Excel Online Training

2

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  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 43,462
    I've just looked through the Person Specification again and of the 27 desirable or essential skills 'proficent in the use of Word, Excel and Powerpoint' is only a single item (but down as essential). The only other one she is missing is only a desirable (a degree - she has the best part of 20 years sector experience and various other relevant formal qualifications that would have been considered at shortlisting) and has a lot of experience and knowledge in several of the desirable areas so is perhaps thinking too much about this element. That said, focussing on a known weakness and strengthening it as much as possible is a good thing. I think the fact that there will be some workshops and testing that may include Excel is her main concern but I also think this will flush out the areas where she's very strong.
  • Tashman
    Tashman Posts: 3,495
    Pross wrote:
    I've just looked through the Person Specification again and of the 27 desirable or essential skills 'proficent in the use of Word, Excel and Powerpoint' is only a single item (but down as essential). The only other one she is missing is only a desirable (a degree - she has the best part of 20 years sector experience and various other relevant formal qualifications that would have been considered at shortlisting) and has a lot of experience and knowledge in several of the desirable areas so is perhaps thinking too much about this element. That said, focussing on a known weakness and strengthening it as much as possible is a good thing. I think the fact that there will be some workshops and testing that may include Excel is her main concern but I also think this will flush out the areas where she's very strong.
    It's likely that a lot of the use of Excel will be within a reviewing capacity at that level. The knowledge on how to do some basic manipulation/editing of tables of data may well be the essential parts neded.

    Alternatively it's a cut and paste job description used throughout the organisation for anyone in an admin heavy role.
  • Tashman
    Tashman Posts: 3,495
    Chris Bass wrote:
    keef66 wrote:
    I'd have thought if accounting was involved she'd already have been exposed to Excel.

    All our accountants fcuking love spreadsheets!

    hang on, hang on..... there are people that don't like spreadsheets?
    Iknow!! Amazing isn't it. Most in our office would much rather use Excel than Word. Far easier to get it to format as you'd like, especially if there's a requirement to include a table.
  • Ben6899
    Ben6899 Posts: 9,686
    I'd like to bet the prospective employers would like to know your wife can take an existing spreadsheet and then manipulate rows and rows and columns and columns and tabs and tabs of data in order to find trends and extract key figures.

    So filtering, sorting, lookups, PIVOT TABLES, maybe conditional formatting.
    Ben

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  • slowbike
    slowbike Posts: 8,498
    Ops DIRECTOR ... ok - so should have some business support for the more complex stuff - if they've lumped Word, PowerPoint & Excel into one line and said "Proficient" then I'd suggest that it's just a "would you be frightened if you had to open one of these documents" requirements - and probably not want much in the way of data manipulation...

    Interesting that they're thinking about doing workshops and assessments ... you'd think at Director level they'd be more about the person and their understanding of the role of a director ... but then I'm not in recruitment! ;)
  • Ben6899
    Ben6899 Posts: 9,686
    Slowbike wrote:
    Ops DIRECTOR ... ok - so should have some business support for the more complex stuff - if they've lumped Word, PowerPoint & Excel into one line and said "Proficient" then I'd suggest that it's just a "would you be frightened if you had to open one of these documents" requirements - and probably not want much in the way of data manipulation...

    Interesting that they're thinking about doing workshops and assessments ... you'd think at Director level they'd be more about the person and their understanding of the role of a director ... but then I'm not in recruitment! ;)

    I have a bit of an insight into recruitment for not-for-profit sector jobs which mention Excel and also do assessments. Seriously be prepared to manipulate data.
    Ben

    Bikes: Donhou DSS4 Custom | Condor Italia RC | Gios Megalite | Dolan Preffisio | Giant Bowery '76
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  • haydenm
    haydenm Posts: 2,997
    Make sure tables are formatted as tables rather than what everyone seems to do here and spend ages drawing boxes around everything to make it look like a table. That way you can insert pivot tables and pivot charts really easily and it does a lot of the formatting for you.

    I have no formal training in excel so others will probably disagree with that. It doesn't make a wild amount of difference for basic things but it becomes a lot easier when you are trying to do more complicated stuff with index & match and the like.
  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 43,462
    Thanks again everyone. I'll get the brother-in-law to run through some basic setting up of spreadsheets with her but mainly focus on data manipulation. I could do with it myself as well to be honest, I barely scratch the surface of the capability of Excel with my usage.
  • Alejandrosdog
    Alejandrosdog Posts: 1,975
    keef66 wrote:
    I'd have thought if accounting was involved she'd already have been exposed to Excel.

