LEARNING TO LOVE EXCEL

This blog entry is not a tutorial per se. I found myself reflecting on my tag line and thinking about it. One of the things I would like for you – dear reader – is to experience love for Excel. Yes, I know that sounds seriously woo-woo but I mean that in the sense of how you feel when you watch a favourite artist perform or a great athlete at the top of his or her game. You know, that sense of hushed amazement at watching someone perform out of their socks. Or watching the technical wizardry in a movie – like the Lord of the Rings or The Matrix – joy at the sheer intelligence, ingenuity and creativity it took to put that vision up there.

I never ceased to be amazed at the ingenuity of Excel – from the shortcuts to the cleverness of the new Ribbon or what you can do with lorryloads of data using a pivot table. Yes, I know it’s got flaws and bugs – but show me a great and wonderful piece of work that doesn’t.

And the thing about learning to love Excel is that (like everything that is loved) it will work better for you, you’ll experience more co-operation and you’ll find it showing you things that you never knew about…

So dear reader, thank you for sharing my whimsical piece on Excel – the poetry of pivot tables, the valour of vlookups and the glee of conditional formatting.

I would love to hear what YOUR pet loves and peeves about Excel are…

Excel Products for Sale

Here are products from some of my favourite Excel authors and bloggers. Please note these are affiliate links so I do earn a small commission from every sale.

MrExcel.com

Mr. Excel (aka Bill Jelen) is one of the Excel gurus. I love his stuff. He also has a slightly bonkers delivery (What! Excel! Fun!) that I thoroughly enjoy. And of course anyone who calls his Excel publishing book company Holy Macro! gets my vote.

MyExcelOnline.com

Xtreme Pivot Tables course

This is a very comprehensive course on pivot tables. It includes videos and workbooks. There are over 200 hours of videos on it and it takes you from having no knowledge of pivot tables to being a power user. If you know everything in this course, you know an awful lot about pivot tables. John explains the concepts in bite size chunks so they are easy to follow and even provides a tutorial spreadsheet so you can track your progress. This would be money well spent. If you would like to become the go-to person in your organisation for pivot tables, this would be an excellent starting point.

He also has a useful Pivot Table webinar…

This is also a useful chart helper.

Debra Dalgleish – Contextures.com

Master 30 Excel functions in 30 days –This is a rather brilliant e-book which covers 30 functions including Vlookup,Match, offset. It includes an Excel file, e-book and links to videos that shows you how to do it – all for the princely sum of $10. What I particularly like about it are her descriptions, explanations and what the limitation of each function is. Highly recommended. If you want to upgrade your Excel skills this is a very worthwhile investment.

Excel UserForms for Data Entry

The Excel UserForms for Data Entry ebook kit will take you through the steps to build a UserForm that stores data on a hidden worksheet. No programming skills are required — everything is explained in simple steps, with written instructions, screen shots, videos and workbooks.

PivotPowerPremiumRibbon

The PivotPower Premium add-in saves you time and effort, when working with Excel pivot tables. For example, you can quickly:
-save and apply default pivot table settings
-clear old items from an Excel pivot table
-change all the data fields from the Count function to the Sum function

Chandoo.org

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Excel Products for Sale

MrExcel.com

MyExcelOnline.com

Xtreme Pivot Tables course

Debra Dalgleish – Contextures.com

Excel UserForms for Data Entry

PivotPowerPremiumRibbon

Chandoo.org

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