How to make it easy for the users

[alexandreleal]

Hello, I hope you can help me.

I am relatively experienced in Excel and can find improvements and solutions for almost everything at work using a spreadsheet.
Where I work there are few people with good knowledge. Not more than a 5 to 6 people (in around 600) knows VBA and the rest, in a best case scenario, go as far as a VLOOKUP function.

My biggest problem is that people get very dependent on me to update or correct (self created) errors in the files (even the simpliest ones without VBA). Although I always create the easiest manuals, it doesn't keep them from calling me on every opportunity.

Has anyone experienced this? Do you have any tip to avoid becoming an Excel help-desk?

 

[Joe4]

Welcome to the Board!

Yes, we have experienced this, though on a smaller scale than you. What we ended up doing is creating our own Excel training course for each department, that is tailored to the tasks that they do and how Excel may help them. We created a document with some simple "how to's" and "examples". We then held mandatory training for each department, and sent them each a copy of the document that they can refer to.

It was a bit of work up front, but did save lots of time down the road. Especially when they ask us how to do something, and we can refer them to a specific section in their document/manual.

 

[petertenthije]

Same here, I created macro that would run every time a upload file I created was closed. This would automatically solve the three most common errors.
* That all numbers are rounded to two decimals;
* That all dates are in the correct format (desired format DD-MM-YYYY, our applications downloads as DD.MM.YYYY);
* That there are no # in date fields (our application downloads # in case there is no date).

In addition to that I had a veryhidden worksheet that displays the most common errors for which no automated solution can be made. That at least saves time on searching for issues.

Also, data validation rocks!