Learning Microsoft Excel-not too bad...

[dave4shmups]

So I can now say that I have at least learned the basics of Exel 2013. I wanted to learn it in order to get into some kind of non-retail office job. Using Excel isn't anywhere near as hard or intimidating as I thought it would be-I'd never used any spreadsheet program before.

I kind of freaked when I saw that the trigonometry function in Excel, but me Dad just laughed and said that most businesses don't use it. Although I find a lot of the formulas in a Excel to be unnecessary and cumbersome. If you want to divide or subtract or add or multiply the amount in one cell from another, wouldn't it be easier to whip out a calculator and do it that way??

The most helpful videos I found were on this YouTube site: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCxfyP6D-OCf6S7m7RIWiJXA

[GaijinPunch]

wouldn't it be easier to whip out a calculator and do it that way??

No way. You've only hit the tip of the iceberg.

Imagine you have 10 cells and you want the average. What if one in the middle changes? Why would you do it all over again when you can just change the one cell and have it done for you?

Imagine feeding data from some source that updates several times a second. Different cells depend on others, which depend on others, etc. etc.

[Damocles]

Formulas man, formulas. If you want to maximize your time to learning consider taking a statistics class that involves Excel. There's a ton of wonderful stuff you can do in it.

[Some-Mist]

in a business environment, vlookups and pivot tables are crucial. (alright... maybe not crucial but it saves a crazy amount of time).
that's basically as far as I've gone though I do use a lot of the other basic functions.


there was some lady in accounting at my old job that was a pro at macros.... and if you can get on that level, you can turn frequent large scale reconciliations into a couple minute or less task. she basically helped create macros for our entire 70+ person company on the side and it was amazing.

[dave4shmups]

wouldn't it be easier to whip out a calculator and do it that way??

No way. You've only hit the tip of the iceberg.

Imagine you have 10 cells and you want the average. What if one in the middle changes? Why would you do it all over again when you can just change the one cell and have it done for you?

Imagine feeding data from some source that updates several times a second. Different cells depend on others, which depend on others, etc. etc.

OK, I understand where you coming from. I'm really not mathematically minded; Math was always my weakest subject in school. So taking a Statistics course, even one that involves Excel, sounds pretty daunting.

I still need to keep learning MS Office, though. It is nice how Microsoft has standardized the ribbon in Excel, and Word 2013. I have learned what Macros are, and how to use them, at a basic level.

[LordHypnos]

Excel is super awesome man! A lot of why it's awesome is actually to do with the way it aids people who are bad at math with math (speaking as someone who often screws up at even super basic math like counting!). It really helps you visualize data and numbers, as well as doing most of the actual computation for you (and trust me, it beats the hell out of a calculator for a lot of data sets!).

I too learned most of my Excel in a statistics course, and have actually used it a lot since then.

Never got as far as macros, though.

[Kollision]

Things start to get really interesting after you get into macros and learn proper VBA.
It's definitely worth it.

[dave4shmups]

Excel is super awesome man! A lot of why it's awesome is actually to do with the way it aids people who are bad at math with math (speaking as someone who often screws up at even super basic math like counting!). It really helps you visualize data and numbers, as well as doing most of the actual computation for you (and trust me, it beats the hell out of a calculator for a lot of data sets!).

I too learned most of my Excel in a statistics course, and have actually used it a lot since then.

Never got as far as macros, though.

Yeah, it definitely does aid those of us who are bad at math! I went to my local county workforce center, and they set me up with some tutorials, which I can do from home, on Excel, through the website proveit.com I did those a few months ago. How different are different versions of Excel? 2010 and 2013 are pretty similar, but I'm assuming that some businesses still use Excel 2007. I know that with Windows 10 this year, there will be a new version of Office; I hope they don't change much. But it's not like every company's going to upgrade immediately.

On the broader subject of IT jobs; I LOVE computers! But I don't want a job in computer sales, and I don't want to work in a call center.

