January 2013 - Raising the Bar Blog

10 Basic Tips For PhotoShop

A long time ago, my first business was editing photographs for professional photographers. During this time I picked up many useful time saving tips in Photoshop that I would like to share with you. Most of them are basic however they can really save you some time in Photoshop and I use these tips and tricks all the time. If your not a keyboard shortcut fan then you really should learn. Some features require you to use keyboard short cuts to get the job done. Read on – 10 basic tips for Photoshop.

Continue reading “10 Basic Tips For PhotoShop”

Raster and Vector Graphics Explained in Illustrator

Illustrator, Adobe’s drawing and design program, can be used to design and create anything from a simple logo to complex illustrations including text, but underpinning all of that is the notion of the vector-based image. This is in complete contrast to the raster-based world of Photoshop (where everything is made of pixels), because in illustrator our images are object-based. Continue reading “Raster and Vector Graphics Explained in Illustrator”

Excel VBA Selection and Navigation Techniques – part 2

See previous article: Excel VBA Selection and Navigation Techniques

In the last article I showed you how to make some basic navigation and selection techniques using the macro recorder. In this article I’ll show you how you can navigate and select when the data is more complex. Blank cells can be difficult to deal with if you don’t know how. I’ll take you through some of the methods I use when coding in Excel VBA. Continue reading “Excel VBA Selection and Navigation Techniques – part 2”

Excel VBA Selection and Navigation

Microsoft Excel VBA Navigation People often ask me about selection and navigation techniques using keyboard shortcuts when I’m teaching Macros in an Advanced Excel course. However, when I’m teaching students how to program for the first time in an Excel VBA course:

Question: How do I select or navigate using Excel VBA?

In this article I’m going to show you some basic techniques on how to go about it. Continue reading “Excel VBA Selection and Navigation”

Case Study: Combining Webinar and Face to Face Training

The Requirement:

An integrator Upgraded their client from Windows XP and Office 2003 to Windows 7 and Office 2010 and engaged ‘Raising the Bar’ to up-skill their client’s staff and help them understand the key differences between the two versions of MS Office and the Windows platforms. The client also uses Project and they were upgraded from Project 2003 to Project 2010. The team, located in three different states of Australia were identified as being quite computer literate and are a Company of Project Managers. Continue reading “Case Study: Combining Webinar and Face to Face Training”

Office Clipboard

[caption id="attachment_143" align="alignleft" width="152"]

The Microsoft Office Clipboard. Keyboard shortcut (Alt, H, F,O)[/caption]

How many times have you done it? You need to copy several things from one excel spreadsheet to another or from one word document to another or even from one Microsoft Office application to another, so you copy paste, copy paste…… copy paste. I think you get the point. Well let me introduce you to one of those tools that is now a little hidden however it’s a real little gem of a tool when you need to use it. It’s the office clipboard. No, not the normal windows clipboard.

Bitmap Graphics in Photoshop

Everyone knows that Photoshop is an extremely powerful program which can be used to create a rich variety visual of materials for the web, print, animation and 3D. However for first-time users it can seem a bit of a monster, far more difficult to operate than other programs they have used. For starters, you might ask why you can’t just simply click on the things you see in a picture in order to select them? The reason is that, while the majority of programs used by most people on a day-to-day basis are vector-based, Photoshop is a raster-based, or bitmap program. In order to tame the beast, you need firstly to understand what that means and how it makes working in Photoshop different. By the way, the words Raster and bitmap are synonyms and thus can be used interchangeably. So what do they mean? Continue reading “Bitmap Graphics in Photoshop”

Case Study: Office 2003 to 2010 Upgrade Training

A local government organisation were upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 and Office 2003 to Office 2010.

Whilst the organisation has approximately 300 + staff in total, initially there were approximately 80 staff members to have the new platform and applications rolled out to them in a specific week. The 80 staff members were made up of three target groups:

To minimise the impact that the changeover might have, it was identified that the initial target groups would require some training designed to give users an overview of what the new desktop would look like, along with some basic knowledge of how to navigate within the applications that they predominately use: Excel, Word and Outlook.

In designing a solution for our client, we needed to consider timeframes and budget and we worked closely with the key stakeholders within the business to ensure that the end result was a true partnership.

The Requirement:

A local government organisation were upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 and Office 2003 to Office 2010.

In designing a solution for our client, we needed to consider time-frames and budget and we worked closely with the key stakeholders within the business to ensure that the end result was a true partnership. Continue reading “Case Study: Office 2003 to 2010 Upgrade Training”

Database Management in Excel

Correct database heading location When working with data in Excel it surprises me how many people don’t know how to setup a database (also known as a list or table) correctly. This can cause many problems when trying to sort, filter, subtotal, build pivot tables or utilising the table tool. I’ve seen first hand the devastating results of a user sorting only part of a database because the database wasn’t set up correctly and they didn’t know how to safely manage the data. Whether you enter the data directly into your database or you download the data from an external source I’m going to go through the design considerations that you need to apply when setting up your database. There are not many considerations however they are very important. Continue reading “Database Management in Excel”

Working with Dates in Excel

I’ve been a Microsoft Office Master Instructor for over 12 years now and I’ve seen some pretty silly things in Excel when it comes to working with dates. Most people don’t understand how dates are stored so they tend to do whatever it takes to get an answer to their problem. This result often leads to more work, heartache and pain further down the track or they simply just don’t get the right answer. In their eyes, ‘close enough is good enough’. Some of the Insidious, diabolical, mega formulas I’ve seen would leave mathematicians scratching their heads. Lets take a closer look at working with dates in Excel. Continue reading “Working with Dates in Excel”