Blog Archives - Page 7 of 8 - Imagine Training

Thinking of upgrading to Excel 2010?
May 1^st, 2013 in Excel
It’s been around a couple of years now, tried and tested, so are you thinking of upgrading to Office 2010? Many of my clients are taking the leap, often having skipped from Office 2003, so their users have quite a learning curve. So, why do it? For a start, the packages are packed with so many new features that users will find they can carry out every day processes faster, and produce better looking documents. An example is for formula in…
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5 Ways to save time every day on your PC
April 14^th, 2013 in Word
I love finding ways to use the features in Microsoft Office 2010 that save you time, over and over again! One of the most useful ones that I’ve been teaching for years, that works in Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint is Autocorrect. It’s great to add to the dictionary of commonly mistyped words, but I use it to save time typing things that I can program it to do for me. I can add in paragraphs that I’ve typed elsewhere by copying and…
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Shhhhhh… Need to Know Basis!
April 1^st, 2013 in General
I visited a small firm recently and was quite surprised how much I could help them with their computer skills. We’d started with a Training Needs Analysis to see what they already knew and it became apparent that the staff requiring training all needed to start with basics. I found that even ‘the Expert’ who everyone else ran to with problems would benefit from the Basics course, so I agreed to run a one day onsite course. Usually people…
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What is the point of IT training
March 28^th, 2013 in General
Many organisations have cut their training budgets and seem to think that staff are able to ‘pick up’ new software on their own. Recently I was training a lady who had been pretty unimpressed with her employers, who expected her to work on Office 2010 with no upgrade training. It was like buying her a new car without checking first that she could use the new controls. Scarey! Even simple things frustrated her and her productivity had fallen…
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Top 10 Tips for creating great presentations
March 27^th, 2013 in PowerPoint
For upgrades from earlier versions of Microsoft PowerPoint I’ve put a few tips about what’s new and worthwhile in the PowerPoint 2010 version of the software onto another blog .. but before we get too technical, let’s just think about what can help you improve your presentations overall. Never mind the techie gimmicks, let’s get down to basics! Decide what the Objectives of your presentation are…
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7 Best New Features of PowerPoint 2010
March 27^th, 2013 in PowerPoint
VIDEO EDITING Probably the most interesting new feature is the ability to embed and edit video from within PowerPoint. Add fades, formatting effects, bookmark scenes, and trim videos to give your presentations. And since the embedded videos become part of your PowerPoint presentation, you don’t have to manage additional files when sharing with others. This includes animated GIFs, and videos saved in AVI, MOV or MPEG format. After you’ve…
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How can you turn slowcoaches into Office Superstars?
March 26^th, 2013 in General
Capitalising on Software Upgrades Every time you buy new Microsoft Office software you hope you’re going to be able to instinctively know how to use it and be productive straight away, using all those new features you’ve read about to do your work in half the time. But so far, it seems that you’re pulling your hair out most of the time – where have all your favourite things gone and how can you do things you used to do…
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Excel – Creating Tables & Simple Calculations
March 20^th, 2013 in Excel
One of my favourite Excel features is the way that in seconds you can create a Table from a group of related data (to see the shortcut keys watch my ‘How To’ video below) then create simple calculations (called ‘Structured References’) that use column headings. A big advantage of this is that Structured References adjust automatically, so you don’t need to rewrite formulas when you later add or delete columns. In a…
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4 ways to Combat Email Overload!
March 10^th, 2013 in Outlook
Decide what to do with each and every message How many times have you opened, reviewed, and closed the same email message or conversation? Those messages are getting lots of attention but very little action. It is better to handle each email message only once before taking action—which means you have to decide what to do with it and where to put it. Under the 4 Ds model, you have four choices: Delete it Defer it Delegate it Do it Delete it…
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Do your IT Trainers really have training skills?
March 6^th, 2013 in General
What makes a subject matter expert into a great trainer? I have so many clients telling me that they feel lost when the office guru ‘shows’ them how to do something on their PC and it set me thinking about how so many companies leave their staff to flounder without giving them instruction in how to use their computer equipment and get the most out of their software. Are they spending thousands on equipment that they fail to train staff to…
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