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You may discover that after a couple of MS Excel training courses that many things you never thought were possible are actually quite simple with a little knowledge of this amazing spreadsheet program. However, after 4 or 5 days of MS Excel training, you’re likely to be astounded by what you learn about VBA for Excel and how you can use it to make Excel work harder for you.

What is VBA?
VBA is a scripting language and is short for Visual Basic for Applications. You don’t need to be a programmer to learn how to use VBA with Excel, but after about a week of MS Excel training courses you’ll be able to create intuitive processes like a programmer and will be able to use VBA to make your Excel databases work harder for you.

Why use VBA with Excel?
Automation and the ability to accomplish more in less time with greater accuracy are the same reasons why people use VBA with Excel and get so excited about MS Excel training courses. An Excel spreadsheet requires data in order to take on any meaning. Even then, once data fills the cells, the information inside still essentially meaningless until you compare or apply it somehow.

As you’ll learn in MS Excel training, VBA allows you to automate just about any function you can imagine that involves importing data, comparing data, analyzing data, or extracting data from the spreadsheet. When you spend less time doing the manual work of manipulating data, you have more time to become innovative with your data. Without restriction to the amount of data you have the capacity to work with, you may discover new ways to process and analyze data from new sources.

How VBA can help you work smarter
The process of manipulating data entails inherent inefficiencies that can bog down projects, lead to error, and waste time. The first of these inefficiencies is the problem of collecting the data itself. If you’re currently spending too much time entering and validating data, then you will almost certainly find a more efficient and effective way to load your data after an MS Excel training course with VBA.

For example, let’s assume that Jim, a sales manager, tallies a variety of different statistics collected from his sales team on an Excel spreadsheet. Each day, he copies and pastes data from each sales person’s sheet into his master sheet, then verifies the data to ensure that there are no invalid characters that will skew his equations. This requires a significant portion of his morning, but the process works and he’s not aware of any other way to accomplish the task.

However, after a few MS Excel training courses with VBA, Jim learns how to create forms for each of the sales people that automatically validate the information they enter. Better yet, the information they enter into their own personal Excel sheets instantly and automatically updates in his master sheet.

Jim’s example only scratches the surface of the time and energy savings potential you can discover after learning about VBA in MS Excel training classes. The possibilities of what can be done with VBA and Excel are virtually as unique and limitless as the goals you would like to accomplish. That’s the beauty of gaining a greater understanding of a scripting language like VBA. The more you understand, the less the interpretation of your data will ever be confined by a pre-packaged software program. The more mastery you have over your data, the more likely you are to discover ways to see the hidden potential lying within your data.

Author is a freelance copywriter for a Microsoft software training company, the UK industry leader in its sector. For more information on MS Excel training, please visit http://www.microsofttraining.net.

You may be wondering what kind of secrets could possibly be unveiled in an Access course that would change the way you do business. What you’re likely to realize during the first hour of a Microsoft Access course, is that this largely underutilized piece of software is an information powerhouse that can revolutionize the way you interpret the critical information that drives your business. The power lies in its relational database structure that when properly used, can reveal insight about trends in products and customers that were there all the while, but invisible otherwise.

What is a relational database?

One of the first things you’ll learn in an Access course is the structure of a relational database. Though a Microsoft Access course will go into much more necessary detail, simply stated, a relational database is a tool that allows you to access multiple types of information based on one point of data.

For example, the ability to instantly locate a customer’s phone number and last item purchased based on their name. However, as you’ll learn more about in a complete Access course, you could also query that same customer’s last purchase and find out how many other customers purchased the product within the last year and look for similarities that could help you understand your target market better.

How can an Access course and a relational database change the way you do business?

That’s a good question, and lucky for you, a question that most of your competitors don’t know the answer to. Using a relational database to store readily available information about your customer, your products, sales dates, your customer service phone calls, can reveal trends that you never noticed before-trends that can help you to maximize your sale.

Let’s assume for a moment that your online home theatre projector store was experiencing trouble with generating repeat business, but that you weren’t quite sure where to begin digging for the problem. Luckily, one of your assistants had taken an Access course last year and has been storing your online order data in an Access database. Your assistant’s knowledge of how to use relational databases from the Access course reveals that 75% of customers who chose next day shipping placed an order 2 weeks prior, which leads you to conduct a brief customer survey.

It turns out that shoppers were forgetting to include one of the essential elements needed to complete their home theatre system when they ordered. After spending hours installing their projectors and screens, they would turn on their projector only to find that they needed one more piece. Some would place a rush order, but most would simply go to their local store, purchase the piece, and remember your online store a bad experience at best.

As a result, you add functionality your site to solve this problem. However, without the knowledge learned in the Access course about using relational databases, you may not have ever noticed this relationship between next day shipping customers and a poor customer experience. What might you be doing unknowingly that is causing your customers to turn away?

