Training Materials

Data is everywhere. Whether you are at the grocery store, office, laboratory, classroom, or ballpark, you are awash in data: prices, schedules, performance measures, lab results, recipes, contact information, quality metrics, market indices, grades, and statistics.*Most job roles today involve some form of data management. In the case of data workers, it may be their primary job task. For some, like research scientists and accountants, data management may be a strong component of the job. And for others, such as sales clerks or those in the skilled trades, data management may consist of an incidental job responsibility such as time reporting or recording a sale. But virtually everyone is affected in some way by the need to manage data.*A relational database application such as Microsoft® Office Access® 2013 can help you and your organization collect and manage large amounts of data. Access is a versatile tool. You can use it as a personal data management tool (for your use alone), or you can use it as a construction set to develop applications for an entire department or organization. In this course, you will learn how to use Access 2013 to manage your data, including creating a new database; constructing tables; designing forms and reports; and creating queries to join, filter, and sort data.*You can also use this course to prepare for the Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Certification exam for Microsoft Access 2013.

With basic computer skills, it’s likely that you are comfortable using a computer to perform basic tasks. Instead of using paper or a calculator, it’s time to think about using the computer to store and manipulate data in electronic format. *When you are manually calculating and recording data on paper, you must recalculate every time that you add new data. If you are working with large volumes of data, by the time you have recalculated the new set of data, the paper-based sheets can be practically illegible, forcing you to create a new copy each time that data changes. Updating data in an Excel worksheet is fast and easy. All you need to do is insert the new data and configure the sheet so that calculations are updated whenever the data changes. Storing your data in Excel also enables you to run reports on the data, perform calculations, print your work to share with others, and much more. In this course, you will use Microsoft® Office Excel® 2013 to create spreadsheets and workbooks that you can use to store, manipulate, and share your data.

Advances in technology have made it possible to store ever increasing amounts of data. Along with this, the need to analyze that data and gain actionable insight is greater than ever. You already have experience working with Excel and creating basic PivotTables to summarize data. But, Excel is capable of doing so much more. Being able to harness the power of advanced PivotTable features and create PivotCharts will help you to gain a competitive edge. You will not only be able to summarize data for you to analyze, but also organize the data in a way that can be meaningfully presented to others. This leads to data-driven business decisions that have a better chance for success for everyone involved.