Why Excel? 

"Microsoft Excel is an electronic spreadsheet program that is used for storing, organizing, and manipulating data." That's great, but how would you use Excel to make your life easier?

Excel replaces the old columnar spreadsheet paper and an adding machine.  It allows you to capture data, numbers or text, electronically in a workbook. The workbook contains worksheets, the row-and-column matrix that you will work in. You can use the worksheet to perform basic number crunching, such as addition or subtraction, as well as more complex calculations, e.g. payroll deductions or a student's average on test results.

You can use Excel's built-in formulas, known as functions, or you can build your own formulas based on your business needs. And you can change the data in your worksheet and Excel will automatically recalculate for you, making it ideal for working out "What if" scenarios.

• Using the Excel 2007 user interface
• Creating new workbooks and working with existing workbooks
• Entering and editing data into a spreadsheet
• Creating formulas and using Excel's built-in formulas, i.e., functions
• Formatting worksheets
• Previewing and printing worksheets

Using a computer to create, edit, and print documents?

Of all the computer applications, Microsoft Word is the most common. Word is a word processing program that enables you to create a document, store it electronically on a disk, display it on a screen, modify it by entering commands and characters from the keyboard, and print it on a printer.

The great advantage of Word over using a typewriter is that you can make changes without retyping the entire document. If you make a typing mistake, you simply back up the cursor and correct your mistake. If you want to delete a paragraph, you simply remove it, without leaving a trace. It is equally easy to insert a word, sentence, or paragraph in the middle of a document. Word also makes it easy to move sections of text from one place to another within a document, or between documents. When you have made all the changes you want, you can send the file to a printer to get a hardcopy.

In this seminar, you'll start with an overview of creating, saving and editing Word documents. You will learn the fundamentals of formatting like applying fonts, italics, and boldface. From there, you"ll  learn how to work with headers and footers and prepare your document for printing.

• Using the Office 2007 user interface
• Entering and editing document text
• Formatting document text and paragraphs
• Working with page breaks and layout
• Creating headers and footers
• Previewing and printing documents

Why Access?  Why not Excel? 

Everyone loves Excel.  And why not?  Excel spreadsheets are great for simple lists and doing math on those lists.  But if your primary goal is the storage and efficient retrieval of large amounts of data critical to the life of your business, Access is the tool you need.

An Access database acts as an electronic filing cabinet of information arranged for easy, efficient search and retrieval.  With Access, you can track and report information with ease.  Before recording large amounts of your critical data in Excel, take a look at what Access can do for you . . . you'll be glad you did.

• Exploring the Access 2007 Ribbon
• Designing and creating databases and tables
• Creating relationships between tables
• Adding and editing records in tables
• Designing simple filters and queries
• Setting query criteria
• Creating basics forms and reports

Upgrading the office to Microsoft Office 2007?

Key Training Points

• Navigating using the new user interface
• Using the Ribbon
• Using Live Preview
• Using new and old version file formats
• Customizing the Quick Access toolbar
• New Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook features
• Using Office 2007 Interactive Help

Need help selling your ideas?

Today more than ever, we must sell our ideas - to clients, peers, and management, and PowerPoint is key to making your ideas stand out above the rest. No professional can afford to be without expertise in using the full-featured presentation graphics available in PowerPoint. With this easy to use application and its powerful graphics tools, you're never more than a few mouse clicks away from turning out exciting presentations for any situation that calls for informing, persuading, or convincing others.

Even though PowerPoint makes creating a presentation easy, the real trick to selling your ideas is finding the perfect combination of text, graphics and multimedia. You'll learn to choose design techniques and schemes that complement, not overpower, your message, and presentation tips to make sure your presentation "sells".

Key Training Points:

• Using the Office 2007 user interface
• Entering and editing presentation text
• Inserting objects and graphics
• Running an on-screen slideshow

You need some information from your database right now.  How do you get it? 

The real power of an Access database is not the ability to organize and store information. The real power is having the ability to retrieve information from your database when and how you need it. 

Queries are the real workhorses of your database.  Typically, the information you need is spread across several tables---queries allow you to bring that info from the various tables into a single view.  And since you probably don't want to see all the records in your database at once, queries let you specify criteria to "filter" the data so you only see the data that you need right now.

Key Training Points

• Using Operators in Queries
• Designing Advanced Queries
• Creating Action Queries
• Using Advanced Query Wizards
• Using Advanced Database Features
• Exporting Data to Microsoft Excel & Word
• Using Access Database Security
• Working with Indexes
  

Now that you have mastered basic Word skills, you want to polish the look.

This Word seminar will help you transform your documents from plain and ordinary to attractive and polished using tables, graphics and templates.

Text in a word processing document can be tedious if you try to do it using tabs and spaces. Fortunately, Word allows you to insert tables in your document, letting you align columns and rows of text with ease.  

