SO...

[badstar]

I've decided that my goal here is goig to be to get a job at a school where employees get free or cheap tuition an use that to get a degree. I have a list now of about 6 or 7 jobs that I want to apply for at Johns Hopkins

If anyone could suggest a good way to learn MS office well enough to legitemately put it on a resume- I can use Word okay, but Excel?


And it's nearly 1pm, I've been sitting here all day with nothing to do. Systems down. I have a slightly sore throat and slightly stuffy nose. I just finished off a quart of grapefruit juice. I am, however hungry.

Comments

[nofate301.livejournal.com]

how about you play with it? like a good geek

[fuego.livejournal.com]

you say that under the assumption that i'm a geek :-P

plus i don't have a copy of excel. and can you learn it to some degree of functionality just playing around with it? i mean...i've seen it and i know there's a hell of a lot more to it than just punching in numbers

[nofate301.livejournal.com]

i put my entire professional career on "playing with software". I learned how to use the graphs under excel by playing, the functions, and lots of other fun and nifty things.

you've got a mac? or a windows box? I can get a copy of office to you if it's a windows box.

then do what all geeks do, you are a geek, go to google, it is your friend, and type "Excel tutorial" guess what you'll find?

[morlockx.livejournal.com]

sign up with office team, and use their self paced training for free

[fuego.livejournal.com]

office team?

[morlockx.livejournal.com]

a temp company.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

yeah, i googled it after i commented and looked into that. i'm gonna try that. thanks

[filmdazzle.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I say, go ahead and put it on the resume and learn it in the meantime.

[smileydee.livejournal.com]

A) Get excel
B) Get some data to play with
C) Play with the data

I use Excel a lot at work. Mostly I learned it by using it, and then deciding, "this would be so much cooler if I could get it to do this" and then I play around with it until it can do whatever I wanted it to do :-)

When it comes to learning how to input formulas, it's pretty similar to any programming language. The syntax is different but if you know a little bit of, say, Java, or PHP, you can do formulas in Excel. If you don't know any programming languages, you might want to do an online tutorial and try to teach yourself a little bit, especially conditional stuff like IF blocks. It's much easier to construct that sort of thing in any given programming language than in Excel, so if you have a grounding in doing it in code it'll be easier when you move to doing it in Excel.

If you wanted, I could send you a spreadsheet I've made if you want to peek around it. It's got lots of fun stuff in it like lists, conditional formatting, and pivottables :-)

[fuego.livejournal.com]

i don't have a computer with excel...i'm going to check into local library classes and stuff like that. I have no problem with learning as i go, but all of these places want some degree of roficiency before they hire you

[saratoga80.livejournal.com]

I use Excel on a daily basis, working as I do for a government research and statistics bureau. I also use access.

Your best bet is to sign up for comuter time at the library - generally most larger libraries have free or low-cost computer training and free time to play with Excel. If you so desire, I will tutor you via AIM for a little bit per night.

-- Rich

[fuego.livejournal.com]

i apreciate that but i don't have a cmputer with excel...im going to check on classes at libraries in the area like others have suggested

[pagandenma.livejournal.com]

The Towson Library has free computer classes in various subjects. Also, I bet the Pratt system has classes too!

All else failing, get a "Dummies" book out of the Library and play with the program. That's how I taught myself Excel and Powerpoint.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

cool. i will defnitely look into that. see you tomorrow!

[fervid-dryfire.livejournal.com]

Join the (Ch)Air Force. =P

I have forgotten more about Excel and Word (and many other obscure wordprocessors and databases) in my 1.5 years at this job than most people ever learn (outside of the MS Office developers themselves, of course).

[fuego.livejournal.com]

cute. but the millitary...any branch..wouldn't like me very much.

[fervid-dryfire.livejournal.com]

It's the hair, isn't it?

[brcmapgirl.livejournal.com]

Take a job as an accounting temp. You'll learn Excel FAST.

The cool features which will make you look cool around the office:
-Auto Filter for sorting Data
-Pivot Tables (which I suck at doing)
-Subtotaling
-VLOOKUP (a formula feature for comparing data)
-Understand how to make pretty graphs and charts from tabulated data

Let me know if you have questions. I run spreads all the time for work and I have been working with Excel since I was an accounting clerk. It's not that hard and most of the basics of Excel you can learn through Lotus 1-2-3 or MS Works. I know you are a Mac girl, but it's not that hard to do this.