XL 2010: Is Excel Help Really Helpful ??

[monirg]

Hello;

1) I don’t recall ever been able to find what I want in Excel Help, or even close to what I want!
Is this a common observation ??
Is there a trick on how to use Help (the ? icon on the top right of excel window) ??

2) I was looking the other day for some info on custom toolbars.
I opened XL 2010, clicked the ? image, and searched for:
custom toolbar
Excel came up with about 30 topics:
-> How to create macros
-> Run a macro
-> Create or delete a PivotTable
-> Minimize the ribbon
-> Create a chart
-> Check spelling
-> Change chart axis
-> OLAP PivotTable report
-> and many more “irrelevant” topics

3) I accessed most of the above topics and read the articles, hoping to find something about “custom toolbars”, such as:
>how to create/modify/delete toolbars in XL 2010
>how to name a toolbar for easy ref.
>are they available in XL 2010
>can one create a local toolbar applicable only to a particular w/b or it has to be available globally to all XL files on the system
>does XL 2010 recognize custom toolbars created in earlier versions
>etc..

4) Nothing, even remotely related to the searched topic.
I tried different combinations of the keywords before I gave up!
The same could generally be said about XL 2010 VBA Help.

Would appreciate your comments.

 

[Smitty]

FYI - From my help content contact at Microsoft:

...Thanks for the link, and for explaining to Monir what we’re doing to make search results more relevant for customers. Clearly, we still have a ways to go. I forwarded the link to my colleagues on the Excel Content Publishing and Office.com Search teams. It helps all of us to see honest feedback about problem spots.

I doesn't mean that things are going to change anytime soon, but they are working on it.


Note that if anyone comes up with a great blog post (or something like it) about an Excel topic just let me know and I'll submit it to them for you. As with Ron Debruin's mention above, a few of Bill Jelen's (aka Mr. Excel) tips, mine, and many other people's have been linked in Office help. If they like it, the Office Help folks even reformat it to post directly on the Office online helpfiles (which means if you die and your site goes down then your content is preserved).

 

[monirg]

FYI - From my help content contact at Microsoft:
It doesn't mean that things are going to change anytime soon, but they are working on it.

Smitty;

Thank you kindly for the update.

Regards.

 

[RonaldD]

FYI - From my help content contact at Microsoft:





I doesn't mean that things are going to change anytime soon, but they are working on it.

It's good to hear they're acting on it.

 

[PCRIDE]

Hello;

1) I don’t recall ever been able to find what I want in Excel Help, or even close to what I want!
Is this a common observation ??
Is there a trick on how to use Help (the ? icon on the top right of excel window) ??

2) I was looking the other day for some info on custom toolbars.
I opened XL 2010, clicked the ? image, and searched for:
custom toolbar
Excel came up with about 30 topics:
-> How to create macros
-> Run a macro
-> Create or delete a PivotTable
-> Minimize the ribbon
-> Create a chart
-> Check spelling
-> Change chart axis
-> OLAP PivotTable report
-> and many more “irrelevant” topics

3) I accessed most of the above topics and read the articles, hoping to find something about “custom toolbars”, such as:
>how to create/modify/delete toolbars in XL 2010
>how to name a toolbar for easy ref.
>are they available in XL 2010
>can one create a local toolbar applicable only to a particular w/b or it has to be available globally to all XL files on the system
>does XL 2010 recognize custom toolbars created in earlier versions
>etc..

4) Nothing, even remotely related to the searched topic.
I tried different combinations of the keywords before I gave up!
The same could generally be said about XL 2010 VBA Help.

Would appreciate your comments.

I've never been impressed with the MS help options, in the programs, on their websites even. I NEVER find anything. Thats why I don't use BING, because it doesn't work.

 

[cheekbones3]

I've usually found help to be fine in terms of basic functions (STDEV, VLOOKUP etc), but for vba etc? Mostly useless.

 

[mathchick]

I've usually found help to be fine in terms of basic functions (STDEV, VLOOKUP etc), but for vba etc? Mostly useless.

Their site was one of the first ones I bookmarked when I started working on VBA heavily at work (right after Mr.Excel ). It doesn't always have the answer I'm looking for and probably 25-40% of the time I ended up looking elsewhere for more specific examples of how to use it, but I found it to be especially helpful for looking through the attributes and methods associated with different objects. I also tend to moan about how inadequate the help files are (and even the well documented parts are lessened in usefulness because people aren't generally too inclined to try the help files), but I really do appreciate very much this Microsoft help webpage. It took me awhile to learn how to navigate it, I would occasionally find a particularly useful page and then not be able to figure out how to get back to it through the menu, but it really is helpful if you give it a chance.

I'm not saying MS office help is great, but there are parts worth using.

 

[monirg]

mathchick;

Your link to MS "Excel 2007 Object Model Reference" webpage is very helpful. Thanks.