The aim of this set of notes is to provide some 'in-depth' guidance for those considering wishing to learn about the use of Excel spreadsheets and who are contemplating taking a course with us (Design Cad Pty Ltd, operating from the University of Adelaide Commerce and Research Precinct, 24 Stirling Street, Thebarton, South Australia).

What is Excel?

Excel is a computer program which provides a tool appropriate for tasks that involve significant manipulation of numbers. This is sometimes referred to as "number crunching", jargon which should be avoided! Excel is also an excellent database tool for manipulating text, especially where you have a requirement to mange lists of information.

Why should you use Excel?

Well-designed spreadsheets can assist in many different ways - in decision making by allowing you to try a wide variety of scenarios with little effort, in goal seeking to achieve a desired 'set of numbers', in managing lists of information without the need to learn to program a database such as Microsoft's relational database (Access) and in communicating financial ideas to non-financial people by the use of charts, etc.

Unbeknown to many experienced computer users, Excel is also very useful as a simple, but quite powerful database. Learning to use Access, Microsoft's relational database program, is an overkill as far as many users are concerned. managing data in Excel is very easy.

Many Excel tasks can be automated - macros (small programs) can be used to speed up frequently performed tasks. You can use excel to create spreadsheets to carry out, specialized calculations and Excel can be customized by the addition of new toolbars to make the user experience even better. So, Excel spreadsheets can make your job easier, especially if you learn to build 'intelligent' sheets.

Your personal use of Excel?

We have listed many other uses of Excel in the table below. 

You might like to think about some of the ways in which you might use Excel in your work. The list below offers some suggestions and we are sure that its not exhaustive. Among other things, our students have learned to use Excel to:

• Create budgets, cash flow analyses and balance sheets,

• Download data from mainframe computer databases - MySQL, MS SQL, MoveX, SAP, etc. Massage that data into more palatable forms, especially producing charts with trendlines,

• Calculate tax,

• Analyze statistics,

• Depreciate assets,

• Stock control,

• Keep lists of class marks and even automatically grade student's test results,

• Track expenditure on a particular project,

• Store catalogue information for products, purchase prices, wholesale & retail margins etc.

• Responding to customer queries,

• Purchases, invoices and payments,

• Manage attendance records for shift workers,

• Forecast electricity demand,

• Hold lists of wire numbers in electrical contracting - avoiding duplication of numbers,

• Build species lists for landscape work,

• Analyze share portfolios. Which companies have the best price to earning ratio?

• Maintain club membership lists,

• Store details of research papers they have read,

• Plot the results of scientific experiments.

Please take the time to think about your own reasons for wanting to learn to use Excel before you enrol for a course with us. We have found that students learn much more efficiently when they have a particular project in mind. 

Determining your training needs

You first step in determining a suitable training program for your needs should be to make sure that you understand what it is that you want to achieve i.e. you need to define your aims right at at the outset. 

We offer Excel 1 (An Introduction to Excel), Intermediate Excel  and Excel 2 (Advanced Excel).

Please note that we find it extremely difficult to align the needs of those students who have not taken the Introduction to Excel course with us and who wish to enrol for our Excel 2 course. We find that most students are at quite different skill levels. If you are in this category, please play the review movie below and consider the topics in the Excel 2 course and send us an email note telling us something about your exact needs before enrolling.

Costs

The cost is $A750.00 when taken in-house at our Thebarton training centre or in your offices (maximum of three students), $A280.00 when taken as an offline distance student using a workbook and CD-ROM and $A250.00 when taken via our broadband distance learning program.

This broadband program offers many advantages - it is lower cost, enrolment is continuous, support forums are included in the price and you can work on the course anywhere - at work, at home or when you are travelling.

Please review your Excel skill level

Click here to play a movie which summarizes the concepts covered in the earlier course. The movie is quite large (5Mb), but if you are contemplating taking an Excel course with us, we would encourage you to download and play it.

Our distance learning program

• If you are thinking about enrolling on one of our courses via distance learning, we would like you to try out a "Sample course" - this is a Computer Aided Design course, but it will give you some idea of the quality of our materials,

• Our courses contain many instructional movies and we want to be reassured that your equipment works with the movies that we make to illustrate the use of Excel commands so play at least one of our sample movies embedded in the home page of this web site  (there is an Excel example).

• Make sure that you have a copy of Excel on your computer and establish that it works before ordering a course.

Q. Are these courses delivered "in house" or by external study?

As mentioned, our courses can be taken on a one on one (or small group basis) in our training facility at Thebarton, South Australia or in your offices. We also run courses in Canberra, ACT on a regular basis.

Q. Is some form of certification provided?

Yes. We provide all students with a "Certificate of Achievement". A statement that a student has reached a satisfactory standard and completed a competent set of working examples can also be added on request.

Q. Do you need a copy of the Excel program loaded on your computer?

Yes.

Q. Which version of Excel?

We use a mix of Excel 2003 and Excel 2007.

Q. Can the course be customized to my needs?

Yes, if you provide us with some guidance and samples of data that you wish to process. This applies especially to the course 'Advanced Excel'

Q. What methods of payment do you offer?

If you take a course as an offline CD-ROM based distance student, on receipt of an official order from your company (a purchase order) or email note from you if you are studying privately, we will ship a CD-ROM (with a personal password to unlock modules in the course) and a set of course notes. An invoice will be included in the package. Payment can be made by direct deposit to our bankers (BankSA). Details of our bank account is included on the invoice.

If you wish to take the broadband course please pay by credit card via our http://www.softwaretutor.net site. We use the PayPal system (www.paypal.com) for payment. PayPal offers a very secure system for processing payment across the Internet and takes all major credit cards. PayPal acts as an intermediary between you and our company. They hold your credit card details (not us) and hold payment to us until you notify PayPal that you have received the course materials in good order.

Special payment arrangements can be made by contacting info@designcad.com.au. In essence, we are flexible and as we support you by email and various forums, a great deal of trust soon develops.

More information on our distance learning program can be found by clicking here. To enrol, click here.