Excel is used on a daily basis by people all over the world with most of them constantly learning Excel in their work. It has lots of features that can be used from a basic to a more advanced level, with one of these features being macros. An Excel macro allows you to save a number of steps, by either recording them as you do the action or by typing them in as code (or a bit of both!) and then assigning that macro to a button to use in your spreadsheet.

In this blog, we have an example of an Excel macro for you to look at. If you would like to try it out, get in touch and we can send you a copy of the spreadsheet.

In this spreadsheet, we have 3 students taking part in a long jump competition. They each jump 3 times and their distances are recorded. There is also a column with the world record distance in it. At the bottom of each student a formula has been used to pick up their longest jump distance. There is then a formula in cell F5 that works out who the winner is and shows it in the cell, however the cell font colour has been coloured white to hide it until the button above is pressed. This button has a macro assigned to it that will show the name of the winner and fill the cell red to show it when pressed. How the macro works is explained below.

Firstly the formula in cell F5 is this: =INDEX($B$1:$D$1,MATCH(E5,B5:D5,1)).

The MATCH part of the formula is looking at the students longest jumps (B5:D5) and then comparing them to the world record figure in cell E5. The ‘1’ part of the MATCH formula is saying that it is looking for the figure that is next closest in value to the world record figure. The range must be sorted in ascending order for the ‘1’ argument in the MATCH function.

The INDEX part of the formula links the jump value worked out as the highest to the name that it correlates to (so it returns the name of the student that jumped the furthest).

However for this to all work, the highest figures at the bottom need to be ordered in value from left to right (lowest to highest). Normally sorting is carried out vertically but in this spreadsheet, we need the sorting to be carried out horizontally. This is changed through using the options button in Data, Sort. Under here you can change the orientation of the sort.

All of this comes together when a macro is recorded. The macro recording to begin with is just of the ‘longest jump’ figures being sorted. Once recorded, the macro is edited to add some VBA code in to fill the cell F5 red so that the name of the student stands out. Once this is done the macro can then be assigned to the button so that when it is pressed, it all comes together and the name of the student who has won appears in the cell with a red background!

Want to give it a go? Then get in touch so we can send you a copy to try!

Once you have done it and a name has appeared, change a distance of a student who didn’t win so that they would win, reset the fill colour cell F5 to no fill and then press the button again and the new student should show as winner!

If you’re interested in learning Excel, then get in touch we would be happy to help!

We hope you liked this hint and tip on learning Excel through games. Why not take a look at our previous hint and tip post on creating a pivot table in Excel?

The post Learning Excel through games – Episode 1: macros with some VBA code appeared first on JPL IT Training Ltd.

In 2018 we once again had a very busy year delivering courses of which 92% were Excel based. This was no surprise to us as this tends to be the case every year!

Excel is such a valuable package for companies that it tends to be the main module from all the other modules in the Microsoft Office package that employers want training for their staff. The Excel training for their staff is sought after to help improve and build on their knowledge of Excel to aid them in their daily jobs. As well as helping at work though, the Excel training will help the staff overall with their knowledge of the package that they could then use at home too.

We’ve produced 3 simple charts (In Excel of course) to show the split by: (just click on each chart to view a larger version of it)

• County
• Module
• Level of Excel

Most of the training courses were carried out in groups of between 2 and 10 but we also delivered some 1 to 1 training as well.

There were also a selection of courses which were bespoked to the requirements of our customers too.

All our content of the courses is contained on our web page, which you can take a look at here www.jplcomputer.co.uk/microsoft-office-training

While we focus our attention primarily for Microsoft training courses in Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Leicestershire and West Midlands you’ll see we sometimes travel further afield.

As mentioned before, Excel training for employers is a great investment in enabling staff to work smarter and much more efficiently when carrying out their work.

For more information on how we as Excel training providers can help improve the productivity of your staff in the workplace using Microsoft Office applications like Excel please contact us on 07903 840105 or email us at johnlegge@jplcomputer.co.uk.

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From Farmers spouses to manufactures to Snow film set providers they all use Excel in Gloucestershire!

Excel training these days comes in all flavours and here at JPL we seek to meet a variety of needs; we have 5 ‘flavours’ of Excel on offer here at JPL!

There is the common type of training we deliver which is on site in Gloucestershire at a company’s site in a meeting room. We make good use of interactive questioning, exercises and explanation on a white board or flip chart.

As our approach is interactive based on active learning not passive learning there are no demo’s its all hands on, the attendees are doing all the exercises to practice what they learn as they go along!

Then we have the self-teach packages we’ve developed. These sit around 3 modules: Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Excel. Each module covers 6 topics and includes a video, example and exercise per topic with answers. If you want to find out more about this, head on over to the page on our website here.

In addition, we also deliver bespoke training developed to the customer’s request using selected topics and sometimes their own data. This can often be a great way of getting training for your staff especially if their knowledge is mixed, so just a basic or an intermediate course wouldn’t be right but a basic/intermediate one would!

Excel training in Gloucestershire has become an integral part of our business and we look forward to developing the use of Excel in other companies in the region.

For more information on all our courses please contact us at johnlegge@jplcomputer.co.uk or on 07903 840105 we will be happy to help.

Want to know what some thought of our courses? You can head over and take a look at our customer comments here.

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