Add appeal to your document with pictures, and borders. Your documents will grab readers' attention, and compel them to read your information, making your messages more meaningful.

• Setting Tabs
• Indenting Paragraphs
• Using Numbers and Bullets
• Working With Tables
• Editing A Table
• Sorting Table Data
• Applying Borders And Shading
• Inserting Graphics
• Inserting Dates And Symbols
• Using Templates

Need to present your data graphically in a chart or format it to provide more impact to your audience? And do you have data in multiple worksheets that you need to use in calculations?

One of the most important functions of Excel is its ability to help you analyze your data. Conditional Formatting, new in Excel 2007, applies rich visual formatting in the form of gradient colors, data bars, and icon sets to your data that meet certain rules so you can find exceptions and spot trends. 

And although charts were available in earlier versions of Excel, the new charting tools in 2007 make it even easier to create professional-looking charts that communicate your information effectively. Live preview, also new in 2007, allows you to explore new chart types so you can create the right chart for your data.

Finally, you will learn how to create workbooks with multiple worksheets and manage that data more effectively. For example, you can put an entire year's data in one workbook with multiple worksheets, each representing a month or a quarter. At the end of the year you can then create 3-D formulas that will consolidate the numbers on the multiple sheets saving you hours or days of work.

Key Training Points

• Creating  & formatting charts
• Using advanced charting features
• Using conditional & custom formats
• Using shapes & SmartArt
• Creating 3-D formulas
• Working with multiple worksheets
• Managing worksheets

You need an easier, more accurate way to put info in your database.  And you need a way to summarize and present the data from your tables.  Here's how to do that.

Access "forms" are the interface you use to work with your data --- you can edit data directly into your tables, but using a form provides you and other users a true "data entry screen".  A well-designed form simplifies data input and reduces data entry errors, which can save you time and money. 

Reports are what you use to summarize and present data in your database so you can make better decisions and improve your bottom line.  In Access, you can design reports to answer specific questions, e.g. "How much money did we receive from each customer this year?"  And you can format each report to present the information in the most readable way possible.

Key Training Points

• Using Controls and Layouts
• Manipulating Form Controls in Design View
• Using Design View
• Using Advanced Form Design
• Using Editing Tools
• Using Advanced Report Design
• Using Subforms/Subreports

You have to send out over 100 form letters, each personalized with specific data, using your company's standard format. You'll spend the whole day typing letters and preparing envelopes and labels. Where do you begin?

Turn what used to take all day into a few hours work. Word's Mail Merge functions make it easy to create envelopes and labels, and create personalized form letters.

By choosing a theme, or style you can create professional documents with a coordinated set of colors, fonts, and backgrounds. You'll  never again have to wonder about what looks good together. When you create a new document, you can simply choose the same theme and styles you used for previous documents, thereby ensuring that everything you create has the same look and feel.

For information that is entered into multiple documents, like signatures, use quick parts. Instead of always typing the repeated information, users can type it once, select it and save it as a quick part. Once saved, this quick part can be used in other documents with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Key Training Points:

• Using Mail Merge
• Merging Mailing Labels and Directories
• Using Styles
• Formatting with Document Themes
• Using Quick Parts
• Working with AutoCorrect
• Using Section Breaks
• Using Newsletter-style Columns

Do you want to learn more about how to use the functions in Excel to save time?

One of the most useful functions in Excel is the IF function. The IF function allows for decision making in a worksheet. Suppose that you give a bonus commission of 12% if a salesperson exceeds a threshold value, say, $100K. Rather than going through each sales figure yourself and manually checking to see if that number is greater than $100K, and if so, calculating the commissions in another column, you can use the IF function to do this for you.

The VLOOKUP function is a handy one to know when you want Excel to lookup a value in one place and insert it in another. For example, let's say you have a list of all of your customers on a sheet named "Accounts" and an invoice on another sheet named "Invoice". When you type in their account number on the Invoice, you want Excel to fill in the name of the customer and their address (and this information is included for all customers on the Accounts sheet). A VLOOKUP will do this for you.

In addition to learning how to work with Excel Functions you will learn how to use advanced formatting options and how to create templates. Templates contain standard text that can be used as a starting point to create new workbooks.

Key Training Points

• Using Range Names
• Using the If Function
• Using the Lookup Function
• Working with Comments
• Using Automatic Formatting and Styles
• Using Templates
• Using Worksheet Protection

Why Expression Web?

Does your position require you to create and maintain a website and you don't feel you have the knowledge or experience to complete the job?  You don't have to be a technology savvy web designer or developer to create an appealing web site.  Expression Web is much more than the replacement for FrontPage.  It is a feature packed web design package that helps you to build fast loading valid web sites using XHTML and CSS.

