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Microsoft Excel Training Courses

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When you upgrade to Excel 2007, you and your staff may be in for quite a shock. The initial reaction of most people is: "where is everything?" Bearing this in mind, you may well find that a training course on Excel 2007 is a good investment. The training should first of all get you past the initial state of confusion caused by the fact that 2007 looks so different from previous versions. Then it should give you some guidance on the new features in Excel 2007 such as the enhancements to charting and graphics, functions and conditional formatting.

At the end of any training on Excel 2007, you should feel that you have grasped the logic of the new interface and be able to navigate the ribbon and find all the basic commands. You should be getting used to doing things the Office 2007 way rather than the Office 2003 way.

In addition to this, however, you will want to learn the new features that Excel 2007 has to offer: the stuff that either wasn't available in previous versions or which has undergone considerable enhancement.

The number of cells in an Excel 2007 worksheet is now about 1000 times bigger than in previous versions. If you book training on Excel 2007, you should learn ways of taking advantage of this new space and also pick some tips on efficient navigation and management of this huge area.

Pivot tables are a key area where Excel 2007 has made improvements. Ensure that any Excel 2007 training that you book includes first of all an explanation of pivot table essentials (pivot tables often confuse users) and then moves on to the new ways of creating and manipulating pivot tables offered in Excel 2007.

Charts and graphics are a great way to add impact to your Excel reports. Does your organisation use them? If so, make sure that your Excel 2007 training course incorporates gives you plenty of practice examples in using Excel 2007's new features to create and manipulate charts and graphics. You should become a dab hand at using the new charting ribbons: the format ribbon, the design ribbon and the layout ribbon. Do you need advanced features too? If so, you should also be looking to learn about pivot charts, scatter charts and adding trendlines to your charts.

Another feature that has been developed in Excel 2007 is conditional formatting. Be sure that any training you have on Excel 2007 includes some insight into the use of Excel 2007's powerful new conditional formatting features especially Data Bars and Color Scale.

Formulas are the lifeblood of Excel. They analyse the raw data entered in other cells and provide most of Excel's awesome power. You should definitely request that your Excel 2007 training shows you the improvements that have been made to the entry of formulas in the formula bar and the key new functions that have been introduced, especially AverageIf, SumIfs, and IfError

Microsoft Excel Training Courses

For example, let's look at tips from Excel training courses that can help in maintaining a database. Excel is an easy way to keep a simple database and a few design steps can save you huge headaches later.

Hide Blank Formulas

The simplest databases are a collection of data records but some have formulas off to the side providing analysis of each entry. However if any data is missing from the record then these formulas clutter up the sheet with "#NUM!" and "#DIV/0!" and other errors.

Consider a database of payments from a client, a typical example in an Excel training course. Each line contains, among other information, the date of invoice and the date of payment. You have a formula on each line that calculates the time between invoice and payment using a formula like "=G2-F2" to subtract the invoice date (F2) from the payment date (G2). Until you have a payment date, this field will read as a very large negative number.

Instead, enter this formula: =IF(G2="","",G2-F2). This says "If there is no payment date, leave this field blank otherwise calculate the payment delay". Even better, try "=IF(OR(F2="",G2=""),"",G2-F2) which leaves the payment time field blank if either date field is blank.

Mark Blank Formulas

There are a lot of reasons you might have blank cells that actually contain formulas. They could be examples of the above, formulas that won't calculate until all data is present. Another reason, and another trick you might pick up in an Excel training course, is that cells used for intermediate calculations can be formatted to be white text on a white background so they don't clutter up the sheet.

These blank cells are easily overwritten by a careless user so need to be marked in some way. Using a light gray or other colored background is a good way to indicate that there is something there without detracting from the main information on the sheet.

Use Border Rows

Databases outside of Excel training courses are seldom static. As you add new records to them you don't want to update every formula that refers to the old range. By using border rows, the formulas all update automatically.

Take one row above and below your database and mark it in some way. You might put symbols such as asterisks or dashes, or you might color the background of the cells to create borders. In any formula that refers to the database, be sure to include these border rows in the range designation. The range automatically adjusts as you insert new lines even if you add them before the first row or after the last because you are still adding them within the two border rows.

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About Author

Both Matthew Fletcher & Rich Talbot are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Matthew Fletcher has sinced written about articles on various topics from Microsoft Excel Office, Personal Desktop and Liability Insurance. The The writer of this article is a training consultant with , a UK IT training company offering. Matthew Fletcher's top article generates over 3600 views. to your Favourites.

Rich Talbot has sinced written about articles on various topics from Software, Data Recovery and Software. Author is a freelance copywriter. For more information on , please visit. Rich Talbot's top article generates over 165000 views. to your Favourites.

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