Help me pick a course!

[Barbarte]

Hi everyone,

I need some advice from people in the know!

I have what people around me consider pertty advanced knowledge of Excel and VBA.
I can write my own macros easily enough (especially with the help of these boards! ) I've completed an intermediate and advanced excel course as well as a VBA development course.

Since then my boss has decided that they have paid for themselves 3 fold, and has told me to go do another.

My current job involves Access as well as excel, so I was thinking of taking an Access course, given the previous courses I attended, could I afford to skip the beginner access course?
When I took the Advanced Excel course I was expecting the stuff I got in the VBA development course, so I dont want to fork out a chunk of company money for a course I'm not gonna get anything major from.

Another option I was considering was a VB course, but I'm not sure how long the pay off for that would be. I've been looking at courses on here:

www.iact.ie

I primarily work with excel, access and a number of databases accessed through internet explorer and Rumba (unix), some of which use CSV files for adding data.
So far the stuff that has impressed my boss the most is the stuff that takes the repetitive jobs away from people, quite simple macros and the like.
He's talking about getting as much of our paperwork as possible onto the servers now. so I'm thinking of developing a database that multiple people can access at the same time, on which I can store customer information, including contact details, account numbers, PDF's of signed contracts and that type of thing, give people access to them (in the office) through an interface, that will allow them to save copies of the information, but will not allow them to go access the information except from within the interface.
so they couldn't go routing around the hard drive and move files etc....

sorry for the stream of conciousness, but I'm not eactly 100% sure what I need here.

any ideas???

Thanks,

Paul.

 

[SydneyGeek]

I took a look at your link and those courses seem to be pretty thorough.

If you are already comfortable with DB concepts and can put together a decent table structure, maybe you can skip Level 1. But... I have done a lot of training over the years and often I find that experienced users who come straight to the advanced courses are missing important bits of knowledge; mostly productivity tips, but also some basic background.

Level 2 of that series looks like it will give you some useful and fairly advanced skills in Access. I'd also recommend that you get your hands on a book or two:

Developing Microsoft Access Applications (John L. Viescas)
Access Cookbook (Litwin, Getz and Baron).

Hope this helps

Denis

 

[Barbarte]

Thanks Denis,

I agree it might not be worth jumping in at the deep end if I might miss some fundimental details.

I've since discovered that I can do this course:

http://www.iact.ie/iopen24/product_info.php?products_id=1266

and the government wil pay 70% of the funding!
so I've opted for that one.

Thanks for the tips, I'll check those books out.

Paul.