Reply #3: Excel's cool. [View All]

[astral]

The beginner stuff isn't too hard to learn, but you want to go systematic at it, whether it's a class or a home-use book. A lot of jobs that use Excel do not require you to become an expert at doing all that it can do, but just understand the basics -- The set of gridlines on a blank spreadsheet are 'cells' and each cell can be set up to contain a formula, text, or whatever, and they can be made longer / shorter, taller/ skinnier, and of course the lines can be made visible or invisible in any manner you want.

"Formulas" are what it make it a nice little calculator with a paper roll, only better. You'll find it handy to add things up for yourself or keep a ledger of your monthly expenses and such.

Just like beginner's algebra, any numbers computed in parentheses will compute themselves inside the parentheses, and whatever you do with them will compute afterwards. If you have taken even beginning jr. high algebra you'll catch on to how to use formulas literally in minutes.

Just thought I'd drop a word of encouragement. I am no math expert and when I say algebra has driven me to tears I do mean literally. But Excel's cool. Just learn a little at a time and practice playing with each thing you learn a bit before you move on.

Do you know how you are planning to go about learning it?