    All our accountants fcuking love spreadsheets!

    they rock. Pivot tables are basic these days
  • slowbike
    slowbike Posts: 8,498
    Pross wrote:
    I could do with it myself as well to be honest, I barely scratch the surface of the capability of Excel with my usage.
    I don't think many of us scratch the surface of the capability of Excel ... ;)
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    the most annoying thing with excel is knowing which version they are using - everything is backwards compatible but the look and feel of it changes quite a bit between each iteration - the old formulas all work in the newer ones but not all the formulas and things work in older versions - some of the IFS functions (sumifs, countifs, averageifs etc)
    www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    Slowbike wrote:
    Pross wrote:
    I could do with it myself as well to be honest, I barely scratch the surface of the capability of Excel with my usage.
    I don't think many of us scratch the surface of the capability of Excel ... ;)

    you are speaking to someone who filled the formula bar in excel 2003! i literally couldn't write any more in the cell!
    www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes
  • slowbike
    slowbike Posts: 8,498
    Chris Bass wrote:
    Slowbike wrote:
    Pross wrote:
    I could do with it myself as well to be honest, I barely scratch the surface of the capability of Excel with my usage.
    I don't think many of us scratch the surface of the capability of Excel ... ;)

    you are speaking to someone who filled the formula bar in excel 2003! i literally couldn't write any more in the cell!

    you're supposed to do word processing in Word ...


    and if we're playing the "I did " game - I did that in Excel 97 - timesheet workbook ... I've never nested so many formulas since ... !
    I do my formulas in SQL server now ... ;)
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    no i filled it with formulas - ifs within matches within indexes within lookups etc!

    I use SQL too, SAS a bit of R - I really am a cool guy!
    www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes
  • slowbike
    slowbike Posts: 8,498
    Chris Bass wrote:
    no i filled it with formulas - ifs within matches within indexes within lookups etc!

    I use SQL too, SAS a bit of R - I really am a geek!

    Corrected that for you ;)
  • haydenm
    haydenm Posts: 2,997
    I think in that scenario I'd have to have sheets with conversion tables in to get what I want. I'd struggle to check that it was actually doing what I wanted it to afterwards...
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    It kind of grew to that - it wasn't my intention from the outset! One of those times when deleting it and starting again would have probably been the best idea but i had invested too much time into it already :)
    www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes
  • TheBigBean
    TheBigBean Posts: 21,887
    Geeky Excel aside - I came across someone who, due to the lack of a PRODUCTIF funtion, had taken logs of everything and used SUMIF.
  • slowbike
    slowbike Posts: 8,498
    Mine started as several cells each providing a result from one or the other then slowly amalgamating into the end result that was displayed... I then popped the whole lot into a single cell - although iirc - it still had to be split into 2 cells as I'd run out of room in the first ... eitherway, I think it would've been better to have the workings on a sub-sheet as it would've been a lot easier to diagnose/adjust when there was a query over a particular result.
  • rjsterry
    rjsterry Posts: 29,530
    Slowbike wrote:
    Chris Bass wrote:
    Slowbike wrote:
    Pross wrote:
    I could do with it myself as well to be honest, I barely scratch the surface of the capability of Excel with my usage.
    I don't think many of us scratch the surface of the capability of Excel ... ;)

    you are speaking to someone who filled the formula bar in excel 2003! i literally couldn't write any more in the cell!

    you're supposed to do word processing in Word ...


    and if we're playing the "I did " game - I did that in Excel 97 - timesheet workbook ... I've never nested so many formulas since ... !
    I do my formulas in SQL server now ... ;)

    I know of a chap who produced a full set of architectural drawings using Excel. A bit like trying to plaster a wall with an Allen key, I would imagine.
    1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
    Pinnacle Monzonite

    Part of the anti-growth coalition
  • slowbike
    slowbike Posts: 8,498
    DPRODUCT ?
  • keef66
    keef66 Posts: 13,123
    Just because you can do something in Excel doesn't mean it's a good idea.
  • slowbike
    slowbike Posts: 8,498
    TheBigBean wrote:
    Geeky Excel aside - I came across someone who, due to the lack of a PRODUCTIF funtion, had taken logs of everything and used SUMIF.

