Free UpdatesLaunch Excel – Who is it for?
Find out who Launch Excel is meant for and discover what's coming next
Who is my ideal audience?
Do you want to take yourself to the next level 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.
What if I’m a complete beginner or advanced user?
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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!
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
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I am so excited after reading your blog. Your blog is very innovative and helpful.
My Knowledge of Excel is growing rapidly and l want to take steps to develop it further. Your site has been of significant help to me .
l am sitting the Microsoft Excel 2010 Exam 77-882. What do you think is the best way to prepare for this exam.
Again what is the the best and cheapest way to learn VBA and get to speed within a short period.
Regards
Rotimi Daniel
Oxford, UK
Hey Rotimi Daniel,
I’m glad to know that you want to expand your Excel horizons, and that you find the material on Launch Excel helpful.
On the topic of MOS exams I have not taken any myself – all my Excel knowledge is self-acquired over 10+ years of working in Excel.
So I asked a friend who has the MOS Excel 2007 qualification and his advice was to explore all the Excel menus and use a MOS book and tests. Apparently the 2007 qualification did not test for knowledge of VBA, did not have any difficult formula questions but did have several questions on features that are rarely used in the business world (such as 3D glow shapes). Not sure about the Excel 2010 exam, so it would be best to follow the Microsoft syllabus and get yourself MOS-certified books.
As for VBA here are 2 options:
(1) Buy yourself a book on VBA programming and spend the time playing around with projects. Unless you’re already familiar with programming computers in general, there will be many concepts to pick up (loops, program structure, if then statements, properties, methods) and you will need to get familiar with the Excel object model. Finding real projects to work with is a great way to learn – just reading books does almost nothing for your progress. You can check out a range of my recommended books at https://www.launchexcel.com/books/
(2) Check out Chandoo’s VBA classes. These start at $97 (online viewing option) so you probably won’t call these “cheap” but they will save you time if you want a structured approach to learning. You don’t need to commit as there is a 30 day money back guarantee, so feel free to try it for yourself. Here’s a link to the VBA classes page: https://www.launchexcel.com/chandoo-vba-class-blog (note: this is an affiliate link)
If you have lots of time (i.e. a year or so) and don’t mind lots of trial and error you can definitely learn VBA yourself with some good books and some real life projects. When I learned VBA it happened organically over 5 or 6 years, and I did countless Google searches. In fact I’m learning something new about VBA all the time.
And if you need to pick up VBA quickly then don’t lose the chance to check out Chandoo’s VBA classes, you’ll be glad you did. The initial cost is quickly repaid once you find yourself automating tasks and developing simple applications in VBA.
Cheers
Victor