Where to learn

  • Thread starter Thread starter AFranco
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AFranco

I want to know Excel to a higher level, I worked with formulas, small macros
etc.. but I want to be able to create more complex macros and more complex
formulas to be able to use it at work. So I wanted to know where did you guys
learned? Ive been to a few classes, but I see everything that I already
know.. where should I go? please help
 
I love a few sites and owe a lot to their creators... but best way is to take
a problem and try to solve it... you will learn a lot in trying to answer
posts in this forum...

Chipe Pearson - http://www.cpearson.com/excel/MainPage.aspx
Debra Dalgleish's - http://www.contextures.com/

Download Learn Excel 97 through Excel 2007 From MrExcel -
http://www.mrexcel.com/learnexcel2.shtml

This should be more than enough for now...
Last but not the least - use Google search... (or any other search engine of
your choice)
 
Most of what I've learned has been on my own. I've taken a couple classes,
but like you, found that they only cover what I already knew. I've never
read any Excel books, so I can't speak to whether they're helpful or not.

The best learning resource that I have found has been this discussion group
here. Any questions I've ever had have always been answered here. Plus,
trying to answer other people's questions is a great way to teach yourself.
Look through the posts, even if they've already been answered, and find a
topic that is of interest to you. Then, try to answer the question. You'll
be teaching yourself and maybe even helping others at the same time. See if
you can come up with the same solution as the experts. And if not, look at
their solutions and see how they did it.

HTH
Elkar
 
1. start with a good book like Walkenbach's Bible
2. skim the book to where you can find things easily
3. use the discussion groups. You will find lots of practical problems and
solutions
4. attempt answering some questions
 
I'm completely self-taught. I started back in 1981 with versions of the then
BASIC language. What I did (way back then) was first read through and
familiarized my self with the various functions and (for VB) statements that
comprised the language. I didn't memorize their syntax, just that they were
there and what they did (syntax could always be looked up until repetitious
use allowed me to "know" them by heart). Then I decided on a rather complex
project for a beginner (I choose to make a slot machine program... graphics
and all) and sat down and started to figure out what I wanted and what
functions and statements I *thought* I might need to accomplish this goal.
Then I started to write code... and made a TON of mistakes. This was good. I
learned more from my mistakes than if what I thought would work actually did
work. The reason... you learn the limitations of the tools you have to work
with faster when they trip you up by not working. Now, becoming good at
coding didn't happen right away... it took several more complex projects to
start to lock the concepts and limitations into my mind. Okay, the above is
just a long-winded way of saying practice, practice, practice. I believe
experience is the best teacher... not books, classes, etc. Next, when things
start to make sense to you... then start looking at other peoples code and
try to figure out how what they did actually works. These newsgroups are an
excellent resource for that stage. I didn't have anything like it back when
I started, so I used magazines (back in the early 1980s to early 1990s,
magazines posting code to be typed into your computer were all the rage).
 
Rick, that brings back memories. I remember back in the early '80s eargerly
awaiting my subscription to Home Computing magazine every month, so I could
type in the programs they had printed in the back. Trying to see if I could
figure out what each line of code would do as I was typing it in. Then the
real fun, seeing if it would acutally compile, or if you made one tiny typo
somewhere and then searching through the hundred or so lines of code to find
it.

Ah, the good ol' days! :)
 
Thanks for the links. Very useful. I am trying to learn basics about pivot
tables and charts. And your links are valuable.
Dadenwala
 
Do you remember the DATA statement... miss just one comma when copying the
code and you ended up with an unrecognizable mess!

COMPUTE! Magazine was my favorite even though I was using a TI-99/4 computer
back in those days. They didn't start to cover the TI computer until 1983 or
so, but the BASIC languages had enough in common that you could use them as
a base and just account for the (mainly) graphics handling differences (TI
handle graphics *totally* differently than the IBM based PCs of the day). I
even got COMPUTE! to buy a few articles I wrote and submitted to them.
 
Do you remember the DATA statement... miss just one comma when
copying the code and you ended up with an unrecognizable mess!
Click to expand...

I should made clear here... when multiple sequential commas were used to
indicate zero values. For those younger readers of this thread, in the old
days when computers did not have lots of RAM... my first TI had about 12.5K
free for programs (that's K as in kilobytes)!... one would do whatever they
could to minimize one's code. That is because BASIC was an interpreted
language and the size of your code was subtracted from the RAM to figure out
how much space was left in RAM for the running part of your code. Hence,
programmers tended to do whatever they could to shorten the code (leaving
zeroes out of DATA statements was one of the many, many ways). This made
reading code a particularly "fun" exercise back then.
 
Thank you to all for your comments, I guess I still have a long way to go... =)
but I will keep trying until I become a good as all of you guys...
 

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