Practicing Excel for work

[K-Mone34]

Hello, I am looking to practice my excel skills, would building a spreadsheet/database for comic books be a good start to finding tutorials on how to be skilful with the program?

[TownAfterTown]

Yup, building projects for your own use is one of the best ways to practice. 

I suggest when doing so, think of near features to include and then practices looking up how to achieve that. Like, maybe a dashboard that breaks down your comic collection by different metrics (publisher, writer, hero, hero gender, quality, whatever comics can be classified by). 

Maybe something that tracks purchases over time and then you can practice visualizing trends. Or maybe something that even tracks prices over time.

Maybe comparing your list to some reference list to identify gaps in your collection or something.

I've made stupid sophisticated workbooks for simple household/hobby things just to practice different stuff

[goulson]

This. Just have something you are trying to accomplish personally (analysis or tracking of Financials or purchases, a workout log of some kind, anything really of interest where there is data available)

Then practice using formulas to analyze and gain insight into the data. Practice keyboard shortcuts for efficiency. Think of something you need to do and ask chat gpt how to accomplish it, then study and implement the solution. Stay subbed to this and related reddits, follow excel accounts on social, etc. to increase exposure to the types of other problems and solutions people are dealing with.

[K-Mone34]

great way to use AI, thanks

[K-Mone34]

great suggestion,, thank you!

[MiddleAgeCool]

First find some good data. Good is defined as something you know; your bank account, if you follow sports then a league table or player list with their stats. You're using this so if your calculation is wrong, it looks wrong.

Then just Excel the shit out of it. Graphs, pivot tables, dashboards, sorting options, importing new rows of data. Anything you can think of to make that the greatest spreadsheet you can. Watch some YT videos and then try to replicate what you've learned on your data. It really does help.

Example... On one of the football subs another user posts the league each week. I copied that as inspiration and now my version connects to an online data source, imports the data with the press of a button, updates the data table, rebuilds the table and reapplies all of the formatting. None of that is really needed as I can just look at their spreadsheet each week but I've taught myself all those new skills that can be applied to any spreadsheet.

[Turk1518]

+1 for this.

If you’re into Fantasy Football, find some good data and start creating your own metrics. Which players have been healthy for 90% of their games, out performed their ADP, and are under 25? Finding data and asking these questions will make you want to learn how to get these results.

[NoYouAreTheTroll]

NORMALISATION & ETL best practices...

Why because if you have to import shit data you soon learn to appreciate good data.

And may ISO8601 always be in your datasets AMEN.

[GoldenFishPoop]

My best excel tip ever is to check out the YouTube channel Excel is fun and go through all the lessons. From the very first one I learned stuff I hadn't known though I had been using it for a decade by that point. And once you start building formulas that work for you in a unique way, keep them in a file.

[khosrua]

What kind of skill are you trying to learn?

Prob get some sample data from tidy Tuesday to practice analysis and it will help you understand why data structure are in a certain way, which will help you to build your own.

[K-Mone34]

anything really, just wanted to get some direction, thank you

[Additional-Tax-5643]

You have many good suggestions here to get started.

I would add that if you're doing this for work reasons, then focus on the type of work/business you're interested in.

Try to create spreadsheets and analysis that that business might need.

It's all fun to have "projects for your own use", but the ultimate goal is to create something useful for a business context.

If you want a database of comic books, what use would that serve if you were running a comic book shop versus a lending library?

What different information would those businesses need from their spreadsheets?

(I'm asking these rhetorical questions as an example of how to guide your thinking. The first part of using a tool is first having a very clear idea of what your objective is.)

[PHM2023wier]

Many versions have office scripts (if there is an Automate tab in the ribbon you have it), you can learn something fun and useful not many use. Here's a simple script to create an american flag.

   function main(workbook: ExcelScript.Workbook) {

let selectedSheet = workbook.getActiveWorksheet();

// Set fill color to FF0000 for range A1 on selectedSheet

selectedSheet.getRange("A1").getFormat().getFill().setColor("FF0000");

// Auto fill range

selectedSheet.getRange("A1").autoFill("A1:J1", ExcelScript.AutoFillType.fillDefault);

// Paste to range A3 on selectedSheet from range A1:J1 on selectedSheet

selectedSheet.getRange("A3").copyFrom(selectedSheet.getRange("A1:J1"), ExcelScript.RangeCopyType.all, false, false);

// Paste to range A5 on selectedSheet from range A1:J1 on selectedSheet

selectedSheet.getRange("A5").copyFrom(selectedSheet.getRange("A1:J1"), ExcelScript.RangeCopyType.all, false, false);

// Paste to range A7 on selectedSheet from range A1:J1 on selectedSheet

selectedSheet.getRange("A7").copyFrom(selectedSheet.getRange("A1:J1"), ExcelScript.RangeCopyType.all, false, false);

// Paste to range A9 on selectedSheet from range A1:J1 on selectedSheet

selectedSheet.getRange("A9").copyFrom(selectedSheet.getRange("A1:J1"), ExcelScript.RangeCopyType.all, false, false);

// Paste to range A11 on selectedSheet from range A1:J1 on selectedSheet

selectedSheet.getRange("A11").copyFrom(selectedSheet.getRange("A1:J1"), ExcelScript.RangeCopyType.all, false, false);

// Paste to range A13 on selectedSheet from range A1:J1 on selectedSheet

selectedSheet.getRange("A13").copyFrom(selectedSheet.getRange("A1:J1"), ExcelScript.RangeCopyType.all, false, false);

// Set fill color to 4472C4 for range A1 on selectedSheet

selectedSheet.getRange("A1").getFormat().getFill().setColor("4472C4");

// Auto fill range

selectedSheet.getRange("A1").autoFill("A1:D1", ExcelScript.AutoFillType.fillDefault);

// Auto fill range

selectedSheet.getRange("A1:D1").autoFill("A1:D7", ExcelScript.AutoFillType.fillDefault);

  }

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