and-dry  feature could be manipulated to perform other useful tasks.

Thanks in advance!


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## etaf (Jan 6, 2014)

> Many job postings for this type of position require advanced Excel skills; however, my recent temp assignment (which required "great Excel skills") only included data entry and some conditional formatting. For this reason, I want to guide my practice so I can focus on the most important aspects and avoid spending too much time on skills that would go unused.


i think that could be difficult, as each job will require different level of knowledge 
and the definition between "great Excel skills" and "advanced" will also be open to interpretation.

sounds like you have a lot of things covered
perhaps looking at some of the questions in the forum , which you think you may also be expected to do and then see if you could have solved , may help 

look at all the count(if(s)) and sum(if(s)) 
also sumproduct
using index match instead of vlookup


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## tweedle (Jan 6, 2014)

Hi JFO_MXF

As you progress, keep these two YouTube channels handy.  

Bill Jelen - YouTube
ExcelIsFun - YouTube


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## Derek Brown (Jan 6, 2014)

Hello and welcome to The Board.
Have a look at Hiker's List for source references:
http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-...-belong-sheet1-belong-module.html#post3645327
(Ignore the reference to "macros" in the link)
The previous reply suggesting the YouTube sites is an excellent recommendation.


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## xenou (Jan 6, 2014)

Defined names (named ranges) and dynamic named ranges are very helpful.
You could view topics at contextures to look for ones you don't know very well:
http://www.contextures.com/tiptech.html
Also not to forget proficiency in using Windows generally is also very helpful too


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## JFO_MXF (Jan 6, 2014)

Thank you all for the recommendations and resources. I will make sure to check them out as soon as I finish my current material.


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## Fazza (Jan 15, 2014)

hi,

Sounds to me like you've already covered all one would need to be ahead of 99.9% of other administrative assistants. Well done, and I admire your attitude & enthusiasm for improvement.

I'd suggest you put some time into forum posts. Not just reading them but answering them. You will quickly encounter the common tasks that office users handle and really learn (by doing & reading solutions by others). There are often many good, different solutions.

all the best. regards, Fazza


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## PaddyD (Jan 15, 2014)

I'd probably keep on learning until you get bored  

If an employer asks for some skills you can talk about what you've got, which is OK, but more important (to me at least) would be the demonstrable commitment to personal development that you could point to (i.e. this thread)!

The only thing I'd suggest as an area to focus on is charting - people with EAs often have to do presentations, presenations have to deliver complex messages effectively, and a well-constructed chart can make all the difference.


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