Excel internet course

[Martin Holt]

Sorry for the blatant crossposting, but I'm hoping for a quick resolution. A
friend of mine is hoping to take on the role of Data Manager at a local
college (14-19yrs), and whilst she has over 20 years of using Excel, she
knows that she must update her knowledge of Excel as it has progressed over
the years and she has fallen behind. I know there's a strong groundswell
against Excel, but that is what is used by the college. I would be grateful
if you could email any links to internet courses (free)....she has a £20
book but would be interested in what's out there.

Thank you,

Martin

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[Steve Simon, P.Mean Consulting]

Martin Holt wrote:

> Sorry for the blatant crossposting, but I'm hoping for a quick
> resolution. A friend of mine is hoping to take on the role of Data
> Manager at a local college (14-19yrs), and whilst she has over 20 years
> of using Excel, she knows that she must update her knowledge of Excel as
> it has progressed over the years and she has fallen behind. I know
> there's a strong groundswell against Excel, but that is what is used by
> the college. I would be grateful if you could email any links to
> internet courses (free)....she has a £20 book but would be interested in
> what's out there.

Why is it that everyone asks for stuff for free? I've taken an Excel
course that I had to pay good money for and it was worth every cent.
Limiting your choices to only free stuff may end up being penny wise and
pound foolish. Hey, I offer a lot of stuff for free and I'm a big
supporter of the Open Source movement, but there comes a time when you
need to think carefully about investing some of your own money to insure
success in your career.

Who's going to offer something for free? Well, Microsoft will

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/CR100479681033.aspx

but I suspect that the material is intended more to convince you to buy
their product than to help you learn their product. Still, it looks like
one of your best choices for free.

Companies that offer paid training for Excel or books or other
commercial resources might give you a small taste of what they offer for
free. It's a good way to separate out the vendors that are covering
stuff you need versus the vendors that are covering stuff that you don't
need. But you'll find yourself spending money eventually if you want to
learn something serious.

There is a listserve for Excel, [hidden email], and it
might help to
  1. join and pose questions,
  2. browse the archives, and
  3. ask THEM about free training.

The disadvantage of a listserve is that you have to pick and find your
way through a mass of information and also you need to identify who
knows their stuff and who is a pretender.

For someone who knows and loves R, an excellent resource would be the R
Through Excel package and documentation. I heard a talk about this at
the last JSM and it turns out that Excel has some pretty cool things
that when combined with R makes for a very powerful interactive system.

http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RExcelInstaller/index.html
http://rcom.univie.ac.at/

There's a nice book, too,

http://www.springer.com/statistics/computanional+statistics/book/978-1-4419-0051-7

but books cost money and in today's world, everyone expects everything
to be free somewhere on the Internet.

Many universities offer free training for their employees in basic
computing skills, and that often includes Excel. You'd have to admit
that you don't know very much about Excel to your boss, which might be a
bit embarrassing. Also the free classes at universities are often just
for beginners.

When you get to the new job, if you have a nice boss, ask him/her to pay
for some good quality books, videotapes, and/or training classes on
Excel. At my old job, I'd ask for and get several thousand dollars per
year to attend conferences, short courses, and buy books. I had a nice
boss, of course, but it also made sense to the organization to have
someone who was prepared to answer questions on a wide range of topics.

Finally, not to sound naive, but how much Excel do you really need to
know for data management? Excel can do all sorts of "cute" things like
turning the text in a cell red when a number is negative, but many of
these cute things are not all that helpful in data management. Maybe you
already know all you need to know about Excel and perhaps a better use
of your limited training dollars should be in learning more about
relational databases.
--
Steve Simon, Standard Disclaimer
Sign up for The Monthly Mean, the newsletter that
dares to call itself "average" at www.pmean.com/news

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