Wanted: How YOU use Excel!

[PaulGroom]

Folks, yours truly is gonna start giving Excel seminars around the country. In order to get folks to perk up in their seats, I would like to create examples that strike close to home with as many people as possible. I would be much obliged for anyone that could help me generate these. If you could give information along these lines - that'd be just swell:

• Your industry - for example
  • manufacturing
  • service
  • education
  • government
  • non-profit
  • tourism
  • so on and so forth
• Just a general description of where within the industry
  • Plastics Manufacturing, or
  • Electronics Manufacturing
  • Service: Restaurants
  • Service: Health Care
  • Govt: Dept. of Motor Vehicles
  • Govt: Ministry of Silly Walks
  • Education: Elementary School
  • Education: University
  • you get the picture
• How you use Excel
  • Creating pro forma invoices for export bids
  • Reconciling Customer Returns
  • Tracking Sales of Various Mixed Drinks
  • Scheduling for Nurse's Station
  • Minimum Wait Times for License Renewals
  • Applications for Grants to Create New Silly Walks
  • Template for Science Fair Projects
  • Room Assignments in Dormitories

Again, much obliged fer any help y'all kin lend in this direction.

I would approach this in a slightly different way.

I would establish who is going to be attending the seminars - Small business users? eBusiness users? Teachers? Families? Individuals for career enhancement? Bespoke seminars (industry specific)? etc etc..

What level is the seminar aimed at - New user? Novice? Intermmediate? Advanced?

What are the 'goals' for the seminar - At the end of this seminar you will know how to......

You've covered all the bases in your list so with a little bit of thought on the part of the attendee they should be able to see how a dormitory allocation list could just as easily be a staff holiday roster (both involve assigning something to someone).

The danger you face is if everyone on this forum was in the service sector, you create service sector type examples which may have no relevance to your customers. They go away presuming Excel is a service sector programme.

As long as you've covered each feature of Excel that you set out to cover then you have achieved your goal. The actual data/example you use to highlight that feature is not really important.

 

[Cindy Ellis]

I'm in the medical device manufacturing industry (USA), currently in Research & Development, but spent some time in Quality Systems.
Other folks in my company use Excel for

• financial modeling
• creation of batch record forms (with formulas protected and locked, spreadsheet validated and controlled through our document control system)
• creation of various other less "critical" forms

I use Excel to automate huge amounts of data analysis, create user interfaces to otherwise complex information, and help other folks accomplish in a few minutes what they expect will take hours or days
For instance:

• A macro used by our mfg. dept. that called an external program to convert a binary log file into human-readable form (~7200r x 25 c), pull the converted file into Excel, then summarize and analyze it. This broke when we switched to Excel 2007 a few months ago...but it was used daily for 10 years (pats self on back).
• A macro that simplified the process of looking up the countries where a given product was authorized for sale (appropriate regulatory clearances, etc.). This macro also created and saved a formatted Word report from within the Excel macro.
• A macro that opened ~ 6000 large (3600r x 85c) data files in various directories and subdirectories (searching recursively using a routine from the Mr. Excel site...maybe Nate O?), extracted the bits of data I needed, identified the data with the directory and filename, appended the info to a summary file, closed the file, and went on to the next. I was able to complete the analysis of all 6000 files in about 4 hours (just over 2 seconds per file)...therefore making me a hero in my manager's eyes
• A macro that helps our Field Service Engineers, by creating a summary report and Pareto chart of the problems recorded internally by a given system since installation.

Have fun developing your seminar!

Cindy

 

[Greg Truby]

...I would establish who is going to be attending the seminars - Small business users? eBusiness users? Teachers? Families? Individuals for career enhancement? Bespoke seminars (industry specific)? etc etc..

All of the above. Unless it's an on-site where a company has brought in a trainer just for Excel, these are "general public" so it'll cover the gamut of industries, hence the desire to create examples based on a wide variety of scenarios.

...What level is the seminar aimed at - New user? Novice? Intermmediate? Advanced?

Beginners to intermediate.

...What are the 'goals' for the seminar - At the end of this seminar you will know how to...

That's already established by the brochures the customers responded to. The course content must cover all of the points in the brochure - there is a workbook that essentially guarantees this gets done.

...As long as you've covered each feature of Excel that you set out to cover then you have achieved your goal. The actual data/example you use to highlight that feature is not really important.

Ah, but it is in the sense that you must weave a story the audience can connect with. I need fun and interesting stories [Bill's a master at this BTW] that the audience can identify with in order to keep the audiences engaged. For the best connection, I need realistic stories; and the good folks here have given me a lot of terrific material to work with. So a big THANKS to everyone that has, or will respond.

 

[Darren Bartrup]

I work for Essex County Council and I think my main task is to create the god workbook.... throw any old rubbish at it and it will know what to do and spit out a shining example of brilliant logic and flow.

As a sideline I either create workbooks which analyse workbooks created by other people, so there's usually a fair amount of tidying up first:
e.g. checking dates of births in the future, dates of birth more than 120 years ago, correcting dates that have been entered in a format not recognised by Excel, cells with text instead of the expecting numeric value.
I'm sure you've all come across similar problems when looking at a workbook not designed by you.

In the workbooks I build I try and stop any of the above mistakes from being possible.

Apart from stopping errors, my work seems to be filled with counting, averaging, finding maximums & minimums and usually on data that will change from month to month so dynamic ranges are a must.

Charts! I build lots of charts to because the management like green lines and hate red lines. So I put in lots of sliders, buzzers, bells and twiddly things - lot of thanks to Jon Peltier and Andy Pope for charting hints.

Then there's the VBA side of it... I won't go into what I'm asked to do with that; I swear it's not natural sometimes.

 

[daniels012]

We are a construction company, our company puts down flooring.
I started out when Quattro Pro was THE top spreadsheet and when Excel became the best I made the move. Ever since, I have created every form, sheet, report in our family owned business using Excel. All kinds of stuff like: Brochures, memos, expense reports, inventory, customer proposal sheets, estimating sheets, job folder cover sheets, post cards, sales reports, sales graphs, financial reports.

Many people have said "you should use Word for that" but Excel is so ingrained in my brain, it is just easier for me.

In my personal life, I have created a fantasy football draft sheet. With the Fantasy, I have created a form to pull data from the internet to track player statistics.
For our little league I created a draft sheet to draft players and then print the data brought in from our leagues online database.


Hope this helps!
As many times as you have helped me on Mr Excel, let me know if I can be of more assistance to you!

Michael Daniels

 

[Norie]

Michael

You should use Word for that sort of thing I think - it's sort of designed for it.

There's also another application called I believe Access which can come in handy.