Hi,

I don't know about courses, etc, but I often use www.mrexcel.com for queries, help, learning, etc.  There are very helpful people there who will answer any problems and give advice on excel issues.  Its quite good to browse other queries and I have learded a lot that way.  All the best in your learning.

John

hi,

depends on what you are looking for but most of the important thing in excel can be found in youtube. type excel tutorial and you'll get a lot of videos that helps you to start from beginner. cheers!

Thank you both for the input. 

Yes there are online ressources and tutorials are available, and this will likely be part of it, but I'm looking for something a bit more formal. 

It's just that hard to dedicate two hours a day to learn Excel without any distrations! 

Hey Nic,

Microsoft has a pretty vast self-help section to get started with Excel.

However, most of the information you will find on Excel will be as boring as Excel itself; so I believe it's best to use some real chunks of data to perform some real analysis, pivot tables, presentations etc. to truly explore Excel.

Youtube has a few of videos by the user MotionTraining, which are pretty detailed and well explained. Here's one of them.

If you do run into issues that you do not find answers, feel free to send me a message.

MS Excel is a very vast subject with tons of possiblities, not sure if anyone can ever be done learning it. :)

Cheers,

Arun

I think the problem with formal courses is indeed that they are very expensive, and you really don't need them.

I think you should try to find someone who's willing to teach you Excel in 1-2 hours. Provided that you are already familiar with for example MS Word I don't think it will take longer than that to learn. You may not know the most advanced stuff but you'll know enough for a regular marketing job.

If you can't find anyone I could help you, but I will leave this weekend and won't be back until mid-December.

the internet is probably your best source for this sort of thing...couple that together with just experiementing and working your way through the various menus.

do searches for the methods you like to learn - you may prefer demo videos , you may prefer simulations or you may prefer working from a book and using the software

just allocate 1 hour a day to doing that and seriously after a month you will be better than 99% of the users out there. You will find in most jobs very little is needed in advanced skills

another option is to contact an employment agency and they maybe able to get you a free or cheap short course

Thanks for the infos. From what I've seen, Excel goes from very basic to extremely complex. Do you have an idea of what Excel functions I'd need to master in Marketing?

Okay, if all else fails, I'll go the book/youtube/web route. 

I'll look for someone to give me a couple hours of 'class' though, to get things started. 

we need an edit button...

to the op Nicolas..why do you need some formal training? IME you simply have to use the software DAILY even 20 minutes a day is better than nothing...work through menu options and online help/tutorials

I would just 'obtain' a Teach Yourself Excel type book and work with the software so you can fit it in with your life.

If you lack discipline in that area just opt for some private tuition and accept you will have to pay

I would guess you would need to be experienced in grouping data, competent in producing charts... maybe familiarising yourself with financial functions.

To be honest if you are at the level where you are dealing with lookup tables, pivot tables and macros you are in the top range and NOT likely to need that level imho

just an add up, i got some input that companies wants people that know how to calculate and the make presentation which probably can be achieved by knowing excel, but if your target is to get a job, its not so bad to also open the tutorial about SPSS or R (at least that what my prof teach me in the class, quote"it makes you looks more professional").

hope it helps!

Hello Nic,

I agree with Keith. Excel can get complex, but don't let that scare you in any way. Most of the complex part is the simple stuff compunded with each other or themselves.

If you lack the motivation to set aside a couple of hours per day now, it's unlikely that you will gain some from a two hour class even from an Excel wizard.

What may help you more I think, is having a mentor or two to guide you through your learning process. All the rest, including practical exercises are available on the internet, mostly free.

Go through a few initial online tutorials, take some chunks of meaningful data and play with formatting; date/time, text, logical functions and charts.

Overall, knowing Excel at a basic level can help you:

1) Understand (and appreciate) data.
2) Easily automate repetitive calculations that do not require any human judgment. If required, the specific actions can be called out
3) Standardize/ data capture to a great extent
4) Analyze, summarize & present large chunks of data and help others understand it.

Even at the mid/advanced level, lookups and pivot tables are a lot easier than most people think and macros, well one can easily record them now.

Although it seems like a boring subject, it can be very interesting if you work with numbers that are meaningful to you.

Have fun learning and if you still need a class and do not find a formal trainer, give me a shout.

Cheers!

Arun

(I've worked in Marketing (at Procter & Gamble and other companies) and I'm now doing a PhD in it).

If you're in an analytical position (marketing research or forecasting) you may need to use some advanced things, e.g. statistical functions. But for most Marketing jobs you'll be fine if you just know how to do basic things:

- Setting up a spreadsheet logically

- Adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing data

- Formatting tables nicely for presentation

All these things you can learn from the Internet, a (thin) book or a friend.

theres really good books in the library of geneve the big one 

i study informatic for 3 years i took also a course of excel en united states and 

theres really good books i could recommend you 

i took classes but then i realize that with the simple books are enough 

so let me know if you are interested :) 

Thanks all for the good tips!  

Sure I'd be interested in book references, although I am now learning the basics via the internets to get thigs started. 

@nicolas if you have questions, want a mentor, or someone to help you for 1-2 hours, i can be that guy. just one question, do you have *any* experience with Excel, or do you just feel that you lack "marketing-specific" experience? I would just like to gauge your current knowledge level....