Yusuf , One of the blog readers, sent me an interesting email the other day. Here it is, reproduced in full.
I have been reading your blog for the last six months and have found it to be very enriching. You blog has inspired me a lot. I have decided to undertake the quest of becoming from an intermediate excel user to an excel ninja and ultimately CEO (Chief excel officer).
This is my plan of action:
1) Refer a excel book to revise and refresh excel fundas. Trying to create a strong foundation. Would be great if you can recommend One books to cover this part.
2) Refer 2 or 3 excel blogs. Got thru all the posts of last couple of years to bring me to the advance level. Thinking of using PHD and Mr Excel
3) Read a formula related ebooks
4) Final step would be learning VB macro to qualify as a Ninja
5) Am think of using Excel 2007Any suggestions or feedback is welcome. Will update you periodically on my progress.
Wish me Luck !!
I am obviously flattered to be included in his list of “websites to deep dive”. But I think his plan for Excel Awesomeness can be improved. Here is my advice to him,
- Learning excel alone is probably useless. You must learn how to apply excel to your industry, area of work to improve existing processes or way of working. To that extent, any plan to improve your excel skills should begin with a plan to improve your understanding of the industry and area of work.
- For eg. if you are a business analyst, you could learn about requirement gathering, structuring your thoughts, estimation, project planning etc.
- You should invest in story telling, communication skills as well. Learning how to present, how to write and how to talk can be of great help. Conveying ideas in short but powerful ways is more important in todays world.
- Resources: Presentation Zen, Copy Blogger, Seth Godin’s blog, Made to Stick
(book)
- Resources: Presentation Zen, Copy Blogger, Seth Godin’s blog, Made to Stick
- You should develop strong design (UI) sense.
- Resources: Smashing Magazine blog, Non-Designer’s Design Book
, Don’t Make Me Think
(book)
- Resources: Smashing Magazine blog, Non-Designer’s Design Book
- You should develop your programming skills. understand basic programming structures and learn how to modularize your code (and structure your thoughts).
- Resources: C Programming Language
by K&R, Data Structures Using C
, Excel VBA Programming For Dummies
- Resources: C Programming Language
- Stay open to new tools (this has been one of my weak areas). Explore upcoming technologies like R, Tableau, Google Visualization API, Processing,js to expand your horizon and ideas.
- Resources: Learn R, R Project, Tableau Public, Google Docs
But I think My advice can be improved too. So I turn to you.
What do you think a person should do to become really awesome in Excel?
Share your thoughts, ideas and suggestions using comments. Suggest blogs, websites or books or anything that can make Yusuf (and countless others) really good in using Excel so that they can be awesome in their work.
Go!
11 Responses
Ciao Hui,
Collecting Excel tricks under the title “Notable Excel Websites (Non-MVP) Edition” is a brilliant idea…
Thank you in the name of all The FrankensTeam.
On our site there is a box with a picture and text highlighting:
This is a no-MVP site
we think ourselves “bad boys” a bit 🙂
For those who would like to know why our site is a no-MVP site, enough to click on the link:
http://goo.gl/lxDszY
Thank you again!
Thanks a lot
I really enjoyed this (newsletter). I must admit that I rarely read an Excel newsletter (and I subscribe to quite a few) all the way though, but this grabbed my attention and before I realized it, I was engrossed in it. I must also admit that most of this I don’t understand, yet. But, it excites me when I do learn something new in Excel. I can’t wait to see how much of this I can implement into my (constantly-evolving) ‘House Budget’ & ‘Family Medical’ worksheets that I have developed over the past few years! I sure hope to see more of these type of newsletters in the future! Thanks!
Thanks for doing this Hui! I appreciate being included.
I like Tom’s tip a lot. I posted about a tool I wrote to automate this at http://yoursumbuddy.com/tables-edit-query-dialog/
EXCELLENT !
Hui, This post is Superb! More over I have always been a fan of Roberto’s work and have learnt a lot from him.
Here are some of my recent contributions
1. Customising markers in a chart – http://www.goodly.co.in/customize-markers-in-a-chart/
2. Charting Hacks to work faster – http://www.goodly.co.in/5-charting-hacks-to-help-you-work-faster/
3. 7 Date formulas to make life easy – http://www.goodly.co.in/date-formulas-in-excel/
4. Customised scrollbar using VBA – http://www.goodly.co.in/customized-scroll-bar-in-excel/
5. Adding Direct Legends – http://www.goodly.co.in/customized-scroll-bar-in-excel/
Hope everyone enjoys!
I like the Excel Ninja Menus.
1. Select a cell or range then move till the 4-way cross appears. Right-Click and drag the selection to another place in the worksheet then, like a ninja, a menu full of skills and throwing stars pops up allowing me to do all kinds of awesomeness.
2. When you click the fill box on a Date and right click and drag it down, a lot of amazing Date options pop up.
I also brand my Excel to remind myself that I’m awesome. In my personal macro workbook I place the following code.
Private Sub Workbook_Open()
Application.Caption = “SuperKrishna’s Awesomeness”
End Sub
My favorite tip goes along with #17. If you try to copy subtotaled data (and in earlier Excel versions filtered data),when you paste it all the data displays instead of just the summarized data.
To get around this, select your summarized data, click on Find and Select tab and then select Go to Special. Click Visible cells Only and click OK. Now paste and you will see that only the summarized data has been copied.
You can also go CTRL+G and then click the Special icon at the bottom of the dialog box.
What a great idea, Chandoo! I’d love to be included in your next edition:) Perhaps a VBA exclusive version?
@Ryan
I will review this concept about 6 months out from the original post and be sure to keep your site in mind
Hui…
That sounds great, Hui:) I just realized I gave credit to Chandoo for the idea and I should have attributed it to you.
Sorry about that!