how to become a microsoft excel expert

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innovative

am new to excel &very fascinated about it and would like to learn more about
it,discover more secrets about it.my new job demands me to take
control&manage existing,outgoing&incoming stock on excel.i want to be the
best asset for my company in this field...
 
Well, as an Excel novice and novice contributor to these newsgroups and a
retired department manager, I would suggest this.

Pose your questions in plain English text, (In which I am also not an
expert).

"I am new to excel and very fascinated about it and would like to learn more
about it, to discover more secrets about it.

My new job demands me to take control and manage existing, outgoing and
incoming stock on Excel.

I want to be the best asset for my company in this field."

So, I suggest you won't learn Excel in the next few weeks enough to impress
very many people.

You probably do not have time to view the newsgroups to learn all the things
you will need to get on with your job.

I would suggest local Community College courses in Excel and books by John
Walkenbach on Formulas and VBA Programming as a starter.

You will probably only need a small knowledge of Excel to be a large
contributor at your work place, depending on what you are trying to
accomplish in your job description. If vast Excel knowledge is required to
get your work done, you would most likely not have been hired in the first
placed.

There are tons of Tutorials, which I will leave to the true EXPERTS of
EXCEL, the MVP's, to suggest.

I refer to them almost daily as an Excel hobby in retirement. I learn
something new every day!!! Just cannot remember it all.<G>

HTH
Regards,
Howard
 
To add on...

John Walkenbach's site:
http://spreadsheetpage.com/

For charting tips, I like to use Jon Peltier's site:
www.peltiertech.com

Debra keeps a daily blog of tips, and is a master at PivotTables:
www.contextures.com

And like John, Chip Pearson's site has a plethora of tips regarding formulas
and VBA:
www.cpearson.com


It really depends on what you want to try and learn first. Note that most of
these MVP's also post a list of books they recommend (including some that
they have written themselves). The best way to learn if by doing, but no
matter what path you choose, expect to spend some time reading and studying.
Some of us have been here for years, and we're still learning!
 
Some of us have been here for years,
and we're still learning!
Click to expand...

Exactly. You will never know everything there is to know about Excel.
There's just too much!

My recommendation is to spend at least 4-6 hrs every day in these forums
reading posts, studying the replies, experimenting. If you do this for the
next 4-6 yrs then you'll be pretty good at Excel.

Books, websites, and schools are also good resources but, if you ask me,
they're somewhat limited in scope.

In these and other Excel forums, you'll be exposed to every possible *real
world* application of Excel there is.
 
I disagree with the quite modest L. Howard Kittle, having seen many of his
very astute postings; MVPs aren't Excel experts. A closer description might
be "some people are very adept in certain areas of Excel" along with "and
like to post a lot on websites or write books".

One thing to keep in mind: if you can describe a logical mathematical
process to arrive at a result, you can probably either write worksheet
formulas or a VBA macro to calculate that result. In other words, step 1 is
to clearly define the problem and steps required to solve it. Once you have
that, then either you yourself or you with the help of others can probably
get Excel to do it for you. And after you've done it enough yourself or as
you learn from doing with others, then you gain more and more expertise.

As your read through books, posts on boards like this, and other places, pay
a lot of attention first to WHAT can be done with either functions or code.
Once you have an idea of the capabilities of the Excel tools, then you are
much better prepared to tackle the HOW of applying them to problem solving.
Even if you just know in the back of your mind that there's a function
somewhere that will give you a specific result, then all you have to do is
1) remember what the heck function it is, or get help for your memory from
Help files, posts to forums or other sources, and
2) do the research on the correct syntax needed to use the function/VBA
commands.

Good luck.
 
am new to excel &very fascinated about it and would like to learn more about
it,discover more secrets about it.my new job demands me to take
control&manage existing,outgoing&incoming stock on excel.i want to be the
best asset for my company in this field...
Click to expand...

Some thoughts on how to meet your goals and help your company...

NEVER learn on or experiment with the company inventory database!

If you are authorized to, create a new file, and make a copy of a
small part of what you are working with now. Often having ten
inventory items will tell you as much as 1000. It is more important
to understand what is being done with that information, the format and
the macros etc. on the spreadsheets you are responsible for, and not
the numbers themselves. Now fill in some dummy data. ( see the next
paragraph before actually adding or changing data, even in your test
copy. ) Save your new test workspace with a distinctive name - so
that when someone looks over your sholder, your management will know
two things - you are doing actual work, and this is not going to put
them out of business when you test your greatest new data management
idea.

If you click on a worksheet cell, and you see something displayed
other than what was there before, then try to figure out what that
formula or function does - it helps to understand what is going on
before you try to improve it. Don't replace these functions - only
the areas where the contents of the cell do not change when you select
them.

Others in this forum will have great suggestions for you as well, but
the key is to first figure out what the questions are, and then tackle
them one at a time. Good Luck!
 
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