Download FREE courseware handouts. These documents are ideal for teachers, students and anyone wanting to learn more about their Microsoft Office programs. Each handout covers a specific topic and is illustrated with full-colour screenshots. Many have accompanying sample files. The files are not restricted in any way so you can print copies or read them on-screen.
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Still Alive!

...as I like to tell the nurse each time I arrive for my quarterly check-up, since she has been warning me of my imminent demise ever since Type II Diabetes was diagnosed five years ago. My long absence from this page has not, as rumour might have it, been caused by my untimely death. Although a hearty dose of flu in November followed by the Winter Vomiting bug and finally, just before Christmas, an attack of renal colic which resulted in a visit to hospital in the early hours to plead for painkiller, did little to enthuse me for updating my web site. A urinary infection following the kidney problem made Christmas a little less merry than usual (hence the absence of this page's customary yuletide decorations) and has only just subsided thanks to some powerful antibiotics. But it's all my fault, apparently. Being a fat man it has been made quite clear to me that any illness that I have ever had, have now, or will ever have will be entirely my fault and completely deserved because I am quite obviously a greedy pig with no self control. I was a fat baby that grew into a fat child who then became the fat man I am today. But like I said, still alive!

Office 2007 is here (in case you hadn't noticed!)

So, enough grumbling (although this is my party and I'll cry if I want to) and back to business. It has been a while since I updated this page, some time last summer, and in my editorial I was wondering a year after its release how many people were using Microsoft Office 2007 since, in the business environment particularly, I had come across very few. Well, things seem to be changing with more and more business people deciding to upgrade. It has been over five years since Microsoft Office 2003 appeared - a long time in the world of IT - but it has proved a firm favourite with users and many people just don't see any need to upgrade. Owing to the nature of my work I have to become familiar with new versions as soon as I can so I've been using the latest version since day 1 and, despite still having to search for tools sometimes, it is becoming my firm favourite.

At the university where I teach most of the public PCs, such as those in the library, have been upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007. This is a wise move because students who buy their own computers and a copy of Microsoft Office find themselves with version 2007, the only one currently available, and for many students the only version they have ever seen. However, not all departments have followed suit, some preferring to retain version 2003 because this is what the majority of businesses use.

Of course, it is possible to run more than one version of Microsoft Office on the same computer but there are possible pitfalls and, having tried it before with limited success, I prefer not to do so. I have two desktop PCs, both running Windows Vista. One has Microsoft Office 2003 and the other has Microsoft Office 2007. I have a couple more PCs sitting under the desk equipped with Windows XP and different versions of Microsoft Office but they haven't been switched on for a long while. My laptop is currently running Microsoft Office 2007 on Windows XP because that was the setup my last client was using. I bought some spare hard drives for my laptop and equipped each one differently: 2007/XP, 2007/Vista, 2003/XP, 2000/XP and it takes only a moment to switch disks so I can be ready for any eventuality I'm likely to come across.

I'm pleased that Office 2007 has finally taken off because Microsoft have put a great deal of effort into improving what is now referred to as the User Experience. I think they have done a great job, but the downside for me is that, since the interface is so different from earlier versions, I'm having to update many of my publications and handouts to take account of the changes. Truly, there is no peace for the wicked!

If you haven't experienced Microsoft Office 2007 yet I strongly recommend you visit Microsoft Office Online at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/FX100485361033.aspx. Go to the Products section and select the program you are interested in, then check out some of the demos. I guarantee you'll be impressed!

Microsoft Access is finally coming out of the closet

Working with a wide variety of people and businesses I get to see trends developing and that which has had the most impact on me in the last year or two is the rise of Microsoft Access. Microsoft Excel has long been the prime tool for financial work in business. The accounts department that creates a trading summary each week finds itself with over fifty workbooks for the last year alone. Recently a client presented me with with a collection of workbooks, one for each month for each of around fifteen offices for the last seven years - that's a lot of data sitting a lot of workbooks! The task was to extract certain data from each workbook so that they could be studied for performance analysis and forecasting. Immediately I knew that Access was the right tool for the job. I built tools to extract the data from Excel and import it onto the database, then created a series of reports and queries tied to a user-friendly interface so that, without any previous experience of databases, the users could get the information they wanted.

This kind of job is becoming increasingly commonplace for me as companies realise that much of their valuable Business Intelligence (a smart way of describing the data they have accumulated) is tied up in so many different files that wading through them to get the valuable information they need becomes a tedious job that tends to get put off.

People are often afraid that I am going to tell them to stop using Excel but that's certainly not the case. Excel is very user-friendly and is absolutely the right tool for building spreadsheets and financial models of all kinds, but when it comes to consolidating and analysing large amounts of data you can't beat Microsoft Access. Well, actually, you can... its big brother Microsoft SQL Server is ready to take over when the database needs to support very large numbers of users, contains vast amounts of data, needs special security applied, or when you need any other of the myriad tasks and services this super-database offers. Fortunately migration from Access to SQL server is an easy task. I have built or prototyped many databases in Access that have followed this path.

Sometimes a client shows me one of their workbooks and I can see immediately that the data needs to be in a database - but then that is usually the reason I'm there anyway. Although they might not know what the solution to their problem will be, they have realised that they have got a problem. Increasingly I am called in by a client who is becoming overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data they have accumulated and need a solution that will allow them to safely and easily store, analyse and report on this valuable resource. Access is the tool for the job.

Sometimes, introducing Access the workforce meets some resistance - and this usually comes from IT professionals within the business. I once had an interesting discussion (I use the word loosely) with the head of IT at a large company where I had been asked to do such a job for the Risk Analysts and Management Accountants to use. He was of the opinion that the users should not be allowed to work with Access since databases were the territory of IT, that the data they held was far to valuable to be entrusted to mere mortals and anyway, since nobody in IT knew anything about Access who was going to check the work that the users were doing? Presumably, I told him, the same people who check the work they are currently doing in Excel. And, of course, nobody was. I think I had made my point.

Ta ta!

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