My bosses--most of the admin team, excluding the vocational coordinator and the human resources professional--are helping this guy get his technology and stuff set up. He seems like a good dude. People are starting to show up now and get set up. I have a pretty solid spot in the class; it's sort of in the back, near an outlet. I can literally feel the power of this spot.
The breakfast spread ain't too shabby. I'm eating a croissant with some artisan jam. It's pretty nice. They got these small oranges--they keep calling them clementines but I like small oranges--and various juices and coffee. Apparently there is even going to be a lunch? Maybe this won't ruin my day as expected.
Things are about to get started. We are doing some introductions. This guy has a great last name, like some sort of viking god.
Although I use Excel every day, I'm not super comfortable with it. Making it do what I want is easy, but I'm interested in some advanced stuff used to streamline my work day.
Using templates and things through the Options menu can set it for each subsequent workbook--pretty cool but I knew that stuff. You can author it, etc. I love that this guy's presentation is ostensibly a PowerPoint presented in Excel. He's committed.
Basic customizations and ribbon work in order to reduce workspace clutter. Setting up page layout through ribbons. Etc.
Okay, getting in to ways in which you can simplify work stuff. Switching to Excel for a second.
Sort of cool. Probably wouldn't mess with this too much in order to keep things similar between workstations.
Review tab offers all the stuff you'd normally find in Word for keeping track of errors. Text wrapping. Basic things for making printing easier/clearer/more correct.
Adding cells to formulas so they are not missed when making calculations; it may be useful to differentiate some stuff with a garbage row--formula autocorrects to stop at row. Kinda cool.
Filling formulas left and right to reduce reentering.
Haven't exactly covered stuff I'm not aware of. Good refresher, I suppose.
For my data tracking purposes, I'm not sure of using other functions when tracking numbers--general with two zeroes tends to do the trick when tracking behavior/goal data. Maybe I'll play around with this and see if there are better ways to present data.
Using conditional formatting to highlight desirable/noticeable items could be good when calculating success rates; reader can see when goal is met/not met without having to jump around. I like this conditional formatting. Apply it to quarterly data tables in annuals and it could be pretty powerful.
Formulas. Going to go to Excel and putz around a bit.
F2 key sort of "hard resets" the formula in a cell to recalculate. Sort of cool; but more a cautionary tale of not messing around with cell formats all willy-nilly.
Not convinced there is a value for me in using absolute/relative references in data books. A dollar sign locks the reference row or whatever in place when filling values in some direction. A double dollar sign when referencing the cell locks the specific cell. Cool to know, but usefulness is in question.
Commenting on cells could be good for multiple people working on the same work book--maybe when I work on stuff and pass it on to Linda to review? Would she catch this type of thing?
Autofilling some cells with designated names--months, highlighting numbers together, can be useful in pattern stuff. Not sure there is a work function in here.
Copy and paste. Pretty sure I have this stuff on lockdown. Well... Pasting values versus pasting formulas. This is in paste options when right clicking. Pasting formats moves visual changes, etc. Not exactly new information, just a new spin on stuff I knew. Copying versus cutting. Cutting cells doesn't break formulas, which is pretty interesting. Amazing what you can do with computers I guess.
Paste special: mostly useful for bookkeeping? Like, actually keeping track of accounting books. I see no real value to doing this with my current stuff. Paste special, values, transpose can swap vertical/horizontal. Pretty cool.
Double-clicking edges of columns/rows will automatically make it as wide/narrow as it needs to be. Cool little shortcut.
Man, I guess I like Excel much more than I thought. It's pretty interesting stuff.
Referencing across sheets/workbooks is cool. Equal sign, click on other sheets/books. Not valuable but could be cool with multiple workbooks on related stuff. Might be more useful to paste values.
First break of the day at 10:30 am. My notes are all over the place. Found out some pretty cool things that might make information easier to digest. Everyone seems to be snacking and settling back in for round two. I guess we are halfway done? What am I gonna do after this? I need some afternoon plans.
Backtracking to referencing other workbooks. Moral of the story is not to move books around; file them accordingly. I have this at work, but good tip to have at home.
Moving on to advanced ideas. This is where I start to pay more attention. Starting with navigation. Switching over to Excel to keep up with stuff.
On bigger workbooks, avoid black rows. Basic navigation commands stop at these points. Utilize all spaces, dummy!
View:Freeze panes can keep a header attached no matter how far away you are from A1.
Just basically avoid blank cells as they will fuck up any type of navigation/selection you try to do.
Creating/inserting a table with well-defined headers can make navigation of information pretty easy. This actually blew my fucking mind.
Highlight table, data clear removes all filters. You can get as specific/general as needed. This is cool! No sarcasm! I would never use this at current job but this is pretty jazzy.
Always double-click everything. It just works in filling stuff up. Technically down but who gives a shit.
Tables, subtotals, and filters are definitely better when using larger, more information-heavy workbooks. I doubt I'd be using this too often here.
This viking horse lord has some workbooks that are fascinatingly gigantic. It's horrifying.
Find and replace is great, especially when writing. I guess it works the same way in Excel.
Lookup: goes through x cells vertically or horizontally, finds desired number, places it in cell. Could be cool on bigger projects, but we don't really use callbacks and stuff in day to day data keeping. This is the only time in my life I have wished I was an accountant. I'd feel like a golden god right now.
IFERROR is actually pretty cool, especially when calculating success rate on a goal that a client does not participate in. Man, the syntax of that previous sentence is a nightmare. Not gonna fix it.
For a gigantic math-related data application, Excel has some pretty metal terminology. "Just destroyed that cell. Fuggin' obliterated."
Could add a section below goals tabulation area with IF something is greater than you can have a quick "Did client pass this goal?" Just making it easier on the reader. I think I will add stuff like this to a workbook.
Thanks, Joe. For absolutely nothing.
After applying the IF formulation, I have a mental erection. It works pretty well. Going to have make some changes to the formatting of the tables/workbooks but it looks great. Combined with conditional formatting, you can make our data tables look really snazzy.
Concatenation has no place in my life or the lives of anyone else, thank you very much.
I think charts could be sort of useful, but a graphical representation of the data seems redundant with additions made using conditional formatting/IF functions. How much time are people going to spend reading our reports? Without any data to back it up, I imagine it takes longer to process data presented graphically versus numbers. But maybe I'm just an unfeeling machine.
This guy's attempts at spelling have been a nonstop laugh riot.
Man, we got a guy here who is such a wisenheimer. Asking questions just to get the boss happy. What a frittata.
I have a certain format that works great for my job--I wonder if I make the changes to it and it could be applied to other workbooks without fucking everything up? I doubt it. I think I have a lot of work to do.
Eh... Maybe make a new template on additional sheets and continue from there. Least amount of work it seems.
Pivot tables are pretty neat. I have absolutely no idea how that would apply to this job, but if I was working with reams of information and wanted to see some stuff in a geographic/itemized/etc. breakdown, I'd have a pretty powerful tool.
I made fun of this guy giving this presentation in Excel but he is a goddamn magician with this.
Use refresh on pivot tables if data from original fields change. Like banging F5 on a keyboard to reload a nudie pic.
Macros. Essentially developing new functions; baby's first programming.
Macros are so far outside the realm of things I'm going to work with. If I knew anything about basic coding it could be useful but I'm not going to be doing stuff with this. Just going to stick with basic formulas.
And just like that, he mounts his flaming stallion and rides into Valhalla. Overall, I'd give it a 6.5 out of 10.
Until an asteroid,
Adam
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