This example only scratches the surface that the power a Microsoft Access course might reveal. After applying the knowledge gained in an Access course, you may uncover surprising trends such as returned products from certain areas of the country. Until you gain an understanding of how your information relates to other types of information, understanding non-linear trends can be difficult.

There’s no need to purchase expensive software to do this for you – an Access course could be the answer. Software that you purchase can provide lots of information, but it’s the same information that your competitors can gather using the same stock expensive software. After an Access course or two, you’ll be able to completely customize your own relational information powerhouse using a piece of software you already own and discover the hidden trends that can make a big impact on your business.

Author is a freelance copywriter for Microsoft software training company, the UK industry leader in its sector. For more information on Access course, please visit http://www.microsofttraining.net.

If you’re operating a small business, the most important thing you can do is to make sure that your invoicing and billing process is absolutely seamless. Small businesses don’t often have the luxury of purchasing expensive invoicing software, which is why so many small business owners create their own simple invoicing system with programs like Excel.

What many small business owners don’t know is how a few 1-day Microsoft Excel courses could completely revolutionize their process of invoicing. The information learned in just a few days of Microsoft Excel courses can reveal ways to cut your processing time significantly; reduce errors, and making it absolutely simple for others to learn your invoicing system quickly so that you can delegate tasks and spend more time focusing on growing your business. In this article, we’ll take a look at some features you’ll learn about in Microsoft Excel courses that will forever change the way you view the process of invoicing.

The problem with most invoicing processes:
In order to understand how Microsoft Excel courses can help make the process of invoicing easier, it’s essential to look at the inherent problems that most small business owners say they have with invoicing. The number one problem with creating customer invoices, and most data management in general, is data integrity, which is something you’ll learn a myriad of solutions for in Microsoft Excel courses. If you’re the sole owner of your business, you probably have a good idea about what each item costs, which things are on sale, and various other details about each specific item.

However, if your company is more than just yourself – or if you want your company to grow beyond just yourself, it can be downright confusing to try and keep all of this information organized. It can be disastrous to labour tirelessly on making a sale, only to have a staff member eventually bill the customer the wrong price because of lack of communication.

Not only does this make your company look unprofessional, it takes a lot of time to fix the problem and a lot of time to check and recheck the invoice for accuracy before sending to the customer. Wouldn’t it be easier if all of your pricing and item data was stored in one convenient location that your invoices could pull from? Of course! And this is where Microsoft Excel courses come to the rescue.

The solution to the awkward, confusing, time consuming invoicing process:
Raise your hand if you’re still typing in data for every single invoice field, every single time you create a new invoice for a new customer. If so, you’ll probably gain back the few days you spend taking Microsoft Excel courses in typing time alone! The trick to smarter and faster invoices is to house all of your product and pricing information on one data sheet from which your invoices will reference.

The magic key to this streamlined process is in learning how to use the VLOOKUP function which you’ll learn about in detail throughout your Microsoft Excel courses. Using VLOOKUP, you’ll be able to enter a single attribute of an item (such as an item number, UPC, or item name), and have Excel pre-fill all of the other information – wow!

If you’re running a sale on a particular item, simply change the price in the main data sheet and when the sale is over, change the price back. Now everyone creating invoices is sure to charge the correct price each and every time. Using VLOOKUP eliminates 99.9% of the potential for human error because it draws its information straight from the source.

Want to make things even easier? In just a few days of Microsoft Excel courses, you’ll even learn how to create dropdown lists of item numbers, item descriptions, etc so that you and your team can quickly choose which items to add to the invoice. And that’s just scratching the surface of the potential of this amazing program. You might be surprised at how many interesting things you’ll discover throughout the duration of your Microsoft Excel courses that you probably never realized could be so simple to accomplish.

Author is a freelance copywriter for a Microsoft software training company, the UK industry leader in its sector. For more information on Microsoft Excel courses, please visit http://www.microsofttraining.net.

You’ve probably seen a lot of Excel spreadsheets come through your email inbox that are, to put it politely, not very visually appealing. Perhaps you’ve been at meetings where you’re peers and bosses project charts made with Excel using those same old stock shades and fonts. After a while, every chart begins to look the same.

But you don’t need to contribute to the piles of bland spreadsheets floating around your office. An Excel course can show you countless ways to make your spreadsheets look great and compliment the data you are presenting. In this article, we’ll take a look at a few tricks taught in basic Excel course training that will bring your spreadsheets to life.

Excel Chart Art

If you’ve ever been to a meeting where graphs were used to present the latest company trends, you know how hard it can be to try and figure out which sections of the chart relate to what information by trying to match colours to a graph key. You may not need an Excel course to know that you can include the title of the data in the graph , but fitting wordy titles into small areas can really take away from the usefulness of the graph.

