Pivot Tables: Your Secret Weapon in Microsoft Excel
So many clients I work with want to know how to create complex formulas or functions to analyze large data sets in Microsoft Excel. Reality is, you don’t need to be a math genius to do this, you just need to understand a powerful tool in Microsoft Excel called Pivot Tables. When I mention pivot tables I often see eyes glaze over! Like macros, pivot tables can seem overwhelming and complex. However, when you understand what they do and Excel’s tools to make creating them EASY, enormous amounts of time can be released to do other tasks. The bonus is, …
Comment and review Microsoft Word documents with Ease!
In older versions of Microsoft Word, collaborating on a document with colleagues was cumbersome! It required both the user and anyone contributing or editing the document an understanding of Microsoft Word’s track changes. How to switch track changes on and off and how to remove any mark ups after the collaboration process was completed. For those less experienced, it often felt easier to simply print out the document, make physical changes and pass it back to the owner, or to simply provide changes in the form of an email. With the evolution of Microsoft’s Office suite, today there are multiple …
How to get more done at work
As a speaker, trainer, and educator in Microsoft Office programs my clients regularly ask how to get more done at work. Whilst I can’t magically produce extra hours in a day, this simple tip, depending on how many meetings you have each week, could easily save you an hour or more! Change the length of your meetings. Sounds simple and it can be…here’s why. Meetings have generally been set at a default 60 minutes long.Parkinson’s Law states that the amount of work expands to fill the available time. So, if a face-to-face meeting is scheduled for 60 minutes, generally it …
How to easily separate a single worksheet in Excel to email.
Don’t laugh, but I’ve worked with a client where they want to send a single worksheet in a file to a colleague. They would do a “Save As” and delete what they didn’t want their colleague to see. Whilst it does the trick, it’s not the most efficient or effective way to do it. In this video I share how to separate a SINGLE worksheet from an Excel file so you can easily send just that one worksheet to someone rather than ALL the data in the file. Take a look…. Like this tip? Get more by signing up for …
How to save time and frustration with Microsoft Word tables
If you’ve ever inserted a table only to find you waste ages trying to resize the column widths, get the exact size you need or get the headings onto the next page? It can be so frustrating right? When I present at a conference or internal workshop, when I show people how easy it can be to work with tables they get so excited and so do I! Take a look at how easy it is to do when you know how! Sometimes it is simple things that can make all working with programs such as Microsoft Word easier. If …
How to automatically insert text in multiple parts of a Word document
As a corporate workplace trainer, I am often asked how to insert the same text in multiple parts of a document. So often we create a document inserting a piece of text, only to find we have to type it in again somewhere else. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you typed it in in ONE place and it automatically populated elsewhere??? Watch this video to see how. Like this tip? Take a look at my short course on How to Create Professional Documents in Microsoft Word. Click here for more information. …
Time Out
I often get my best ideas when I am out walking, exercising or just relaxing. Sometimes this irritates me, because I often want the idea when I need it and get frustrated when it doesn’t come to me straight away. I know that when I take time to step away from what I am doing to do something else, then come back, I often see it with fresh eyes. In 2012, Jason Fried, Co-Founder of what was then 37signals, but is now known as Basecamp Project Management & Team Communication software in an INC article, shared the idea of giving …
What’s the point?
At a recent workshop, I went around the room and asked each person what they wanted to get out of the session. Most had a specific thing they wanted to understand or learn, but what one participant said surprised me. They said, “I don’t use Excel and I’m not sure why I’m here.” I was blown away! We can never replace time. It’s our most precious commodity. Yet the organisation was happy to send this person out all day to learn about something they never use. Now it might have been that in the near future, the person attending the …
New Normal
Interesting perspective in this Forbes article. In my twenty plus years as a corporate speaker trainer and educator, I have seen a lot of trends. Companies spending millions of dollars on customised solutions that do not achieve the financial benefits promised in the business cases sold to boards and executives. A colleague of mine, Dave (thanks Dave!) once told me, people want the “ab-cruncher” solution to their problems. In a time poor world, individuals and organisations want the outcome of the ab-cruncher, the six pack wash board stomach, but many aren’t always prepared to make the time, or put in …
Don’t over complicate things
A client reached out to me wanting to discuss a formula to feed information from one worksheet to another. It should be “easy” (for me) they said, but they had struggled for two years to find an answer before reaching out. Once I understood what they needed, they really didn’t need a complicated formula, in fact they just needed to combine some copying and pasting techniques to cross check data, something most users of Excel could do if they knew the process. Sometimes we make things harder than they need to be. Next time you think a complicated formula is …
