Business Administration Certification – Get Started!
With new small businesses coming on to the scene daily, it can be intimidating for any entrepreneur to jump into the fray. There are many skills that you need to know in order to be successful in today’s tech-savvy marketplace, and it’s hard to know where to start. For most companies, from the design sector to the financial sector, there are several key software programs that must be mastered for maximum efficiency and workflow. Luckily, you can get all the training you need to launch your own business right from the comfort of your own couch!
read moreTop 3 Beginner Excel Mistakes to Avoid
When beginning to use Microsoft Excel, there are several key mistakes that all students should avoid in order to be successful for the long term of a project. Depending on your industry and specific Excel needs, this list of pitfalls can certainly become a long one. I’ve narrowed down the top 3 mistakes that all beginning Excel users should avoid.
read moreMicrosoft Excel Cheat Sheet
Download the Microsoft Excel Cheat Sheet for FREE! The Digital Workshop Center provides free cheat sheets on many popular software applications. If you are looking for a quick Microsoft Excel reference sheet, then we’ve got just the thing for you! The Excel cheat sheet includes several useful shortcuts and common commands to help you be more efficient and confident while working in Excel. Several of these commands are included in our hands-on Excel Level 1 training class, so if you need more Excel help please contact the Digital Workshop office. Stay tuned for more cheat sheets coming soon! Click the link to download the cheat sheet in PDF format: Microsoft Excel Cheat Sheet...
read moreSmartArt a hidden gem for business publications
Business processes, hierarchies and goals can be difficult to effectively communicate. While many applications on the market can help you in the design process, the cost of entry for these can far outweigh the need. For example, you might have a medium to large business hierarchy diagram that is constantly changing. With employees constantly coming and going, you need an easy way be sure that the information in the graphic is kept up to date. If this is a need that your business has, Microsoft Word, the most popular word processing program, has many features that can help you get started. There is a graphic feature called SmartArt that can help you create simple, flexible diagrams. Going beyond Microsoft Word, SmartArt is also available in several of the other Microsoft Office programs including Excel, Visio and PowerPoint. SmartArt includes a graphic solution for lists, processes, cycles, hierarchies, relationships and more. After you decide the appropriate format, SmartArt includes two contextual tabs that allow you to control the design and format of the graphic. The items in the graphic are controlled through the Text Pane and work similar to a bullet list, where you can create top-level items and then sub-items as needed. The individual shapes of a SmartArt graphic can be designed independently, or you can control the overall design to maintain a consistent look. In addition, when you change a font size of one SmartArt object, all related items will change their size proportionally. One of the best ways I have implemented SmartArt at the Digital Workshop Center is to create a simple infographic to help explain our certification programs. An infographic is a graphical way to describe our services, combining text and graphic elements to convey the information in a unique way. SmartArt allows me to create a simple infographic within an existing Office document and avoid the time involved with using a graphics program such as Adobe Photoshop. SmartArt is one of the many tools that are underutilized in the Microsoft Office suite. One of the comments about SmartArt I regularly hear in our classes is “I had no idea that existed in Microsoft Office!” I encourage you to try inserting it into your next Office document and start creating a SmartArt diagram for...
read moreText Functions Can Help You Master Microsoft Excel
The problems in Microsoft Excel that the average person comes across tend to be similar from one person to the next. While working on a recent project with a client, it occurred to me that there are many text functions that everyone might like to know more about. To start, all Excel functions have the ability to calculate or manipulate your data. Many people think of Excel as a resource to build financial spreadsheets and calculations, but the program can do much more than that. When working with text data, common problems arise such as capitalization issues, additional spaces, removing portions of unwanted data, and combining multiple pieces of data into one to name a few. Focusing on capitalization to start, Excel has three functions to help you. The ‘Upper’ function will turn any source data into all upper-case, the ‘Lower’ function will convert all your source data to lower-case, and the ‘Proper’ function takes any text and forces the first letter to be capitalized with the remaining letters in lower-case. For any of these text functions, you can reference another cell with the source data and display the result in separate cell with the desired case. Another example of text manipulation often arises when you are given data from a third-party system. Let’s say that you have an HR system that generates a CSV file with names and phone numbers. In order to create a list of emails for your company you might want to join the first and last name to create an email address. Using the ‘Concatenate’ function, you can reference several pieces of data and combine them into one. You might use Concatenate to have the first name, an underscore, the last name, and then your company URL (e.g. @example.com), and generate an email for every employee. In this example, you can let Excel save you a ton of time letting the Excel text functions manipulate your data versus entering the email address manually. There are several other useful Excel text functions that you may find helpful in your daily work. However, it can be intimidating to try and learn them all. I would advise any beginner to Excel functions to use the ‘Insert Function’ command where you can learn about these functions in more detail. The ‘Insert Function’ command provides a definition of the function, and a clear definition of any corresponding arguments that the function needs in order to work properly. I recommend this technique to all of my students as a great way to find and understand the right function for you. Don’t be afraid to jump in and try new text or manipulation functions. As always, make a backup copy of your data first, just in case something you do cannot be undone. Most importantly, have fun with Excel and find new ways to let the program do all the heavy lifting with your data. [Originally posted in the Coloradoan on...
read moreDWC & Adobe
Digital Workshop Center is the ONLY Adobe Authorized Training Center in Northern Colorado and second in the state.
Extended Support Benefits
Did you know that ALL public classes come with extended support options? This includes one month of technical support and one year for a free re-take of the same class (attended students only).