A possible solution you’ll learn in an Excel course, is creating background images for your chart that represents a specific data series. This little bit of info that you’ll discover in your Excel course shows you how to insert an image into a graph or chart. For example, if your pie chart represents the percentage of customers who sent inquiries by phone vs. email, you can include an icon of a telephone and an icon of computer on the respective chart pieces. The result is instant understanding of the data on the chart and a room full of co-workers who are wondering how you became so Excel-savvy.

You don’t even need an Excel course to add this item to your Excel skill set. Simple click on your chart object, select “format data series,” select “patterns,” then “fill effects,” click the picture tab, and browse for the appropriate picture on your computer. The picture instantly becomes the background of the selected data series.

Easy-on-the-Eyes Data Grids

While an Excel course teaches you lots of amazing things that Excel can accomplish, sometimes it’s the simple things that make a big impact. This tip may not be as flashy as creating Excel chart art, but you’re likely to use it more often and your co-workers, bosses, clients and other who read your Excel sheets will thank you for it. Much of the time that you’re using Excel, it’s to share data organized in rows and columns. However, Excel’s standard setting of dark black horizontal and vertical grid lines covering the entire data sheet can make it difficult for readers to focus on the information within the cells.

Removing the gridlines lines completely makes data hard to read. People tend to find it easier to read a white page with light coloured gridlines around only the data. In your basic Excel course, you’ll learn how to format certain areas of a data sheet. To accomplish this simply click the very top-left-most cell and highlight the entire page and then select the white colour on the paint bucket icon. Next use your mouse to highlight your data. Next click the window pane border icon to place gridlines around the individual cells.

While your cells are still highlighted, right click within the highlighted area, select “format cells,” click the “borders” tab, select the light grey colour, and start tapping the dark lines that represent the cell borders. When all of the borders are grey, click “ok” and you’ll find that your data is now well defined within gridlines that don’t overpower the data itself.

You may have looked at your Excel icon bar hundreds or even thousands of times, but once you take an Excel course, you’ll likely be surprised at how many features are embedded in that inconspicuous little toolbar that can make your tasks much easier and your spreadsheets look great.

Author is a freelance copywriter for Microsoft software training company, the UK industry leader in its sector. For more information on Excel course, please visit http://www.microsofttraining.net.

If you’re like many people, you use at least one of the Microsoft Office Suite of products every day, but have never taken any formal training. Because of this, most people venture into only the most commonly used applications like Word and Excel, and have reached their level of expertise through trial and error and through tips shared by co-workers. But is the MS Office application you’re using right for you? Most people who use Excel to perform their data management tasks could do their jobs much more effectively with a few days of MS Access training and a switch to this powerful, yet simple database application.

Most people who enroll in MS Access training are surprised at how easy this incredibly powerful application is to use. They’re also often stunned by how difficult they had been making their lives by trying to accomplish their complicated data management tasks with Excel! According to those who leave the MS Access training classes, there are a few key reasons why the switch is absolutely worthwhile.

Reports:
Just about everyone who enrols in MS Access training courses gets excited about the reporting feature. This incredible feature instantly turns all of those rows and columns of data into perfectly formatted, easy to understand publications that bring a grin to the boss’s face.

If you’re currently producing routine reports, invoices, or data sheets by digging, copying, and pasting from Excel, you will certainly benefit from the portion of MS Access training that covers reporting. Design a custom layout with fonts and images, then choose fields that will automatically fill with the precise information you need any time and every time you desire.

Intuitive, Customizable Interfaces:
If you’ve been using work-arounds in Excel to manage your complicated data, you’re probably the only person in the entire office who can understand how to use it. If you’ve ever considered taking a few days off of work, but decided against it because it would take a few days to teach someone how to keep your spreadsheet up to date, then MS Access training is for you!

Through MS Access Training, you’ll learn how to make professional, customized interfaces that look and act much like all standard web applications and desktop software. This means that you can easily teach others how to use your data applications-not only so that you can take that holiday, but also so that you can expand your options when it comes to collecting data. The best part is that you can learn how to create applications after just 5 days of MS Access training courses.

Relationships:
No, MS Access training won’t directly improve your personal relationships, although potential dates may find your knowledge of databases wildly attractive. In this case, its the relational nature of the database structure that is so exciting. With a relational database like Access, you can connect any number of seemingly unrelated strings of information based on a primary key.

That means that your database becomes 3 dimensional, unlike a 2 dimensional program like Excel where connecting the dots of different types of information is virtually impossible. Grasping the concept of relational databases does require a new way of thinking, but after a few MS Access training courses, you’ll wonder how on earth you ever managed without it.

If you’re ready to make your job a lot easier, stop listening to your cubicle neighbour’s advice about how to work around hurdles in Excel and enrol yourself in a MS Access training course. Learning how to properly use the right type of software for the job can completely change the way you do your job and can help you to interact with your data in revolutionary new ways.

Author is a freelance copywriter for a Microsoft software training company, the UK industry leader in its sector. For more information on MS Access training, please visit http://www.microsofttraining.net.