Thank you so much!

Also, since the objective is to increase productivity, it could be a good idea to include tips about using and abusing shortcuts and the quick access bar. Or maybe you could weave them into individual tips, like when you describe the “insert / delete row or column” function, you could mention the shortcut (Ctrl + MAJ + +/-).

Nice post overall, thanks.

This was an easy intro article for the Excel newbie.

Charles

I’ve developed EXCEL applications for numerous businesses including insurance brokers, banks, and even a cardiology group at a large hospital. I love the application, just not having to learn the newer presentations. Admittedly a new user will not have to relearn the presentation and should not have too difficult a time in eventually mastering it, but I can’t fathom how anyone could have had undue difficulties with the older menu based presentation. I find that system more intuitive, but that is likely because I mastered it over the years.

With my ribbon based system, intuition is often out the window. I recall after installing OFFICE 2007, and wanting to insert a new column in a spreadsheet, I naively clicked on the INSERT tab at the top, but of course I couldn’t find any way to insert a column. After a few minutes and finally consulting good old F1, I discovered that I had to go to the HOME tab and find yet another item marked Insert. The HELP system is pretty good and complete but has cost me literally hours of productive time in having to consult it to find stuff I’d been doing for more than ten years with a program that hadn’t materially changed in capability. Many other items I commonly use were hidden from me in non-intuitive nooks and crannies. Even now, I find occasions where seldom used features elude me because of the ubiquitous ribbon.

Tough to teach an old dog new tricks, especially when the new tricks don’t seem to be an improvement. Then, there’s the same problem with WORD and other OFFICE applications. OUTLOOK is the only one that’s not too far afield from its predecessors. ACCESS has added new useful features, and is not too hard to follow, but on converting from previous versions prior to 2007, one has to do a bit of tweaking. I will consider that the newer OFFICE applications are probably more secure than the older ones, which is a point in their favor.

I could go on, but I’ll just sound more like an old curmudgeon so I’ll let it go. By the way I look forward each day to these e-mails from Groovy Post. Thanks.

Just to follow up on what Steve said, this is an introductory. We are indeed planning future series of articles that go into the advanced capabilities of each Office module. We want this to be a learning experience. For someone intimidated by the app, this should be a good way to familiarize yourself with the program and known the fundamentals. Thanks for the feedback and we will certainly incorporate those in future articles.

Hi Dave,

I agree with many of your comments. In many ways, Excel 2016 is very similar to Excel 2007 and even 2003 when it comes to the core application, calculations, pivot tables, etc… It was a great app back then and still is an amazing app today. The things you can do with it are just “mind boggling”. In future articles, we plan to build on this series, introducing more intermediate and advanced features. If you have feedback on items we should cover for our users, feel free to ping me – tips@groovypost.com

Thanks again!

-S