Learning about Microsoft Excel VBA training classes, courses and seminars will be the first step necessary in order to take advantage of the quality training available when it comes to MS Excel and Visual Basic for Applications. Many people mistakenly assume that Excel is nothing more than a kind of high speed calculator, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

There are other people out there who mistakenly believe that — in addition to being a calculator — Excel is only good for tables, images, spreadsheets and text. It’s true that the program can do all of those things, which are extremely basic, but it is capable of much, much more.

Once one begins to explore the features and a more in-depth fashion — which can be gained through Excel VBA training — one begins to see the truly complex calculations and charts that can be created to illustrate just about any type of data under the sun. There are a multitude of features within the program that most people never find, sadly.

For those who want to learn more about MS Excel and how to put it to its highest and most complex use, some sort of training course or seminar will be necessary. This doesn’t mean that you need to be a programming genius or some sort of software designer, because you don’t. Rather, you only need to be familiar with the basics of MS Excel in order to go forward.

This is why it can be a good idea to head to the Internet and begin searching for a quality training course that will follow a logical progression. This means that it will take you from the basics of VBA and then eventually show you how you can use every feature within VBA to command not only Excel but MS Word and PowerPoint right from Excel. There are a number of two-day workshops around the country that teach this.

As a way to learn how to take full advantage of Visual Basic for Applications, Microsoft Excel VBA training courses are probably the way to go. It’s a fact that most users of MS Excel never come remotely close to taking advantage of all of the built-in features and capabilities of the program. Take a course and learn how to supercharge MS Excel with VBA the right way.

The writer of this article is a trainer and developer with OnSiteTrainingCourses.Com, a UK IT training company offering Microsoft Excel Classes in London and throughout the UK.

Whenever you use the Copy and Paste commands in Microsoft Excel, it is not just the cell data that is copied; the formatting, style and number formats are also copied. The Paste Special command allows you to be selective about what you are pasting. The Paste Special command can be used to import elements from other programs into Excel using Windows Object Linking and Embedding. When doing so, the option “Paste Link” can be used to create a link to the original data rather than pasting in a copy of it.

If you are copying and pasting data purely within an Excel spreadsheet, the Paste Special command offers a set of options which are unique to the Excel environment. Interestingly enough, the Paste Special command is only available if the Excel data is copied rather than cut. Note also that it is often useful to paste over the original data, using the options in the Paste Special dialog to transform the original data in some way. Let’s now look at the key options which are available when using the Paste Special command.

If the radio button labelled “All” is chosen, Excel will paste all the data on the clipboard in much the same way as it would do if the ordinary Paste command had been used.

Choosing “Formulas” causes Excel to ignore any cell formatting and paste only the data contained in the cells being copied. (The term “formulas” is used in a broad sense here and does not imply that Excel will only copy cells that contain formulas.)

I personally find the “Values” option particularly useful: it can be used to “freeze” dynamic data. Like the “Formulas” option, “Values” causes Excel to paste only data and ignore formatting. The key distinction is that if the copied cell contains a formula, Excel will paste the calculated result of the formula rather than the formula itself.

The “Formats” option is a bit like using the Format Painter tool. It pastes the formatting from the copied cells but does not paste any data.

As you can probably guess, the “Comments” options copies only comments that were in the source range, ignoring all other data.

Similarly, the “Validation” option will copy only cells that have had validation rules applied to them.

Hopefully, this has given you an idea of how the Paste Special command works. I’ll just mention one final option: “Transpose”. This option reverses the orientation of the original data, so that rows become columns and vice versa.

Audience handouts provide us with a method of giving the attendees of your PowerPoint presentations something to remember you by. They normally consist of printouts of the presentation; one, two, three, four six or nine slides to a page. Naturally, however, whether or not the essence of your presentation can be captured by this kind of printout depends on the nature of the presentation.

To customise the appearance of handouts, click on the View tab of the PowerPoint ribbon and then click on the Handout Master button. In PowerPoint, masters allow you to determine the format of the three main elements within a presentation; slides, speaker notes and handouts. When you are in handout master mode, the Handout Master contextual tab appears. It contains a Page Setup section which allows you to choose the orientation of both the page as a whole and of the individual slide miniatures. It also contains buttons for activating or deactivating the header, footer, date and page number as well as for formatting the background of the slide.

Given that Microsoft PowerPoint allows you to produce three separate elements (slides, speaker notes and handouts), when the print command is used, you need to specify which of these elements you wish to print. This is done by choosing an option from the Print What drop-down menu. In addition to the three elements mentioned above, you can also print the outline of the presentation.

If your presentation contains a lot of important detail, it may be more useful to print out the slide outline and distribute it to the audience in place of PowerPoint’s usual handouts. Better still, you can export your presentation into Microsoft Word and then customise it for your audience. To export an outline, from the Office button, choose Publish and then Create Handouts in Microsoft Word.

Using the Create Handouts in Microsoft Word command brings up a dialogue box which allows you to choose one of five page layout options. Firstly, you can have speaker notes next to slides. This will create a two column layout with a slide miniature in column one and speaker notes next to it in column two. If you have used the speaker notes feature in your presentation, this may be a useful solution. The second option is Blank Lines Next to Slides: this produces the same two column layout as the first option but the right hand column is blank, so that you can enter notes next to each slide.

