Improvement Project #1

Final Post: July 14, 2010

Task Completed: I finished the Harvard Spreadsheet tutorial. Was it a pain in the rear to complete? Yes. Was it long and often boring. Yes. Was it meaningful for my future career? Yes. In fact, despite having more functions than I ever thought possible, Excel is one of the most powerful data tools I have ever used. I never realized the full potential that Excel has. Going through this tutorial has helped me understand some basic and advanced tools in using excel. It has also helped me realize what Excel will offer me in my career. Honestly, I maybe only understood half of the concepts that the tutorial goes through. Some of the harder stuff I skipped. But the rest of the stuff was very valuable to me and learning the more advanced features will come in time. I really just need to practice Excel on a regular basis to understand how the functions apply in real life.

Even though it was tough to complete, and often difficult to follow, I am glad I took this as one of my improvement projects.


Week of June 20 - 26
1. Task Completed:

I was able to go through the Chart Creation portion of the Harvard lessons.

2. Progress Made:

I am about 3/4 done with the excel spreadsheet tutorial. This has been a much longer tutorial than I had previously thought. While it is very time consuming and some of the tutorial is a little boring, most of the tutorial is very helpful and interesting.

3. What I learned:

I learned that there is a function that can create pivot tables and pivot charts. Pivot tables and charts are easy to configure and create simple and professional charts and tables. The pivot tables allow for easy input of data and calculation. I also learned the many ways to create charts. When used correctly, charts can look very professional and will certainly be helpful in my career.


Week of May 29 - June 5

1. Task Completed: Completed tasks: useful excel function

2. The progress you made in accomplishing those tasks: I was able to go through these portions of the tutorial and follow the instructions per page. Rather than just read the instructions given, I open an excel spreadsheet and perform the functions as shown on the tutorial.

3. I am learning some really cool stuff. I learned how easy it is to change dollar symbols, alignment of symbols, decimal placement, printing certain areas of a spreadsheet, and how to create "good looking" charts. The coolest thing I learned about is the conditional formatting section. This tool is extremely powerful and gives the user to select, emphasize, de-emphasize, certain cells that may occur at certain times or have certain trends or patterns. This is a tool that will come in very useful to me.

Week of May 23 - May 29

1. Task Completed:
I am still hammering down on the Harvard Spreadsheet tutorial. I am halfway through the tutorial and I am now finally working on some of the more "meaty" material of the tutorial. I completed "increasing spreadsheet readability" "working with the data" and "excel formulas."

2. The progress you made in accomplishing those tasks:
I was able to follow and perform all of the activities shown in the tutorial.

3. The lessons that you learned from the tasks:
I learned some really cool stuff from tutorial this week. I learned that there are "sorting" options that I was unware of. If you press F5, it opens the "go to" box. Then if you press the "special" button, you can select different cells in a large database. For example, if you wanted to select all of the "blank" cells in a large database, rather than clicking and selecting each cell (which could take a long time), all you have to do is go to the special box and click blank cells. All of the blank cells would then be highlighted which could be changed all at once. All of the lessons that I have learned are helping me speed up processes within excel.  I am really enjoying this improvement project.

Week of May  15th-22nd
1. Tasks completed:
I learned about some of the Key Excel functions including the tool bar, editing the tool bar, scrolling, saving, printing, and a couple of useful hotkey functions. I also learned about cells, selecting cells, and splitting screens. The most useful function that I learned is being able select a group of cells in a range, and additionally add cells that are not within range. This is something I have never done up until this point. I am going through all of the exercises and watching the videos to make sure I do everything correctly.



2. The progress you made in accomplishing those tasks:
I am still in the basic techniques portion of the excel Harvard Mentor. I hope to make a lot more ground this upcoming week.

3. The lessons that you learned from the tasks

I learned the ability to select multiple cells (that are not connected) at once. This is very valuable to me. I also learned how to create new pages, change the order of pages, and merge pages together using right click on the tabs on the bottom of the screen. Even though I think I know the basics of Excel, I am finding out that I learned the basics through people who never knew all of the basics themselves. This is helping me realize the potential that Excel has and how it could benefit me.



Week of May 9th - 15th

Watched 1 hour of Excel video. Worked with Excel environment tab and basic techniques.




Ideas approved by Bro. Bell -April 30-

#1. Excel Spreadsheet Improvement Project - Outline

The intent of this project is to improve my ability to use spreadsheets. I want to gain a deeper understanding of spreadsheet usage and learn the function that will give me an advantage in the the workforce. I will be taking the 10 hr. Harvard Spreadsheet course to help me understand Excel. By the end of the project I hope to have an advanced understanding of important spreadsheet functions, have a basic understanding of advanced spreadsheet functions, and come away feeling absolutely confident in my spreadsheet abilities.


Go through the 10/hr class

Practice skills taught

Produce a few effective spreadsheets showing my understanding