If you think and design visually, Expression Web is a perfect tool to enable you to create compelling, impactful and expressive designs for the web. With a state-of-the-art design surface that generates clean web pages, you can make design decisions on the fly.

Key Training Points

• Navigating the Expression Web workspace
• Designing and planning a web site
• Formatting web pages and applying cascading style sheets
• Adding images and graphics
• Creating hyperlinks and image maps
• Working and designing tables
• Publishing a finished site

How many PowerPoint presentations have you seen, or worse given, where the slides are nothing but lists of bullets --- and the speaker just reads them to the audience?  Never do that again!

Your audience will not only be bored, but they may also think you're wasting their time. Worse, they are not likely to remember anything you say.

Instead of using bullets, communicate visually! New in PowerPoint 2007 is Microsoft's SmartArt. Use SmartArt to take your bulleted text from average to great by displaying the bulleted text in graphic shapes.  Not only is it easier to communicate using a picture, but people remember things that have been communicated to them visually using pictures and graphics.

Finally, add music, animation, movies and sound to create an outstanding, memorable presentation.

Key Training Points:

• Adding animation and special effects
• Converting bulleted text to SmartArt
• Inserting sound and movies
• Creating slide transitions

Is your inbox overflowing? Does it take hours to sort through your inbox, even when you've only been out of the office for a day?  Don't let email overwhelm you --- make it work for you.

Email has become one of the most popular communication tools today due to its ease of use and instantaneous delivery. Unfortunately, email's rapid growth has led to a new phenomenon: email glut. This tool that was supposed to make you more efficient can turn against you if it isn't managed effectively.

This seminar introduces the basics of storing and managing Outlook information so email can be a time saver, not a time waster. You'll learn to create folders to organize your messages, move and copy information between folders, automatically archive old messages, and send mail you don't want to the junk mail folder. These techniques make it easier for you to find those important messages when you need them, without hunting for them for hours.

Outlook Mail - Level II also shows you how to create your own email signature. This signature is automatically inserted in every new or forwarded message, saving time and keystrokes.  Finally, you'll learn to create distribution lists containing the e-mail addresses of the people you send mail to frequently which will save you additional time and keystrokes every day.

Key Training Points:

• Organize Messages
• Work with Junk Mail
• Working with Auto Archive
• Setting Message and Security Options
• Creating Signatures
• Creating Distribution List

• Track project work
• Analyze and adjust the plan
• Format project files
• Customize and print reports
• Customize the project environment
• Managing multiple projects
• Project communications
• Exchanging project data

E-mail is an integral part of your busy life.  Are you getting the most out of Outlook---or are you wasting time and money?

A recent study found that 88% of business professionals didn't know what they would do without e-mail.  It also found that most people are unaware of all of the options in Outlook that can make their life easier and make them more efficient.

Outlook 2007 Level 1 introduces the new Office 2007 interface and the many Outlook shortcuts which can simplify your e-mail tasks.  It is designed for new email users and for experienced email users who are new to Microsoft Outlook.

Key Training Points:

• Exploring Outlook 2007
• Sending and Receiving Messages
• Using Outlook Messaging Features
• Attaching Files to E-mail Messages

Does preparing graphic diagrams---organization charts, floor plans, calendars, flowcharts---give you a headache?  Let Visio 2007 alleviate your pain!

Visio is Microsoft's drawing/diagramming software that makes the development of complex diagrams easy.  Simplify flowcharting and diagramming tasks while easily creating organization charts, system flowcharts, business process flows, network diagrams, calendars, floor plans, maps, and project schedules using Visio's predefined templates and tools. 

This seminar teaches the basic functions and features of Visio 2007. Participants will discover how to create flowcharts, calendars, organizational charts, and floor plans.  If you create any type of business diagram, let Visio make your life easier.

Key Training Points:

• Navigating in Visio
• Editing diagrams
• Creating Flowcharts
• Creating Organizational Charts
• Working with Background Pages and Links
• Creating Calendars, Floor Plans, and Brainstorming Diagrams

Having trouble organizing project tasks and people to ensure your projects are delivered on time and within budget?  Microsoft Office Project 2007 gives you powerful project management tools with the right blend of usability, power, and flexibility. You can easily control project work, schedules, and finances and keep project teams aligned and on schedule.

This seminar teaches the basic functions and features of Project 2007. Participants will learn how to create a new project file, create and modify task lists, and work with task relationships. They'll also create a base calendar, assign resources to tasks, and create task calendars.

• Basic project management concepts
• Creating and modifying tasks
• Scheduling tasks
• Creating and assigning resources
• Working with views and tables
• Finalizing a baseline project

Ever been asked to prepare a proposal, report or other document that requires footnotes, indices, chapters, or a table of contents?

