Learning Excel

[pikachamp]

So, I just got thrown into a job where I'm expected to teach myself Excel and use it. For the most part, I can handle self teaching. I was just wondering if anyone knew any good resources. Books and websites and such. I've been told that if I research and find a book I want to use they will purchase it for me, so I'm not worried about cost.

[Zag]

For any reference book about a computer topic, I always recommend the "in a nutshell" series: http://www.amazon.com/Excel-2000-Nutshell-OReilly/dp/1565927141/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231780050&sr=8-1 They are always concise, accurate, and well-indexed.

I can't imagine buying a tutorial-type book for Excel. It is just too vast, which means that the likelihood of the tutorial overlapping what you actually want to know is pretty slim. You might possibly want one for spreadsheet basics, if you've never used one before, but you can probably just as easily find stuff on the web or figure it out yourself.

[Quailman]

You've never used a spreadsheet software before?

For starters, it's just like filling out any grid. I've taught Lotus 1-2-3 before (though not since 1992) and I used to tape a piece of 12-column accounting paper on the wall so the students could relate what was on the screen to something they were more familiar with.

Open up an existing spreadsheet and look at how it works. There are label, value and formula entries in each cell. Labels (text) can start with any letter or number. Numbers are just that. Formulas start with =, though if I am typing one in I start with +, since that's recognized as starting to type a formula and it's part of the 10-key area.

Use the help function to find what you need when you need it. A lot of what you'd learn in a class or tutorial (at least the medium to advanced stuff) you won't use (at least not right away), and it's too much to soak in anyway.

A lot of techniques I use I found by accident - something didn't give me the result I wanted, but I remembered what I did for the next time I wanted what it gave me.

At what level will you need to use it? We have people here who only update existing spreadsheets, and others who create them. If you'll be dealing with large amounts of data, after you master the basics learn to use pivot tables.

And Excel is quite flexible. If there's something you want to do with the data, you probably can.

[pikachamp]

Nah, I know how a spread sheet works. I'm not entirely sure what I need to do yet, but it seems to involve pulling data from an online database, or something. I'm not really sure. I should be finding out more later.

[LordKinbote]

[Jack_Ian]

I remember SuperCalc

I always think about the inventors of the spreadsheet program when using Excel. They never patented their idea and therefore allowed several other companies to produce their own versions. (See here for more info.)

Lotus 1-2-3 was pretty good too, certainly better than the original versions of Excel. Interesting times... As Microsoft battled to obliterate the competition, forcing users to accept inferior quality products. Unless you were a hard core business user, it just didn't make sense to fork out money for Lotus when you already had software bundled with the OS that could do most of what you wanted (given enough coaxing). This same battle was played out later again with Netscape.

Now Excel is completely bloated with features, as developers wrack their brains trying to figure out how to "improve" things for the next version. It is trying to be a database and spreadsheet combined and the macro language has become so "powerful" that just opening a spreadsheet could seriously compromise your computer's security. Though I do admit, the graphing capabilities are pretty cool.

Even power-users of Excel will only use a small fraction of the features and for the most part only the basic functions are used. Don't bother trying to learn everything. Start with a basic tutorial and then try to get you hands on some existing documents from the company so that you can see the kinds of things they need it for. Otherwise you could be wasting your time learning about features that you will never use.

Also, don't be afraid to just jump in. It's pretty intuitive once you get the basics and you are are not too concerned about the more complex features.

[Quailman]

[MatthewV]

You should ask for a task and plenty of time to complete it.

[Lepton*]

I remember using paper to do tabulations and calculations. Paper!

Pika: no worries, if they are having you move information from a database into a spreadsheet, there's a rather low likelihood that you'll be expected to use the advanced functionality.