Several weeks ago I concluded a series of articles with regard to the new Microsoft Office 2013. Since then I have had several people mention they would like to get Microsoft Office but had never used it before. They wanted to know how difficult it is to learn.
Office is not hard to use for most people. However, I doubt that anyone will ever know everything about Office. Much of the time at work I use Office. I also use many features that most people do not know exist, and I am sure there are thousands of things which are contained in the Office applications I have never even thought about.
So how can you learn how to get the most out of the Office programs? There are many ways.
My first recommendation is that you peruse the opportunities your local Technical Center, Community College, or University offer under their adult education programs. I have taught evening courses in these along with other "technology" courses and the materials they provide are very good. (And of course, the instructors are superior.) These do have a cost associated with them but you end up with hands on training, a good resource in the instructor and a good manual to use for reference in the future.
Next, online/virtual courses are good; however, only for some people. I have taken online training as well as taught courses online. Online courses can be very beneficial since you can usually start and stop them when convenient for you. Hours, days or weeks later you can go back to them and pick up where you left off – the convenience factor is undeniable.
The only issue with online training is that unless you are really dedicated to learning the subject matter you will possibly drift off, not pay attention and not get as much out of it as you should. I do not know if statistics would support supposition or not but I have definitely found it to be true for me. Now, let me backtrack a little after saying that. If it is something you really want to learn and find very interesting you may not have this problem. Students of mine in online classes agree with this. A recommendation for paid online training is Lynda.com. I highly recommend their technical training for everyday users; however, there is a cost. Microsoft also offers free online Office training for the 2007, 2010 & 2013 versions (office.microsoft.com/en-us/training) of Office which is quite good.
Now these are good general courses but what if you have a specific question and you cannot get me right that minute? Try YouTube.com for help. For instance, one of my favorite things in Excel is "vlookup" so I went to YouTube and searched for, "how to use vlookup in Excel." I received over 27,000 results. Are they all good? Of course not, but how about the first four or five? Yes they were. I know since I watched them and each of the people did a good job explaining the process. Some had much better design, sound, video production quality than others but they all got the "how to" correct.
You have many options for learning how to do just about anything you want to, just seek them out.
