Excel tutorial??

iflyforfun

iflyforfun

Pre-takeoff checklist
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iflyforfun
Can anyone recommend a good 1-2 day interactive online Excel tutorial? I work with a lot of companies and I'm tired beyond my ability to explain of the garbage Excel files I am regularly sent ... all sort of randomly merged cells, hand entered values instead of referenced calculations, wildly varied color coding, data entered as a table that looks good and is almost impossible to extract and make useful for analysis, blank eyes when you ask for a pivot table and complete ignorance of basic functions. Ideally, would like something online that would include a basic knowledge test and then provide online tutorials for identified gaps. Surely there must be something out there and I'd appreciate someone knowledgeable in the industry pointing me to something they have used and/or could recommend.
 
I feel your pain... FREQUENTLY!

In 20+ years of ERP consulting I've determined that the accounting staff can do Excel functions, macros, pivots, etc far better than I can. Engineering, Purchasing, and Sales tend to treat it like a typewriter.

Which functional area are you dealing with?
 
rolivi said:
I feel your pain... FREQUENTLY!

In 20+ years of ERP consulting I've determined that the accounting staff can do Excel functions, macros, pivots, etc far better than I can. Engineering, Purchasing, and Sales tend to treat it like a typewriter.

Which functional area are you dealing with?
Click to expand...

Really, I regularly deal with about all of the functions - finance, engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, sales, etc (I'm a bit of a jack of all trades - degreed engineer with manufacturing experience and a finance MBA who worked sales as well). While accounting/finance in Asia are the best of the lot, in many cases I pretty much print what they send and key it in so I can use it. Purchasing seems to be the worst ... I like your description "treat it like a typewriter". I don't know if it is good or bad, but with the mfg teams, I usually end up having to provide them a template to fill out and I always preach the "do not merge, do not add columns" message. I really need to find a "go-to" training system that I can begin using.

What I'm looking for would pretty much be a field agnostic guide covering the basics. I'd LOVE to develop a specific training guide where I could just select the functions that I want covered after the basics of formatting, data structure, etc. I'm not dealing with stupid people ... it's quite the opposite, but they have just never had the opportunity to have excellent training.

When I started working at my first bank as an analyst, they sent us all to 3 days of training. It was made clear that we would NOT even have a mouse provided with our computer and we would live or die by shortcuts. What EXCELLENT training.
 
You REALLY think more than a single digit percentage of the people who send you bad spreadsheets are really going to spend any serious time learning how to do it right?

That's why they send them to you! LOL!

(This is one of my old bosses' quotes about people learning to use our tech products. And frankly, he was right. You're cheaper and more concerned about it than all of them combined... And will do it right more reliably than they will. Here's the reality he shared with me long ago... They don't CARE if they send you incorrectly created spreadsheets and they never will unless their boss tells them they'll be fired for doing it. And they won't. And if you miraculously get them to go to training on it, their bosses will make them, and they still won't care. And there will be turnover. And the newbie won't care. And you'll still be fixing spreadsheets for part of your living.)
 
denverpilot said:
You REALLY think more than a single digit percentage of the people who send you bad spreadsheets are really going to spend any serious time learning how to do it right?

That's why they send them to you! LOL!

(This is one of my old bosses' quotes about people learning to use our tech products. And frankly, he was right. You're cheaper and more concerned about it than all of them combined... And will do it right more reliably than they will. Here's the reality he shared with me long ago... They don't CARE if they send you incorrectly created spreadsheets and they never will unless their boss tells them they'll be fired for doing it. And they won't. And if you miraculously get them to go to training on it, their bosses will make them, and they still won't care. And there will be turnover. And the newbie won't care. And you'll still be fixing spreadsheets for part of your living.)
Click to expand...

While I appreciate your positive and upbeat outlook ;), I'm still looking for a solution. I have a fairly unique position where I'm pretty hard to ignore. They can always do it, but it carries measurable personal risk. I have the additional benefit that most of those I work with are actually looking for help. I fix other peoples stupid, but they get feedback and they either get on board or get forcefully ejected from the bus.

So again, can anyone recommend a good Excel capability testing tool and follow on training tool?
 
This is too funny. I work in IT as a site support "engineer" (I'm a programmer with a history as also being electronics technician) in a huge software solutions corporation. During our little "set goals" yearly meeting with my boss last year I asked for courses in both Excel and Word.
I never got around to it because too much to do, but I did mention to her that my whole time with this company I see technical "genuises" and just techies, that are excellent programmers, etc. that struggle like hell with Excel. We had only ONE guy in our team once that really got into it and could use it as intended and get way more out of it than anyone else.
Same with word to a lesser degree. It struck me that worldwide we must lose millions of man-hours fiddling around with these things, like a monkey trying to fly a plane. What a waste.

I can't count the number of times I've been carefully working on documentation, or some spreadsheet, and inadvertently do something and it all goes out the window and I spend time (when the undo key doesn't cut it) all the time getting it back "to where it was".

If I were a CEO I would gladly approve for ALL employees using Excel and Word, free courses to get them to the level they need to do their everyday duties.
 
use an access db and force them to enter data in a certain way is usually the way I get around that issue...
 
I've been using spreadsheets since 40-column greenscreen days, and have never felt the need to figure out what a pivot table is. I live by the Insert... Functions, and have icons to Insert & Delete cells, rows and columns.

The joys of being an engineer in a manufacturing facility! Production, production support, new product development and R&D. Even doing cost estimates for new products didn't require pivot tables. Maybe you're doing it the hard way?
 
I doubt your cost estimate for a new product did any time series analysis, or you'd be screaming for a pivot table.

I find the access database suggestion hilarious. The times people suggest that, the pushback is... wait for it... we don't have time to be trained on a new software. heehe!
 
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