Question: “I’d like to update my Microsoft Office skills. If I have limited staff development funds, but would like to get some advanced training, which program would be the most beneficial to me and the company? In other words, what’s the best bang for the buck?” — Anonymous
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Marty, would you mind sharing a few of the advanced tips/tricks you learned?
Do you mind sharing some examples of the types of documents you are now developing in Excel, that you might have previously tried to develop in Word?
If funds are limited, why not try Microsoft Tutorials, they are free and will take you step by step, even gives you practice documents to use. Being a non-profit, our funding is very limited and find these tutorials to be just as effective as attending workshops.
I have to agree with Patty. Excel is a great tool but if the majority of your work is in Word or PPT that is where you need to get the training.
I would probably go with Excel.
If you have a tuition reimbursement program @ your work consider attending a local community college and work towards Microsoft Certification.
That is super helpful info.
Everything that you can do in Word and PowerPoint can be done within the Excel program. I would say that to get the best bang for your buck, go with an Excel class.
Which program do you use most? My personal preferences would be a toss up between Word and PowerPoint, since we do a lot of presentations in my company. I agree that Excel is a great program, but I don’t use it much, so it would be a waste for me to learn everything there is to know about it.
The question to ask yourself is, which program do I need to know the most about, and what can I share with my fellow admins? There are some great free online courses, but obviously they don’t teach you everything. If you work with other admins, see about available Webinars that you could share the cost of. We have four other admins besides me and we sometimes take turns paying for a course, or simply split it by how many participate. There are many options; you just need to do some legwork before signing up. Good luck!
It is way too difficult for me to select between Word & Excel – I use both extensively. As far as training goes – and trying to get the “most bang for the buck” – I would recommend visiting learnkey.com. If you go to the demo section, you can request a free trial that will give you access to their instructional lessons in many different office suite programs for 12 days. They don’t request a credit card or anything to register for this free trial – and you have unlimited access for that 12 days. I signed up for this and was able to log on and go through the complete excel training sessions (including tests that guage where you need to focus your concentration). I also did this for microsoft word. It is a great tool that is available at no upfront cost… I’m a penny pincher – and this is a great way to get the training – you just have to be diligent and get all your training completed within those 12 days. I actually went ahead and purchased the CDroms as well – and they are great.
Depends what your company does. Excel is great to track pretty much everything and it will calculate numbers for you. Word is best for writing letters and works with Excel to handle mail merges. Access is a database and works with Excel and can be a bit complicated but if someone has the patience they can master it. Outlook is a great resource to track your daily tasks or to remind you of anything. Powerpoint is to make slides – is this something that is asked of anyone? Start with the one that would be of best benefit to your company. If financial resources are limited why not look into your local adult school and see what they offer and you’ll come out with a certificate and can add this to your resume. I took Excel classes for about $40 and they offered most Microsoft Office classes. What if you bought an Microsoft Office book? Would they buy it for you or reimburse you? Often times the best learning is by trial and error. On all the programs there is a box in the upper right hand corner that says “type a question for help” and this has walked me through MANY tasks I didn’t know how to do. And if you have a computer at home these programs are on there for you to explore at your leisure. The one day sessions are expensive and aren’t enough for you to walk out as an advanced user.
I agree with all the others. If you do only word processing, then you might want Word, but if you use numbers and tables at all, go for Excel. Even if you don’t use numbers and tables right now, you will eventually. Excel can be used as a data base too. Word tables DO NOT compare to Excel. I seldom make a table in Word for any purpose.
I would mostly agree with the others but I took a WORD expert class and found a ton of things that you can do in WORD that I never knew. That helps me with a lot of the tasks I have to perform in my job.
Excel is the one to go with….once mastered, it does so much that you’ll never be able to do without it.
I agree with Dean. I am largely self taught in all the other Office Suite applications, but I attended a seminar on Advanced Excel and it has really changed the way I work and increased my productivity dramatically. There are so many things it can do that you wouldn’t necessarily discover by yourself the way you can in Word or PowerPoint.
Excel, definitely.
If you wanted to get advanced training is just one of the Microsoft office applications, I would recommend getting that in Excel. Excel is very powerful and can do a lot more things than meets the eye, but it can be tricky. My second choice is Word, there are lots of advance functions in word. I would suggest not getting a lot of advanced training in Access unless you really need to develop databases. Access is a great tool, but there are much better database applications available.