I have an exciting news for you, Yesterday I have mailed Charley Kyd – an Excel MVP, author of four books and 50+ articles for various national media, owner of exceluser.com and creator of popular products like plug-n-play excel dashboard kit. And he has agreed to give me an interview over phone / email.
The theme of the interview is “Excel in day to day work”
Here are few questions I have listed down:
- What are your 3 favorite formulas?
- What do you recommend a manager / analyst should learn in excel to be successful in work?
- Where do you think a lot of us waste time and effort when trying to get something done in excel?
- If I am an excel newbie what three books would you recommend?
- Do you think a desktop version of excel has a future in the world of web based computing and storage?
I need your help to get more question ideas, so please give me your suggestions through comments.
14 Responses to “What would you like to ask Charley Kyd of Exceluser.com in an interview?”
Maybe you could ask him for suggestions of how to learn intermediate and advanced pivot table skills. What resources would he suggest?
Good luck.
My questions:
How does someone who doesn't know a single bit of programming approach learning VBA?
Biggest frustration with Excel
@ Chandoo : Here are:
1) What is the right age to teach excel to new generation in school / home? Should it be the one of the subject ? How do we use excel in teaching the different subjects at home / at school ?
2) I believe whatever you think that is possible in Excel. What are the processes / formula to fatch the ideas from different minds ?
3)Deep se deep jale ! How do we go to share / spread the knowledge of excel in society ? One of the way what you have started !
4) How do one can overcome the limitation in Excel / Access compare to SOP? This will enable to small business man to install the excel based programme instead to any version of SAP.
Members of my team currently spend a lot of time copying and pasting from Business Objects 5.1 to Excel. Is there an alternative way to import the data?
What are your 5 favorite formulas? =)
Ask Charley about the Excel 2007 User Interface, and whether he recommends that users upgrade.
Then stand back....
@all : thanks alot for your inputs.
I have mailed Charley the interview questions just now. Hopefully we will have the interview here in the coming weeks.
@Jon: I am saving that question for your interview 😀
@ Fredrick - Don't try, Hire a consultant. I'm available.
@Chandoo - I'll be polite about this - I admire the results of the work Charley has done, but the tone of his site is that of a cheap infomercial - everything is available for a price.
My hat is off to folks like Jon, you, JWalk, Dick, Debra, and SO many more who contribute to the Excel/apps community with value, integrity, humor, and intelligence. I even buy JWalk's books (among others). No infomercials. Can Charley contribute in a similar fashion?
Frederick - See my list of Excel-VBA and Programming Topics. Anything by Walkenbach is a good beginner-to-high-intermediate resource.
Chandoo - Don't save it just for me. Use it often, with any experts, power users, and regular users you encounter.
AlexJ - Some of us make a living (or partial living) off of our web presence. In fairness to Charley, there is a lot of free material on his site, including topics such as Colors in Excel, Cycle Plots, Business Intelligence, and more. The Excel Dashboards product line is icing on the cake.
Disclosure alert: I am an affiliate of ExcelUser's products, so I receive a commission when people purchase Charley's products via links on my site. However, I evaluated the dashboard products before I ever put the links on my site, and I can attest to their quality and ease of use. I only make a partial living off of my web site, because there are not a lot of good products like Charley's that I care to endorse.
@AlexJ: I am sure you have your reasons to believe so. But as Jon pointed, each of us also make some money through the websites we run and Charley has his way of doing the same. There are many people out there who need a ready use solution and Charley and others cater to those needs in fair and useful manner.
Disclosure: I have exceluser's products as ads here. Even though I have not tested these products myself, I have read reviews from experts and understood what they do and only after feeling comfortable that they add value and help my readers I have added the ads here (duh!, couldn't avoid that...)
@Jon: Makes sense, I will make sure bold questions are asked through this blog and other mediums I use so that community can benefit from answers (or lack of them)
@ Jon / @Chandoo
I am the last to object to any of us making a living from these endeavors (Excel has been a VERY significant component of the skillset I offer to clients). I guess you could say that the focus of my objection about the presentation of Charley's site is the style, and perhaps the audience focus. Perhaps my perception is skewed.
That having been said, my sense of it is that if PHD or PTS provides product for sale or recommends such, I would be inclined to purchase or recommend precisely because of the quality of the non-commercial information value that you provide. I haven't got to that level with Charley's stuff.
[...] mentioned earlier, I have conducted a small interview with Charley Kyd - an Excel MVP, author of four books and 50+ [...]
Hi Charley,
Thank you for all these insights about Excel. how can I place an order for a Plug n Play kits , but I will like to send the payment direct to you. Please send me your posatal address with all the details to get to you with the actual Cost of a pack.
Derek
Ghana.
@derek: I am not sure if Charley would visit this page and read your comments. I suggest you get in touch with him directly by visiting this page and e-mailing to the address there:
http://exceluser.com/copyright/reprints.htm