In Word 2007 Level IV, discover shortcuts and techniques that automatically create sections, chapters, footnotes --- even tables of contents to save you valuable time and frustration. And if you need to keep track of all the changes made to a document, use Word's track changes option to see when the revisions were made and by whom.

Find out how to create data entry forms to automate data input. Word forms are a convenient option for forms that are used regularly by multiple users. Drop down lists, option buttons, and check boxes embedded in the forms decrease errors during input.  When saved as a template and stored on a shared network drive, they are accessible and can be completed by everyone in the office.

SmartArt graphics add color, shape, and emphasis to your text and data, and they're a snap to use. You can easily try out a variety of SmartArt graphics to see which one works best for getting your point across. An organization chart? A time line? A process with sequential tasks? Non-sequential items? With Word 2007, it's your choice, and very easy to use.

Key Training Points:

• Create a Table of Contents and Index
• Use bookmarks to cross reference document entries
• Insert footnotes and endnotes into a document
• Combine several documents using the Master Document feature
• Share and track document revisions
• Create data entry forms
• Add diagrams to a document using SmartArt

Do you regularly produce newsletters, advertisements, invitations or flyers?

Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 helps you create, personalize, and share a wide range of publications and marketing materials so you can build your brand, manage customer lists, and track your marketing campaigns --- all in-house.

New and improved capabilities speed up the creation of your publications with a host of wizards and templates. Templates and wizards are available to make things like creating your company's newsletter or invitations, simple and easy, something Microsoft Word cannot do.

Create your publications with the finished product being publishable via print, email or the web.

Key Training Points:

• Using the Quick Publication Wizard to create publications
• Creating, editing, moving, resizing, and formatting text boxes and their contents
• Adding and formatting graphics
• Designing effective marketing tools in an email format

Are you still calling or emailing co-workers to set up meetings? Three short hours in Outlook 2007 - Calendars & Tasks and you'll never do that again.

Microsoft Outlook is more than just email.  It is a personal information manager that provides an integrated solution for managing your time as well as your email.  Besides being a popular email program, Outlook also includes calendar, task management, and contact management functionality.  You're paying for more than email functionality, you might as well get your money's worth --- and save time every day in the process.

Rounding up everyone for meetings doesn't have to be a complicated process that takes up as much time as the meetings themselves. This seminar covers how to use Outlook's calendar functions to schedule appointments and meetings and share your calendar with others to save time and effort.

The Outlook calendar will remind you about important meetings and dates so that you're always on time. And with the Outlook color-coding system, you'll be able to organize your tasks and appointments in less time, and delegate tasks to others on your team without ever picking up the phone or writing an email. 

Key Training Points:

• Scheduling with the calendar
• Managing meetings
• Working with tasks
• Working with notes

Need to become better organized with your contact information for customers, clients, vendors, students, or friends?

Microsoft Outlook is more than just email.  It is a personal information manager that provides an integrated solution for managing your contacts as well as your email.  Outlook includes comprehensive contact management features, as well as calendars and task management.  You're paying for more than email functionality, you might as well get your money's worth  --- and better manage your contacts in the process.

Using the Contact Management features in Outlook 2007, you can keep track of people and their contact information in one easy location. The Contacts folder is your e-mail address book and information repository for the people and businesses you communicate with. Use the Contacts folder to store the e-mail address, mailing address, multiple phone numbers, picture, and any other information that relates to the contact, such as an important date or general notes about ongoing communications with the contact.

From a contact in your contacts list, you can click a button or menu command to have Microsoft Outlook address a meeting request, e-mail message, or task request to the contact. You can have Outlook time phone calls with the contact and keep a record in the Journal folder complete with the notes you take during the conversation. You can link any Outlook item or Microsoft Office document to a contact to help you track your activities associated with the contact.

You will also learn to create a contact automatically from an email message, link contacts to Word mail merges, create and send Electronic Business Cards, and share contacts with others. No more searching for business cards in your desk --- with Outlook you can manage your contact information easily and efficiently. 

Key Training Points:

• Using the address book
• Managing contacts
• Working with files and applications
• Using the journal

Have you ever found yourself scanning row after row in an Excel worksheet to find just the data you're interested in?

If this sounds familiar, Excel has the answer --- the AutoFilter and Pivot Table commands.

Filtering shows you just the data you want while temporarily hiding the rest. By defining different filters, you can compare data in multiple ways, so you can glean vital information without wasting vital time.

Creating Pivot tables provides a simple way to summarize, analyze, consolidate, filter, prepare data for charting, and report on large quantities of raw data in a flexible, ad hoc manner. They are called pivot tables because you can change their layout by rearranging, or pivoting, the row and column headings quickly and easily.

Key Training Points

• Using Large Worksheets
• Managing Data
• Using Autofilter
• Working with Advanced Filter
• Working with Tables
• Working with Outlines
• Creating/Revising PivotTables