Recommended Excel References?
Recommended Excel References?
(OP)
Everything I've learned in Excel has been on my own. I know enough to accomplish most of my own tasks, but I wonder what else I could accomplish if I had a better knowledge of Excel. Do you have any recommended references (online or physical) that would provide a thorough course for self learning. Most things I find are geared toward business and charts/graphs/presentations more than engineering. Pivot Tables are cool, but I don't think I'd need them often as a structural engineer. I imagine learning VBA as it applies to excel would be necessary too. I welcome any suggestions.
RE: Recommended Excel References?
What do you want to do that you currently cannot do or are being held back from based on your current knowledge?
For me having a goal in terms of creation of a standardised spreadsheet tool/template to help me become more efficient was the goal to tipping me over the edge from an occasional dabbler in VBA to me learning VBA in a more through and lasting way. So I'd suggest you probably have to have a driving force or end result in mind, rather than a desire to simply learn it for the sake of learning, come up with something you require that can only be done with the help of VBA, etc. Use this task to teach yourself in the process.
I created an add-in tool that stores the inputs and outputs from a workbook within the worksheet, with the ability to recall any of the design cases as required. It was all run by a custom ribbon (learning XML as well in the process) in excel, and eventually went company wide. As opposed to having 15 copies of a single spreadsheet with different inputs, having one workbook with all 15 cases being able to be recalled into a single common sheet within a few seconds saved a lot of time for a lot of people. Tools in the ribbon aided in achieving a standardised formatting for inputs/outputs, and greatly increased the speed of development of new calculation templates based on this template and creation of a standardised environment for development.
I've never found books that useful, in the sense that I own a few but never really read that much of them as I could always find what I wanted online in forums and blog posts.
In terms of VBA for engineers/by engineers and in general check out these blogs:-
wellsr.com (check the tutorials)
newtonexcelbach.com (By member IDS on these forums)
For charting & some general VBA I've always found peltiertech.com to be a valuable resource as well.
Interfacing python with excel seems to be gaining popularity so that might also be a worthwhile to learn, I don't have any experience with this (yet).
RE: Recommended Excel References?
TTFN (ta ta for now)
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RE: Recommended Excel References?
What it does outline well though, is the consideration of separation of data from the user interfaces and the code, which can be quite important when there are quite a few copies of spreadsheets with erroneous functions in use. Other similar issues can be things like hard coding the cell references, and having other users who aren't aware of the specific cell requirements enter data or attempt to use the code on incorrect cells.
Having said that, it depends on what you want to achieve with VBA. Developing your own code routines for your own use is one thing, but deploying spreadsheets for others to use can be problematic for quite a number of reasons (least of all the security warnings and the fact that macro enabled files now have a different extension).
EDMS Australia
RE: Recommended Excel References?
Become a member at www.Tek-Tips.com, Eng-Tips sister site (see link above-left). There are two forums: the former focues on application features, the latter on VBA.
Microsoft Office
VBA Visual Basic for Applications (Microsoft)
I am a member there, too, and post tips regularly.
Skip,
Just traded in my OLD subtlety...
for a NUance!
RE: Recommended Excel References?
I have also purchased online courses from a company called Udemy ( https://www.udemy.com/ ). They have a ton of online excel VBA courses. Some are good and some are not that great.....but they only cost ~$20 bucks so the downside to purchasing a poor online course is pretty low.
RE: Recommended Excel References?
RE: Recommended Excel References?