Fro some reason because I can make pretty Excel sheets with working formulas I've been "asked" (where the answer had to be yes) to train a few of the idio......I mean sales guys here on the basics of Excel. What are the basics???? I've been using it on and off for most my adult life so to me most of it is 2nd nature. Thinking about showing: Formatting (borders, bold, colours etc) Sort/Filter AutoSum, AutoCount etc Freeze Panes Formulas: Totalling cells Using percentages Wondering what anyone would recommend to show sales monkies? Cheers
Sales monkies? Don't bother with formatting or filtering - that will just confuse them. Stick to autosums, autocounts and simple formulas (division, multiplication and so on).
What parts of it do they need to do their jobs? That should drive the syllabus rather that what a bunch of geeks think they should know.
Pivot tables may not be massively complex, but I wouldn't class them as "Excel basics" personally. As Cthippo says, you need to find out what they currently do in Excel and what they need to be able to do in order to help them do their jobs. The problem with asking people who are already highly familiar with Excel about "basics" is that you invariably end up with the wrong answers!
That main issue is I've been given nothing other than "show them the basics"! I doubt he wants them to know pivot tables as I'm one of 3 people who manage the offices needs etc, I'm the techie guy so would probably do pivots myself. I want to speak to the guys coming in the meeting but they're either on holiday or out on business so can't do that either. Might just prepare the stuff I noted above and then just do a Q&A
Yeah, I'd probably go with basic formulae (sums, averages, percentages), basic charts (line graphs, pie charts), some formatting (not necessarily colours and pretty things, but numbers/percentages/dates). Then I'd leave a fair bit of time at the end for them to ask questions or for you to ask them what else they need to know.
the MS guide is good. Filtering, Sorting, Basic sums are, to me, "you know some excel". Anything less than that is "no - you know how to type" If you can do a VLOOKUP and a pivot table, that's above average in most circles I had to work in.
The MS guide also has the benefit of allowing you to refer anyone who complains you didn't cover something to it.
That was partly my thinking too, hence looking it up... That and why go to the effort of devising an idiot's guide to excel when someone else has done all/most of the work for you... TBH This is the page I was looking for when i came across the one i linked above...
Yeah, that looks like a good overview - I'd go with that. TBH in my line of work (business intelligence, SQL development) vlookups and pivots really are the basics. Once you start getting into index/match instead of vlookups and searching within arrays... now we're talking . Just goes to show: "basic" really is subjective. EDIT: Ack! Pie charts! Burn them, burn them all to the ground! Quite possibly the worst data visualisation; in the right hands they work, but rarely are they in the right hands!
Please teach them how to not F**k up their data with a bad sort. Nothing ruins a lot of hard work faster
Absolutely - My background is Software Development, so I agree... Just for most people that AREN'T, a Vlookup/HLookup is already too advanced.
Some good and funny advise guys! My list pretty much looks like the MS link above so going with that. From what I have managed to find out they need to know how to formulate costs, exchange rates and percent margins, to me that's there own issue to learn basic maths, I'll show them how to make sheets they can re-use and look pretty
