Microsoft Excel skills are required for some work-from-home jobs. Depending on the type of work you are providing, understanding and developing basic Microsoft Excel skills will be beneficial.
Why are Excel Skills Needed?
Excel skills are used when creating financial information for businesses. Adding additional skills to your skill set will bring more value to your employers. If you understand the basics, you will be one step closer to providing more value to the companies you work for.
Excel is the most popular spreadsheet used within the business world. Sometimes, learning Excel can be frustrating, but it can also be very rewarding. Not everyone likes Excel (usually due to lack of knowledge), so why not be available to provide these skills to employers? Even learning the basics of the program can be a good experience.
Excel can be used for a variety of other means. It can be used as a database holding categories of information. The categories or columns can be sorted in a variety of ways. For example, if you create a database with names, residence state, and age, the information can be sorted according to each. If the employer would like to see how many clients he has from Washington, the spreadsheet can be created in such a way to sort by each category.
Excel Possibilities
When using Excel there are a range of possibilities. Some of the ways Excel can be used in business are:
- Income and Expense Sheets
- Mileage Records
- Sales Data by day, week, month
- Create sales presentations based on data (graphs, charts, so on)
- Employee database
- Excel workbooks can be created with different pages
- Time keeping
- Logging work information completed
- Creating article lists along with the websites they are posted to
- Inventory lists
- Creating checklists
- Financial data processing
- There are a huge number of things that Excel can be used for!
What are Basic Functions that a Beginner Should Learn?
Learning the basic functions of Excel is a great beginning for the work-from-home mom. Excel can be very useful in a variety of ways. Here are some of the simple things that you can learn on a beginner’s level:
- Entering words and data into cells
- Locking cells
- Saving Spreadsheets
- Creating several pages in an Excel workbook
- Changing data in locked and unlocked cells
- Moving columns and rows
- Formatting columns and rows
- Deleting and inserting columns and rows
- Using basic financial functions within the cells (auto functions)
- How to highlight a column and use the sort function
- Creating a chart using the bar chart tool
- Copying formulas and information from one cell to another
- Using shortcuts in Excel (search functions, auto fill functions, so on)
What are Considered Intermediate Excel Skills?
Intermediate skills provide for more advanced use of Excel. Once the basics of Excel are learned, the option is available to further your skill set. Here are some intermediate skills for Excel:
- Creating tables, forms, checklists
- Indexing fields within tables
- Planning database designs
- Creating and using queries in Excel
- Using the datasheet view
- Saving, deleting, and updating records
- Setting up data validation
- Adding, removing, and using filters
- Defining field data types and their properties
Learning Advanced Excel Skills
Advanced Excel skills are a great asset to any company. Learning advanced skills offers more flexibility to your employers. It also brings more pay. Learning advanced skills will allow you to do a variety of things:
- Leave cell comments for others to read
- Track changes within the spreadsheet
- Use conditional formatting skills
- Add advanced Excel rules within Excel documents
- Using codes within the document
- Write macros to use
- Use Excel with other programs simultaneously
Encouragement to Learn Excel
As a work from home mom, learning Excel will provide more skills and increase the positions you qualify for. If you desire to learn new skills, please take the time to learn and improve. Set aside time in your week, or month, to learn new functions.
There are so many tutorials available on line through Microsoft and other reputable companies. Videos are available for the visual learner. Learn by reading, seeing, and doing.
Would you like to bring more pay into the home? Do you desire to offer the best services possible to your employers? Do you desire to expand your skill sets? Be determined to improve your skills. Do so in a manner that is not overwhelming. Take baby steps if you do better with short learning sessions. You can learn to do new things! You can make it happen! Start the process in becoming an Excel expert today
