Training advice

[dunlopoil]

Hi,
I work in Marketing, covering things such as designing adverts, posters, technical manuals etc. (I have a degree in Graphic Design). I also use Excel on a daily basis, e.g. extracting supply records for customers, creating a sales enquiry register etc. I have a reasonable familiarity with Excel (greatly enhanced due to recently discovering this forum!) but want to take a step up a level from my current rather scattershot knowledge to a more structured level. I would greatly appreciate any advice on a training path I could take from here. I presume VBA would be a good starting point.

Ideally I ultimately want to be able to combine my Excel knowledge with my skills in Adobe design software including web design. The key thing is that I want to focus on a couple of applications and really get to know them well rather than having small amounts of knowledge of many applications without the ability to put this to practical use.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Russ At Index]

Hi Dunlopoil,

Take a browse around the MrExcel Store.

There you will find a most informative selection of
literature & media to assist in your quest !!!!!!!!!!

Good Luck !!

HTH

Russ

 

[dunlopoil]

Thanks Russ. I've been doing this already. I suppose my fear was that this approach might be a bit unfocused, but maybe I would get just as much out of this as formal tutored training, the only downside being a lack of tangible proof that I would get from a course certificate. Have you found this a problem at all?

 

[Russ At Index]

Hi Dunlopoil,

Check out Domski's thread below :

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=322244

Or ,you could check out training companies in your area , they
range from Excel Beginner , Intermediate & Advanced.

HTH

Russ

 

[dunlopoil]

Cheers Russ. I've now replied to Dom's post as well.

 

[Domski]

Hi,

Though I'd reply to this post rather than my other one.

I've done a fair few courses over the years including 2-3 day intermediate and advanced courses and an advanced ECDL in Excel.

All the courses tend to focus on running through the functions available in Excel and a few of the more useful features like pivot tables but even the advanced ECDL which lasted 13 evenings (most of which I missed) didn't teach you how to really get your hands dirty. I've never seen a course where they've introduced combining more than one function together as you need to do a lot of time to do the really funky stuff.

I've learned pretty much all I know through trial and (quite a bit of) error and reading/contributing to this board. I'm doing the MS certification so hopefully it will be something credible I can put on my CV.

As far as a training path I would recommend:

- Get yourself a good book covering Excel functions and VBA. I use John Walkenbach's Excel 2003 Bible and Excel 2003 Power Programming but there are plenty of others out there. For learning VBA his Excel VBA Prograsmming for Dummies is a good starting point.
- Pick a project whether it involves VBA or not and using resources like this board see how you go about achieving what you want.
- Start answering people's questions, a lot of the time there may be two or three different approaches posted in response to a question it's a good way of picking up tips on different ways to achieve things.

If you want to do a course then I won't say don't bother but it's not something I'd particularly recommend, especially if you're going to have to pay for it.

Best of luck,

Dom

 

[dunlopoil]

Many thanks Dom.

 

[cornflakegirl]

I'd second Dom's post - I find formal training courses to be largely a waste of time. Everything I know about Excel and VBA I have learned from people at work, this board, and generally playing with it. Like many people here, I'm the Excel whizz-kid in my office - although nowhere near the level of the top guys. I have no formal Excel qualifications, but I can produce models that make other people go "wow!" - much more useful!

I definitely agree that working on projects is the best way to learn. If there's something in your office that you think could be done better, then start working on it, and when you get stuck, search / post questions on here. If you can't think of a work project, pick a problem on here that you don't immediately know how to solve, and try to do it. I've learnt a fair bit of VBA by posting solutions with the disclaimer "There's probably a better way to do this". Then sometimes, the guys with better solutions will not only post them for the benefit of the original poster, but explain to them and me why the new solution is better.

 

[Greg Truby]

I'm gonna disagree a wee bit with Domski. I think some classroom training can have a benefit for some people. Personally, I have never taken an Excel class. (I have given classes.) However, several co-workers have taken Excel seminars. Frequently I will go through their course guide when they come back. And a lot of the course guides cover a fair amount of good stuff. The problem is that so much ground gets covered in such a short amount of time that none of it tends to soak in very deep. Invariably, I'll have them asking me questions about things that I saw that were covered in their class.

So it can give you a good framework for what to learn first. But you won't really know the stuff unless you apply it routinely. This board helps a lot in that sense. After reading a couple of threads here, I understood how to use SUMPRODUCT to evaluate multiple criteria. But whenever I needed to do it for myself I would have to really think on it. So I came here and worked a few dozen threads where the solution would involve using SUMPRODUCT() in that context. Now I can do them quite easily.

So, if you will use the class/seminar as a launching point then I'd say it might be worth considering. Just don't think that you are going to be significantly better after one day of getting force-fed a couple o' bushels of Excel. Very few folks can digest a bushel of anything at once; most folks do a lot better a few mouthfuls at a time.

 

[TinaP]

I agree with most of the previous replies.

One mistake I made was learning VBA before I fully understood most of the Excel functions. I ended up writing all kinds of macros (some rather complicated) when a function would be much simpler.

Most of the time, if you know WHAT can be done, even if you don't know HOW, you've got half the battle won.