***NSW Government Subsidised places available for qualifying applicants. There is also funding available for small business owners/employees if the business has less than 20 employees or a turnover of less than $2M/year. Please contact College office for more information.
Do you already excel with Excel for work or study? Looking for ways to go far beyond its built-in functionality? Want to tap into hidden powers of Excel and Office? Want to understand important IT principles to continue learning about automation and programming? If so, this is the course for you!

Do you know standard Excel supports functional programming and that Microsoft Office includes Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)? In many cases, this is the fastest way to improve productivity for the non-professional programmer. Just a few lines of procedural code can save you hours of work.

This unique course uses Excel to boost your automation skills while learning key computing principles. Each lesson teaches a fundamental of programming, and then finds a solution to arduous business tasks. By knowing the underlying principles, students will be able to decipher online manuals and go on to understand other programming languages.

Let us show you how to take thorough advantage of Excel, the application you know best, to do things with VBA that otherwise require installing an advanced programming environment. At the end of this course, you‘ll have completed your first VBA project. With the fundamentals under your belt, you‘ll be in a position to pick up more skills over time, impressing your managers or directors, gaining a clear understanding of IT professionals, and feeling innovative with your work and business. No concession.

Agenda

Week 1: Popping the hood learn about the Office VBA programming environment and write your first practical computer program in VBA with a basic loop, following common conventions.
Week 2: Creating procedures let‘s think about what a program is, then learn how to design a program, and how to use Excel macro recorder to write parts of that program.
Week 3: Information is data learn about variables, data types, data conversion, type functions, data tables and how computers handle numbers, text and images.
Week 4: Functional programming learn about computer logic and programs that fit inside an Excel cell, including how to test functions, avoid user input errors and repair sheets with VBA.
Week 5: Working like an engine learn more about loops, other control structures and error handling to build robust, reliable, time-saving programs.
Week 6: Object oriented design learn how VBA reveals the inner workings of Excel from charts to pictures to capacities hidden from users, then practice by writing an output text file program.
Week 7: First project put together everything you know, by completing your first project within two hours, with help on hand to get you though errors and other problems you may encounter.
Week 8: Using AI intelligently learn how to use ChatGPT or other AI language models to fast-track and debug programs while avoiding the pitfalls of code that doesn‘t work or make sense. Demonstrate your first project to your classmates and compare to what AI generates.

Materials

FIRST SESSION NEEDS: (Needs are advised to participants on their confirmation and available on the internet)
Bring your laptop with any version of Excel software, except online or web versions.
Bring a pen to write on your freely-provided course notes.

Venue

403 HUME HIGHWAY LIVERPOOL
The College office (Suite 5) and Training Rooms (Suite 8) are located at 403 Hume Highway, above Aussie Home Loans between Brinlay Paints and Little Kingdom Child Care Centre. For disabled access and those with mobility issues there is a Platform Stairlift provided contact the College office on 8080 2121 for more information.
Parking underneath the building is limited to evening and weekends with a maximum of 12 non-stacker spaces accessed via an unnamed lane off Boundary Road (behind Brinlay Paints). Unrestricted parking is available in Reilly Street, Alderson Avenue, Gill Avenue and Boundary Road west of Gill Avenue on the College (western) side of the Hume Highway and in Congressional Drive and the Collingwood Museum (including 3 disabled parking spaces) on the eastern side of the highway.
Public Transport (Go to transportnsw.info for more details). Buses connect from railway stations - the closest being Liverpool station.
Bus Routes: 851, 852, 855, 856, 857, 870, 871, 872. Going North: Bus stop on Hume Hwy (outside College - after Boundary Road). Going South: 2 Bus stops on Hume Hwy: 1. near Monteclair Avenue and 2. opposite Boundary Road.