# How advanced am I (Excel)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-advanced-am-i-excel/20057>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [May 20, 2000, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-advanced-am-i-excel/20057 "2000-05-20T17:08:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2000, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-advanced-am-i-excel/20057/1 "2000-05-20T17:08:53Z")

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I want to take a course to improve my Excel ability. I am currently a systems analyst and I pretty much never have any trouble figuring out how to do anything in Excel. I can do simple macros that is the only thing I know I am definately lacking.

Anyway I see on our company’s approved coursed we can take Beginning, intermediate or advanced Excel courses. How do you determain what you are? The course guidlines seem to indicated advanced but I don’t want to waste money by taking something over my head or vice versa too simple

Also how much of an advantage is it to know Access?

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**Author:** ![BoBettie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@BoBettie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BoBettie)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2000, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-advanced-am-i-excel/20057/2 "2000-05-20T17:31:39Z")

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Marxxx,  
As a former instructor, here’s my suggestion. Ask your supervisor to obtain a copy of the training manuals to be used (these should be readily available from the company that is doing the training). Review them and decide from there which course to take. As far as Excel goes, the manuals we taught with went like this:  
Beginner:  
What is a spreadsheet?  
Basic Formulas  
Basic Functions  
Absolute References  
Make your own spreadsheet

That sort of thing.

Intermediate:  
All charts and graphs. All of it. Knowlege of Level 1 a must.

Advanced:  
Pivot tables  
More Absolute references  
Working in multiple workbooks (creating formulas that refer to other spreadsheets in other workbooks)  
Problem solving.

Hope that helped!  
Zette

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**Author:** ![billehunt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c37758/32.png) [@billehunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billehunt)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2000, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-advanced-am-i-excel/20057/3 "2000-05-21T06:41:18Z")

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Sounds like you’re advanced in Excel. For my money, you’re better to take something over your head than under it. You can always read up after the course to figure out unknown stuff if it’s too deep.

Access has different levels of depth. If you get into the coding, it has some deep stuff, way beyond Excel macros.

You ask, “How much of an advantage is it to know Access?”: It won’t mean much as far as learning Excel goes. But it will be good for general DB and coding stuff.

What do you want to do next year or in five years? If coding is for you, there are better paths than Access (or Excel for that matter). Such as Java, C++, Perl, etc.