In-house Excel Training

Excel is one of the most widely used software programs in the world and one that is vital to modern businesses. Excel is the common currency used by financial staff, operations staff, and human resources staff -- all of the departmental building blocks of many corporations. It is used for planning, resource allocation, and all manner of summarizing and crunching data returned from the enormous databases that hold the simplest units of information that companies store.

A lack of Excel training among junior staff members creates needless extra work, and while many people realize Excel illiteracy is a problem the solutions often involve too much training or too little. In-house Excel training is cheap, easy, and fast. It is easily accomplished with a minimum of investment and pays dividends when all staff members can perform basic Excel functions.

The basic Excel requirements are to be able to print a report correctly, without having a single worksheet print over three pages or printing in such tiny type that it is unreadable; to be able to sort and subtotal; and to be able to enter a simple formula.

Before any of that even begins, however, all members of an organization must learn the basic components of an Excel file, because unless the basic terminology is in place, it becomes impossible to ask for help. Participants in any in-house Excel training program should learn: workbook, worksheet, row, column, and cell. They should know how rows and columns are identified, and should know how to express the position of a cell by its coordinates, for example, cell a1.

To start an in-house training program, project leaders should review the scope of the training and determine what is most needed at the present time, whether the most remedial skills will do or whether a few hours of additional training is a worthy investment. In general, an hour should be able to give most staff members the very basic Excel knowledge they will need to build more knowledge on their own, and the skills they will walk away with will continue to produce returns for the company over time.