Just got a call for a job that I am really interested in. I was asked if I was proficient in Excel. Now I have used excel nearly everyday in my jobs for the past seven years so I know my way around it except for Macros and Pivot tables, which the caller specifically asked for.
Now, I am pretty sure in the past seven years I have run across macros just haven’t noticed. I have a general idea of what they are but not to sure. So, what exactly do they do? Are they hard to create? What do I need to know about macro basics to be proficient in a job?
Now I remember Pivot Tables from when I was taking Excel courses about four years ago but I haven’t used them since then. Can someone also give me a run down?
I am going to go out this weekend and pick up an Excel book to bone up but any help from the all so wise dopers would be appreciated.
At their simplest, macros are simply recordings of groups of steps you’ve perfomed manually. At their most complex, they’re complete programs involving thousands of lines of code and require considerable expertise to design, develop, & maintain.
Using an automotive analogy, you know how to drive now. They may be asking you if you know how to change oil, or they may be asking if you know how to rebuild an engine, or even create one from scratch. Most drivers could fumble through an oil-change with a guidebook, but would never succeed at engine rebuilding, much less taking a pile of steel & making it into an engine.
I’d suggest you need to find out more about what they’re asking so you don’t inadvertantly bite off a LOT more than you can chew. Odds are they’re looking more for oil-changing than engine building, but it pays to ask.
To give yourself a flavor for macroing, pick some task you do often in your present job, updating totals or combining two sheets or something like that. Make copies to work on and then use the macro recorder to record you doing the steps manually. Then go ino the macro editor and see all the gobbledy-gook. If you can kinda see a couple of recognizable things amongst the undecipherable gunk, you’ve got a chance to learn this stuff. If it just glazes your eyes, well you’re not gonna pick this up quickly, if at all.
There are lots of books on the topic, and you’ll want to scan a few to decide where you need to begin. The “For Dummies” series is a place to start if you have zero background in programming & logic. Most libraries have a copy & you don’t need the absolute latest version to get started.
Re: Pivot Tables, They’re pretty cool. Imagine a table of data with multiple rows and columns. Then imagine a series of drop down boxes for every individual element of data. Each dropdown box would allow you to select a subportion of the that data element and see how it affected the rest of the data in the table.
I’ve created a sample one here for you to look at.
Data can be stored internally to the spreadsheet, or externally in a file called a cub file.