I know (next to) nothing about Pivot Tables, but suspect I would find them mighty useful. Can anyone point me in the direction of a company who could give me a good, in-depth single days' training (London/South area), or failing that some software, or even (shock, horror) a recommended book?
Thanks
Kara Sutton
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this is a perfect example in the time v value debate
you are soon to acquir a new skill and will therefore complete many tasks in less time than before if you charge by time you will be worse off unless you either have more than one charge out rate or work to a vlue based fee
Priorities
You said The thought of trying to follow a tutorial online at work with all the noise and interruptions gives me a headache!
So you lock the door and unplug the phone!
A good book
...is "Pivot Table Data Crunching" by Bill Jelen and Mike Alexander. It follows a tutorial format throughout the book and goes at an easy pace. It focuses exclusively on Pivot Tables so may not be what you want if you are after a more generalist approach. There are exercises to follow and sample workbook data to download from the book's website, which can be useful if you are struggling for inspiration/dummy data.
At the end of the day though, the best way to learn is through doing, which is why the online tutorials on this site, hand-in-hand with some of your actual work data would be an excellent place to start.
Richard
in addition to the tutorials in here
I would suggest two things. 1) is to look at excel help - it also has tutorials. 2) is to create a small table with data that is meaningful to you, and give it a go.
If you are netsavvy then "excel pivot tables" in google also brings back an impressive selection of tutorials.
If you are excel confident then a couple of hours tops on tutorials should be enough to give you a basic grounding and to be productive
RE: Pivot Tables Training
Hi Kara,
I tackled exactly the same problem after being asked in an interview if I had ever used these in work. My answer was obviously "No!", so i went away from the interview with a goal to learn how to use these amongst other tools in Excel.
The book I bought was called Excel 2007 for Dummies, youve probably heard of these books, dont get put off by the name - there actually very good at teaching you the subjects! Try Amazon.co.uk its priced at around £20 and it covers Everything you can achieve through Excel. I bought the definative guide, 8 books in one.
I hope this helps your cause
Paul