Hello pretty-new-to-the-office-tools ( "ExcelfromGermany"* )Originally Posted by ExcelfromGermany
Welcome to ExcelFox
I spent some time trying to figure out how to answer such a very open, non specific, question like this. I confess I am a bit stumped on what to say.
The link sandy gave could well be a good start point for you. (Remember, of course, that Microsoft are the makers and sellers of Office -Office tools is what Office is. So you are "going with Microsoft"
Because of this, it is perhaps also worth bearing in mind that in more recent years Microsoft don’t try to earn money by selling the product Microsoft Office. As with most of their products they are trying hard to integrate everything into everything, including integrating you and all your computer and internet activities into them, as much as they are able to. I am not saying that this may not be the route to suit you, as I know nothing about you, so I can’t say one way or the other. But going this way, you will likely be steered into the direction of being controlled in anything you do on a computer by Microsoft. So you may become dependent on them for more than you bargained for. In line with all this is that you are likely to be doing a lot of things on-line, with and without your knowledge, and almost certainly a lot of what you are doing, or things about you, will be used by Microsoft as they choose, even if it is boarder line legal)
I am at a loss of what more specific to say. It’s dependant on you, what you are about, what you want to do, why you want learn Microsoft Office. Learning all of what potentially Microsoft Office can do for the hell of it is impractical/ impossible. It is just too big.
Despite it's massive size, Microsoft Office is designed for the home user, or, if in a professional environment, it is a tool to help with, well , as its name suggest, office work. It is unlikely to find a job where Microsoft Office skills were the main thing. It is possibly a useful skill / tool to have in another job. If you are an office worker, it will help you to do your work efficiently. But in many cases, if the boss, or other workers such as design engineers, or many professionals in other areas, were very skilled in some areas of Microsoft Office, then they could often do away with most of their administration / office related staff, or free them up to do other things.
The alternative to "going with Microsoft", is to have a stable standalone version installed, and preferably an older version, since Microsoft did not go over from
_ selling the product
to
_ using it as a way to "get you"
, in one go.
They started their new policy around 2013. There are different opinions of the best earlier stand alone versions. Most people’s pet is in the range 2002 to 2013.
If you take this second route, then you will likely be wanting to look at independent third party help in learning. But there is just far too much out there to recommend without knowing more details about you and your interests in Office. (And I, and many of the helpers here, can only talk about the Microsoft Office areas we know, which is mainly Excel and Excel VBA. Currently at excelfox we are about helping and discussing mostly just the area of Excel and Excel VBA**. But even this sub area of Microsoft Office is so big, that it is unpractical to come ever close to knowing it all. So you may need to narrow down a bit your question.
( **We do have one of the best PQ people here , ( I am not always sure if that PQ stuff is regarded as Excel or independent but it can be a great tool in Excel to use ) )
Just one last thing I would say. Something that not every Microsoft Office user knows: Parts of the coding that creates , controls and effectively is the software, Microsoft Office, is by default always available to us, ( although there may be some restrictions in the newer on-line version ) This coding is what is known as VBA or Office Automation. Often, mistakenly, just in my opinion, this is regarded as a more advanced topic, introduced at a later date. I would personally recommend trying to get some basic understanding of this at an early stage. I would say, using some parts of Microsoft Office but without VBA is like having a multipurpose vehicle that can dig, fly , swim , go the moon and back at the speed of light, but you use it just on a few short pre determined road routes to do your shopping. But it’s not for everyone, and that is just my opinion. If this coding is for you will depend heavily on what you are about and more specifically on what you want to do or end up doing with Microsoft Office. Just bear in mind that it is there, at least with standalone versions.
People’s opinions vary, but many say the performance of Microsoft Office peaked, at about 10-20 years ago, depending on the particular area of interest to you, as did their own documentation on it. Microsoft concentrate on other things now, some of which I touched on. But it’s your choice the way you want to go. Often at work, for larger companies, they will have some political or financial reasons or whatever meaning that if Microsoft Office is used, they keep it up to date to the newest. So Many experienced professional users will be using newer Microsoft Office, because they have to, at work. Often at home they prefer the older stand alone versions
Alan
*P.S. Are you from Germany? – ( Your IP address suggests Cambodia )
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