[TJB]

Things start to get really interesting after you get into macros and learn proper VBA.
It's definitely worth it.

This this a million times this. I've worked in the finance sector as an "IT Guy" and our only option thanks to a heavily restricted environment was to write things in VBA in order to make our lives easier.

[dave4shmups]

Things start to get really interesting after you get into macros and learn proper VBA.
It's definitely worth it.

This this a million times this. I've worked in the finance sector as an "IT Guy" and our only option thanks to a heavily restricted environment was to write things in VBA in order to make our lives easier.

OK, I'll definitely look into VBA! Thanks for the advice!

[dave4shmups]

I don't know about coding, you guys. I never used DOS when I was younger, and I was terrible at Logo on the Apple IIes that I used in elementary school. People can call that a bad comparison all they want, but coding is coding-if you even miss on character, whatever you're trying to code for won't work.

[nasty_wolverine]

Okay, so insight from a guy who basically kickstarted his career as Business Analyst solely with excel.

back story: around when i was 14, dad had made a deal with a guy to teach me computers, guy taught me just the office package, so excel, ppt and word. when i started working, i could do filters and pivots, already my then manager was taking me off normal work to do his shit. in a later job and learned more excel, started doing team stats and stuff, got through as a MI Analyst in a IJP, now years later I am a excel wizard and a Business Analyst. Ofcourse i learnt everything required for the role like statistics and business skills. I really never have to worry about a job anytime soon.

so how to be a excel badass 101:

Formulae - this is the basic stuff you need to know. you dont need to know all formulae but some are very important. I ll just list the absolutely necessary ones i cannot survive without. also, i should point out, the functions themselves are not much use, its when you learn to string them together to do magic (it will look like magic to anyone else who doesnt understand excel)
sum, sumif, sumifs, count, countif, countifs, if, iserror, vlookup, hlookup, offset, match, left, right, mid, len, find, substitute, mod, sign

Pivots - extremely useful in getting data out fast, learn calculated fields, you can do some pretty funky stuff with it.

VBA - this is high level stuff, start learning by recording, and then start writing code yourself. but, if you have ever used excel at high levels, you want formulas to do as much as possible, only offloading things to macro when its necessary, like executing a query and populating a dump sheet from a external database, copying data in from multiple files, doing complex calculations etc.

others - charts, conditional formatting, filters, removing duplicates, evaluating formulas

Also, learn statistics (atleast the basic stuff) and sql. you can be gold. and learn the damn shortcuts. best way to learn is start experimenting, i have macros which manipulate cells, which feed into formulas, which feeds into a graph for a glorious spinning double helix display.

edit: some fun stuff i made when i was bored
https://db.tt/okMuflab
https://db.tt/SSLKgpnj

[AeroCityMayor]

Excel is awesome!!!

I've made a very comfortable living for years off the back of my 1337 Excel skillz.

I've just begun a new job as an MI Analyst using SQL databases and Excel as a front end.

As the guys have said, macros/VBA is a must as are pivot tables and array formulae.

Good luck.

Cheers,

Ralph.

P.S. here's something I did in Excel 2003 when I was bored: http://petes-emulation.com/ftp/acm/fun/JoB.xls

[Xyga]

Any good learning websites for this ? (All the stuff I find in French is crap so in britspeak plz!)

I've been wanting to improve for years but never went the first step.
You know I'm the "only know the few formulas/charts/sorting tips I need for my weekly report" type (which when you come from the retail business translates by 'ignorant' ).

[AeroCityMayor]

Hi Xyga,

Whilst Microsoft generally get bad press for their documentation, I can highly recommend the Office online training courses. They sort them by package release so it's really easy to find. I learned ACCESS from scratch using these courses.

https://www.microsoft.com/learning/en-g ... ining.aspx

N.B. As support for 2003 ceased in April last year, there is no longer any training for this release.

HTH

Cheers,

Ralph.

[Xyga]

Oh nice! Didn't know they had those. ^^