[ SIG Mission ] [ One Hour App ] [ Attendance Statistics ]
 | Follow Links: When: 2nd Wednesday of
each month.
Where: At HAL-PC
Headquarters
4543 Post Oak Place Drive
Houston, TX US
(see Map)
2nd floor at the top of the Stairs |
| No. The sign in sheets explicitly allow for
"Visitors". Naturally, if you are a
regular attendee, we would like you to become
a HAL-PC member. But come to the SIG on "spec" to
try us out. |
| There are many ways to do almost anything. It will
always be in order and proper to suggest alternative approaches and to
listen to the alternatives before proceeding to implement one or more
solutions. Note advantages and limitations of each
approach. Dogmatism has no room here. |
| Each SIG meeting will start with simple, manual approaches to solving a
problem and work toward stronger, advanced and automated methods toward the
end of the meeting. |
| Each meeting should strive to show one or more self-contained
examples. Continuing a Project Development across several meetings
will be discouraged. Members should be able to join the SIG at
any point without feeling they have missed some
foundation. Topic examples should make use of examples in
prior meetings, but each example should be built to be understood by a
person attending their first SIG meeting. |
| Some VBA will always be used within a meeting. Typically the
latter half of the meeting may be heavy in VBA, especially in any example of
Office Automation such as saving results or charts to PowerPoint slides
or exchanging data with Access. |
| While the SIG is not a magic show, people come to see and learn
the magic. Show the magic, do not talk about the magic. |
| Yes, but the SIG is not oriented toward only beginners. We start out with
some beginning level tasks, but we progress toward more advance topics
through the meeting. |
| In fact, some of the material we will cover is quite
advanced. Perhaps half of the of the session may be over
the beginner's head. But let's consider the pluses:
 | Each class will start at simple level and gradually (and logically, I
hope) get more complex. |
| A beginner will see the types of things of which Excel and Office are
capable. |
| Often the biggest hurdle to learning advanced techniques and tools is that
the uninitiated do not know the vocabulary. This is a place
to learn the vocabulary. |
| Knowing something can be done is the first step in being able to do
it. |
|
| HAL-PC offers Beginner and Intermediate level classes in
Excel. Check the "Class Calendar" link
from the HAL-PC home page |
| The Puzzler was added to our SIG meetings in January 2001 to emphasize
that there are almost always more than one way to get the job
done. Some ways are simple, but tedious. Some
are quick, but fragile. Some are one time use only. The
best, in my opinion, are quick, rugged, but usually quite
advanced. |
| In our first Puzzler, we
outlined 11 and performed 9 solutions in under 40 minutes. The
final solution was a single array function less than 40 characters long. |
| The objective of the Puzzler is to show as many different techniques to
solve a problem in 45 minutes as possible. Instead of going
in-depth into a subject, as we do in the rest of a meeting, the Puzzler
provides an opportunity to briefly refresh techniques and topics we covered
in prior meeting or to introduce topics that will be covered in the future. |
| Think "out side of the box". The solutions do not
need to be limited to Excel. Anyway to solve the problem
with the tools at hand is fair game. |
| The multiple solutions are presented in increasing order of difficulty
(and usually increasing craftiness). |
| Solutions will be provided by the leaders, but are welcome from the
membership. Solutions from members email to the leaders in
advance of the meeting are greatly appreciated. It give us an
opportunity to put the solutions in a logical order and to put the solution
in the notes handout. |
| Hopefully, we can make this evolve into a game: "I can solve that
problem in XX seconds". |
| As of July 2001 we use Excel 2000 and Office 2000 for most
examples. |
| Occasionally, we show examples in Excel 2002 and Office XP. |
| Excel 2000 is backwards compatible with Excel 97 and forwards compatable
with Excel 2002, so version conflicts are
not a problem |
| PowerPoint and Word are also fully compatible between versions 97, 2000
and 2002. |
| Access 97 can be converted to Access 2000, but Access 2000 cannot be used
by Access 97. Therefore, we will use Access 97 for any examples in the
SIG. |
| In September 2001, we began coverage of Star Office, currently a free
downloadable alternative to MS Office. Our purpose is to
evaluate what alternatives to Excel and MS Office exist in the market place. |
| This is a GREAT place to learn. |
| We show VBA by using the Recorder, then editing the recorded VBA to make
the macro more general. |
| We also show how to write well structured, modular subroutines and
functions from scratch. |
| User Functions are not difficult, but that first rung on the learning
ladder is out of reach for many. We can help you get past
that first step. |
| MS Office is one of the most widely used pieces of software in
history. Knowing how to leverage its strengths in developing
your business applications is key to improving your productivity. |
| The Object Models of the Office applications are rich and
complicated. Excel's object model has more elements than does
Access -- Excel is not just a grid of numbers! The SIG can help
you learn what Objects, Properties and Methods can be useful in different
tasks. |
| We can learn from you. |
| VBA is "Visual Basic for Applications". |
| Similar to VB "Visual Basic", the primary difference is that VB
is for creating programs from scratch or independent of any other software,
while VBA builds upon existing application software, such as MS Excel,
PowerPoint, Word, and Access. |
| Why learn it? VBA is the macro language behind all MS Office
applications and is essential to automating anything in
Office. . |
| Anyone may make a presentation to the SIG. |
| A presentation must be outlined and provided to the SIG leaders in
advance. The more time requested, the earlier the outline must
be provided. |
| We want to have an agenda prepared at least 2 weeks prior to the meeting
and posted to this web site. |
| We also want to make tentative agendas 1 or 2 months in advance. |
| A presenter needs to follow the Ground Rules of
the SIG. |
| The SIG Leaders will provide reasonable assistance when requested by a
presenter. |
| Presentations of commercial software are allowed, but the scope of the
presentation should be constrained to the Mission
of the SIG. In this regard, presentations that allow you
to "look under the hood" are particularly appreciated. |
| The presenter must arrange for time with the SIG Leaders and the Leaders
will enforce the time contract. |
|