    I still use "=if(iserror(something),anotherformula,whatever)" despite being shown (by my wife) the iferror formula ... think how many more nested codes I could get in if I shortened it just a little ;)
  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 43,462
    rjsterry wrote:
    Slowbike wrote:
    Chris Bass wrote:
    Slowbike wrote:
    Pross wrote:
    I could do with it myself as well to be honest, I barely scratch the surface of the capability of Excel with my usage.
    I don't think many of us scratch the surface of the capability of Excel ... ;)

    you are speaking to someone who filled the formula bar in excel 2003! i literally couldn't write any more in the cell!

    you're supposed to do word processing in Word ...


    and if we're playing the "I did " game - I did that in Excel 97 - timesheet workbook ... I've never nested so many formulas since ... !
    I do my formulas in SQL server now ... ;)

    I know of a chap who produced a full set of architectural drawings using Excel. A bit like trying to plaster a wall with an Allen key, I would imagine.

    At least he didn't use Microstation (or insist on drawing by hand in the 21st century)!
  • TheBigBean
    TheBigBean Posts: 21,887
    Slowbike wrote:
    TheBigBean wrote:
    Geeky Excel aside - I came across someone who, due to the lack of a PRODUCTIF funtion, had taken logs of everything and used SUMIF.

    I still use "=if(iserror(something),anotherformula,whatever)" despite being shown (by my wife) the iferror formula ... think how many more nested codes I could get in if I shortened it just a little ;)

    Sigh. IF(reason there might be an error, thing to do with said error, else)
  • Longshot
    Longshot Posts: 940
    rjsterry wrote:
    Slowbike wrote:
    Chris Bass wrote:
    Slowbike wrote:
    Pross wrote:
    I could do with it myself as well to be honest, I barely scratch the surface of the capability of Excel with my usage.
    I don't think many of us scratch the surface of the capability of Excel ... ;)

    you are speaking to someone who filled the formula bar in excel 2003! i literally couldn't write any more in the cell!

    you're supposed to do word processing in Word ...


    and if we're playing the "I did " game - I did that in Excel 97 - timesheet workbook ... I've never nested so many formulas since ... !
    I do my formulas in SQL server now ... ;)

    I know of a chap who produced a full set of architectural drawings using Excel. A bit like trying to plaster a wall with an Allen key, I would imagine.

    For simple or indicative layout plans it's marvellous.
    You can fool some of the people all of the time. Concentrate on those people.
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    TheBigBean wrote:
    Slowbike wrote:
    TheBigBean wrote:
    Geeky Excel aside - I came across someone who, due to the lack of a PRODUCTIF funtion, had taken logs of everything and used SUMIF.

    I still use "=if(iserror(something),anotherformula,whatever)" despite being shown (by my wife) the iferror formula ... think how many more nested codes I could get in if I shortened it just a little ;)

    Sigh. IFERROR(thing to do, thing to do with if an error)

    FTFY
    www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes
  • TheBigBean
    TheBigBean Posts: 21,887
    Chris Bass wrote:
    TheBigBean wrote:
    Slowbike wrote:
    TheBigBean wrote:
    Geeky Excel aside - I came across someone who, due to the lack of a PRODUCTIF funtion, had taken logs of everything and used SUMIF.

    I still use "=if(iserror(something),anotherformula,whatever)" despite being shown (by my wife) the iferror formula ... think how many more nested codes I could get in if I shortened it just a little ;)

    Sigh. IFERROR(thing to do, thing to do with if an error)

    FTFY

    No, you broke it.
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    iserror is still useful though as iferror works as follows:
    IFERROR(formulaX,FormulaY)
    does formulaX work (or at least not return an error)? if so do that else do formulaY

    but sometimes you might want to do something other than formulaX if it is true

    for example is a cell a number then do X else do Y
    www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    TheBigBean wrote:
    Chris Bass wrote:
    TheBigBean wrote:
    Slowbike wrote:
    TheBigBean wrote:
    Geeky Excel aside - I came across someone who, due to the lack of a PRODUCTIF funtion, had taken logs of everything and used SUMIF.

    I still use "=if(iserror(something),anotherformula,whatever)" despite being shown (by my wife) the iferror formula ... think how many more nested codes I could get in if I shortened it just a little ;)

    Sigh. IFERROR(thing to do, thing to do if an error)

    FTFY

    No, you broke it.

    how so?
    www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes

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