In a previous blog article I shared with you the story of the beginnings of Launch Excel. I told you how I went from working a regular day job in finance to setting up LaunchExcel.com to help others use Excel more effectively. If you haven’t read that article you can do so by clicking here. This week I’d like to tell you who this site is meant for and say what’s coming next for Launch Excel readers.

Who is my ideal audience?

I have spent 10 years working with Excel in different roles, and I have been really excited to learn new things about Excel and then help my friends at work get better at using Excel. Now with Launch Excel, I want to focus my attention on people who are actively using Excel and who have some experience of Excel – they want to take themselves to the next level, whether this means learning more shortcuts to make their work faster or expanding their knowledge of how to build more effective solutions in Excel.

I feel that I’ve gained many useful skills and ideas of best practice that I’d love to transfer to you, especially if it makes your job easier and quicker to do. You will benefit from material on this site if you want to:

• Learn secrets of working faster in Excel
• Automate tasks in Excel and make your life easier
• Magnify your influence by creating great spreadsheets

Specifically I will focus on these areas:

• Tips and Tricks – quick tips and shortcuts to make you faster in Excel
• Pivot Tables – how to analyze data quickly with pivot tables
• Excel Charts – create clean and powerful charts
• Excel Dashboards – combine spreadsheet elements to make dashboards
• Excel Formulas – learn how to write effective formulas
• Macros and VBA – simple ways to automate Excel

If you would like to keep up to date with my newest content why not take this chance to sign up to my RSS feed if you haven’t already. I’ll still be here when you come back!

And if you want to receive weekly emails delivered straight to your inbox please sign up for my newsletter. As a bonus you’ll get my exclusive free Excel Keyboards Shortcut PDF. I also keep my email list informed of special content and offers that you won’t get anywhere else. Click here for a link to my email signup page.

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What if I’m a complete beginner or advanced user?

As I’m going to focus on intermediate users who are already using Excel on a day-to-day basis, it means that complete beginners may find my material too advanced, and advanced users may find my material too basic. If you are a complete beginner I am working to develop a new Excel video-course to make it really simple and quick to learn the basics of Excel. Read more in “Spreadsheet Basics Video Course” just below. I’d love to hear your ideas and feedback for this course. If you have any comments please leave them in the comments section below.

If you are an advanced user you may want to check out these blogs:

• Excel Hero – advanced Excel with downloadable workbooks to help you learn how Excel thinks
• Chandoo – “make you awesome in Excel and charting” with a great archive of tips and tricks

Spreadsheet Basics – Excel Tutorial Video Course

I am working to develop a video based course for beginners to Excel that will give new Excel users a simple and quick way to learn the basics of Excel. This course is for you if you want to learn Excel and land a job that needs basic Excel skills. I plan to cover these topics:

• Overview of Excel
• Calculation basics
• Formatting basics
• Charting basics
• Lookup functions

If you have any requests for skills that you as a new Excel user want to learn, or have any ideas about what a new Excel user should learn, head down to the comments section below and let me know!

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What to do next

It’s easy to get started using Excel but there are so many features in Excel that most people never learn the power features that save time and frustration. I’d like to invite you to join me as I explore better ways of using Excel and look into pivot tables, macros and charting.

If you’re interested in receiving updates about future articles from Launch Excel, take this chance to subscribe to my weekly newsletter using the form below or sign up for my RSS feed by clicking on the orange RSS icon to the right. And share this with your colleagues and friends using the share buttons below.

Finally let me know what you think about my future plans. Use the comments section below the email form to share your thoughts and feelings, and if you have any suggestions about specific areas of Excel that you’d like to see covered in depth please let me know.

Thanks!
Victor
P.S. You can read more about Launch Excel by clicking here.

Image Credits:
Sunrise courtesy of “gilderm“.
Concert illustration courtesy of Peter Suneson.
RSS icon courtesy of Svilen Milev at efffective.com