Training Recommendation: Excel, Access, or VBA?

[z168]

I have free training as a company benefit. I have the following options:
1. Access-Level1
2. Excel-Level3
3. Excel VBA
Which one do I take?

I know the basics of excel. formula here and there, pivot tables, histograms, etc

Here is the course outline (sorry for the poor upload).

 

[Trevor G]

I would consider which of the applications Excel or Access is mostly used by yourself and which would you personally benefit from? Do you have Access knowledge and would you use Access in the work place !

Do you get asked to participate/help others with issues in either of the applications !

Without knowing you and what your role in your company is, or your personal career goals are it is very hard to be specific.

If you can use Excel or Access regularly at work/home/other then that could help. An introduction to Excel VBA is very interesting as it opens up new ideas and challenges, as does Access as it can rethink the ideas of moving large Excel data into a Database with greater functionality.

These are personal views as would be anyone elses who participates in this thread, but I do hope they do as you will get a greater spread of ideas suggestions to help you (or so I think).

 

[z168]

Thanks for your reply Trevor. Im an analyst and for the most part, make my own path where I work. A lot of my dept audit functions still use paper so its fun for me to bring everyone up to speed to instead send me spreadsheets instead of boxes of paper.

my "database" of info is small (25x6000 cells) but because of heavy use of vlookup functions, it tends to crash. Before it gets out of hand, i thought I
should start using access.

A good peer and friend told me to just maximize Excel. So his suggestion was to take the Level3 Excel. He said that if I became an expert on excel, it will be easy to follow access.

So Excel?

 

[SydneyGeek]

Looking at those outlines I don't think that Level 3 Excel will solve the problems you have with the workbooks. It will give you some more Excel skills, but you need stuff way beyond the so-called 'advanced' courses. Most of the formula answers on this forum are way beyond those courses, so lurk here, ask questions, and learn. Down the track yo may find yourself contributing answers as well.
If your workbooks mostly require cross-correlating data (I assume that's the reason for the many VLOOKUPS) then Access will do a much better job, with very little computing overhead. But I think your answer lies with a combination of the two (or three, because VBA helps you tie the applications together).
I would suggest that you do the Access course, and get your hands on a book like Integrating Access and Excel by Mike Alexander. He also has written one called The Excel Analyst's Guide to Access. Both are good.

Denis

 

[atbepxinh]

It is important that your work has to be applied to many programmers do not, but if only office work, you should select option 1

Thanks

 

[Trevor G]

I would go down the line of learning Access as Denis has explained and his suggesting is spot on, a good recommendation for a book as well.

The forum will be very useful with a breadth of knowledge and experience in so many avenues will be of great help.

 

[z168]

Thank you very much for the replies. I agree that this site has saved me more than enough times and has also served as a spot to learn new things I didnt even know existed

unfortunately as of the 10th Friday, I already enrolled in Excel. But I will have to get started on Access soon (one way or the other)

Trevor, Denis, Atbe - thanks again bros