The first two options don’t offer you much room for text. If you have made or wish to make extensive notes on each slide, options three and four (Notes below Slides and Blank lines below Slides) provide a layout with the text below the slide miniature and leaves approximately 60 percent of the page free for notes.

If you just want the audience to have a summary of the content of the presentation, you can choose the final option: Outline Only. This simply exports the text on each slide into Microsoft Word.

As is often the case when transferring data from one Microsoft Office application to another, you have the choice of activating the Paste Link option. This will create a link between the exported file and the original PowerPoint presentation, such that, if the presentation is modified, the exported Word file will also be updated.

New users to Adobe Illustrator often complain that they find the program “fiddly” and frustrating. When we run Adobe training courses, we recognise that part of our job is rid people of this perception of Illustrator as a difficult program to use. We have identified three main elements to making people aware that Illustrator is no more difficult or frustrating than any other program.

To start with, we show them how to read and understand the extensive visual clues provided by the software as you perform various operations. Next, we keep reminding new users how easy it is to revert your drawing back to the way it was before things started going wrong. And, finally, we keep telling our students that they have to highlight the right tool to be able to perform a give operation.

New users to Illustrator will often attempt to manipulate elements within their drawing without first activating the Selection tool. For example, they will create a shape with, say, the Ellipse tool and then, while the Ellipse tool is still active, they try to move or resize the shape they have just drawn or click on the page to attempt to deselect the shape. They then get puzzled and annoyed when little ellipses keep appearing in their drawing or Illustrator’s shape dimension dialogue box keeps on appearing.

If your whole drawing has gone seriously wrong, perhaps the easiest thing to do is to take it on the chin and choose the Revert command from the File menu. This is like saying “OK, I give up. This isn’t working!” File – Revert will discard every change you have made to the file since the last time you saved it and can be a very useful way of avoiding unnecessary frustration.

Another thing that phases new Illustrator users is when they find they are unable to carry out a certain operation because it can’t actually be done under the current set of circumstances or at that moment in time. For example, they might want to resize a shape and they end up rotating it or changing its position instead.

A simple way of avoiding this kind of problem is to keep an eye on the many visual clues that Illustrator gives you and, in particular, those that relate to the cursor. Let’s take an example. Say you are attempting to change the size of a circle, you can only carry out this operation if your cursor has changed to a diagonal line with an arrow at both ends thus showing you that have positioned the cursor precisely over one of the resize handles.

If you a new user to a program like Illustrator, it is inevitable that you will make errors: things may go slightly wrong or even get completely messed up. The key thing here is to learn the Undo habit. For example, if you accidentally move an object don’t try to manually put it back where it was, simply choose Edit – Undo or use the shortcut Control-Z (Command-Z on a Mac). If you Undo too far back, you can use the Redo command to come forward again. (The shortcut for Redo is Control-Shift-Z.)

This problem is easy to avoid. Always make sure that you are on the right tool. Thus, if you wish to manipulate an existing object, you have to ensure that the Selection tool is highlighted. One of the first keyboard shortcuts that we teach delegates who attend our Illustrator training courses is that you can temporarily activate the Selection tool by just pressing the Control key (or the Command key if you are using a Mac).

Adobe Dreamweaver has quickly established itself as the leading website creation software available on the market today. There are many organisations as well as individuals that long to have their own website but cannot afford the services of a professional web design company. With Adobe Dreamweaver, nearly anyone can successfully build a web presence. Adobe Dreamweaver is relatively simple to use, pays attention to current web standards, and allows even the less experienced web builder to put together a good looking, functional website.

Just as the use of a graphical interface has changed computing, making it more user-friendly, the use of Adobe Dreamweaver renders people with limited understanding of web construction capable of putting together a quality site. It is also an excellent platform for learning how web sites should be put together. For example, when you create a new page, Dreamweaver lets you choose from a series of standard layouts based on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), the recommended specification for creating web pages. The code produced by Dreamweaver contains useful comments explaining how the page layout works.

Many smaller companies have already learned to rely on Adobe Dreamweaver to build and manage their own websites, creating and altering pages and then uploading them using Dreamweaver’s built-in FTP utility to make them live and available to their audience. Those organisations with a more pressing need to establish a web presence can still turn to a professional web development companies to get them started and then, using Adobe Dreamweaver, make changes and updates to their own pages for themselves, often saving a small fortune.

Another way that companies can save a few bucks is by commissioning web designers to create Dreamweaver templates and then using these templates in-house to build the website themselves. This also has the benefit of allowing organizations to maintain control of their site from the outset.

Although Dreamweaver is pretty easy to use, it is not likely that many users can simple load it onto their machine and start using it like a pro. Most people will benefit from having some form of Dreamweaver training. This will allow them to learn the essential aspects of the program and the process of creating basic sites and making them live. An effective Dreamweaver training course will also give users an insight into the underlying web technologies and the code which Dreamweaver generates as the users create their pages using visual techniques.

One of the most effective ways to make a site useful for visitors is making it interactive, allowing visitors to search for the specific content that they want. After attending an advanced Dreamweaver training course, staff within an organization can learn how to add interactive content to their website using technologies such as ASP, PHP or ColdFusion. And, here again, Dreamweaver does most of the work for you, allowing users to create sophisticated search and results pages using the same comfortable techniques used to create basic content.