Mission of HAL-PC MS Office Excel SIG

[ SIG Mission ] [ One Hour App ] [ Attendance Statistics ]

2004-2005 SIG Leader: Stephen Rasey

The mission of the Microsoft Office/Excel SIG at HAL-PC is to help members learn how to take advantage of the strengths that Excel and other MS Office applicaitons provide to businesses and the home computer user.

This SIG will concentrate on Excel. While there are other SIGs that cover Access, Word, Front Page, the MS Office/Excel SIG will explore the techniques of Office Automation and Integration - making Excel work with the other applications in Office: Access, PowerPoint, Word, Internet Explorer, Query, Graph, and others.

The MS Office/Excel SIG meets on the 2nd Wednesday each Month, from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm. at the HAL PC headquarters

	The first 30 minutes we will devote to questions and problems from the floor. We also work a "Puzzler", a common business problem that typically has many solutions.
	From 7:00 to 8:00 we devote to exploring the Excel User Interface. We will show how to use commands from Excel Menus, Toolbars, and Shortcut menus. We will also choose 4 to 6 functions from Excel's Function Library and show how to use them.
	From 8:10 to 9:00 we will move into advanced areas usually involving VBA for macros and User Defined Functions and automation of routine work. Sometimes we will use this period for the "One Hour App" - a small application built within the hour.

While we will not cover all aspects of Excel in any one meeting, over the course of the year we will do several topics that cover:

	Formatting worksheets, including Autoformats
	Styles
	Conditional Formatting
	Using Named Ranges to point to data without knowing its cell address.
	Charting,
	Filtering,
	Managing Windows.
	Outlining
	Subtotals
	Data Validation
	Data Consolidation
	Pivot Tables
	Database Table design
	Database Forms
	Autofilter and Advanced Filter
	Linking worksheets, workbooks, and linking to databases
	Security and Protecting Cells
	Sharing workbooks and Tracking Changes.
	Drawing and Autoshapes
	Reports,
	Working with 3D worksheets and 3D Formulas
	Working with Templates
	Array Arithmetic
	Solver
	Scenario
	Goal Seek
	User Forms
	Data Capture from Internet Explorer,
	Web Queries
	Capture Displays to PowerPoint, Linking with PowerPoint
	Data Exchange with Access
	Linking to Word,
	Techniques of good design.

We will also highlight a category of functions from the Excel Function Library and show how to use 4 to 6 of most popular functions and some of the lesser known, but very useful functions available.

Function Categories:

	Logical (IF, AND, OR, NOT)
	Financial
	Statistical
	Lookup
	Text
	Date and Time
	Database

At every meeting it is our goal for everyone (beginner, intermediate AND advanced) to learn something new to improve their productivity at work.

For more information, contact : Stephen Rasey at raseysm@wiserways.com

Please check the MS Office/Excel SIG web page (www.excelsig.org) for agenda and topics of future and past meetings.