{"id":1309,"date":"2013-08-30T10:06:12","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T10:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1309"},"modified":"2013-08-30T10:23:14","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T10:23:14","slug":"how-microsoft-excel-shaped-my-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/08\/30\/how-microsoft-excel-shaped-my-career\/","title":{"rendered":"How Microsoft Excel Shaped My Career"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Microsoft-Excel-2013-Logo\"<\/a>That\u2019s a rather bold title I know but having read a rather entertaining piece on 8 Bit Dad titled, An Open Letter to My Son About Microsoft Excel<\/a>. It got me thinking about how Excel actually had quite an impact on my career. <\/p>\n

Back when I was in college I had a part time job at a metal pressing factory. My job was to help the quality department who were in the process of implementing a quality standard<\/a>. I was tasked with creating various forms and spreadsheets for the team as well as providing general IT support to the rest of the factory. <\/p>\n

The manager of the IT department needed to create a weekly chart showing waste figures to add to a notice board and he asked me to try and make this as simple as possible (he was the first to admit he struggled with computers). The biggest problem with this was that the figures came from a old unix based ERP<\/a> system. Each week the production team would give him a floppy disk with some files on that would need to be imported into Excel, formatted correctly and turned into a chart. <\/p>\n

So I created a template for him with the idea being that once a week he\u2019d copy that file, rename it, run through the import process in Excel, copy and paste the figures into the right place, select the chart page and press the print key <\/p>\n

Sound simple enough? <\/p>\n

Nope. <\/p>\n

That was too much for him. My instructions were to make it \u201cTrevor-Proof\u201d (that was his name\u2026yes he actually said that) <\/p>\n

So I went back to the drawing board and hit on the idea of using macros. I then realised that behind the scenes macros were actually automatically generated Visual Basic code (Visual Basic for Applications<\/a>) and it didn\u2019t take me long to figure out that I could record a macro to broadly follow the steps Trevor needed every week and then tweak the code to make it more generalised and hook it up to some buttons I\u2019d placed on the front sheet.<\/p>\n

This worked perfectly! Each week Trevor would open the same file, He\u2019d insert the disk, press a button and It would guide him through the steps automatically and spit out the printed document. <\/p>\n

He loved it and it worked a treat!<\/p>\n

Luckily for me even though the team weren\u2019t all that computer savvy they were able to see lots of other possibilities for doing similar things and my days then largely consisted of developing increasingly complicated Excel \u201capplications\u201d for the business and getting to know Excel and Visual Basic inside out. Soon every department was running at least one of these applications on a daily basis. <\/p>\n

Before long I was approaching the end of college and I\u2019d started to apply for various IT support jobs and along with my CV I\u2019d included some details and examples of the things I\u2019d been developing. Out of the blue one of the companies I\u2019d previously had an (unsuccessful) interview at called me. They\u2019d had a developer leave and wanted to know if I was interested in applying. <\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t actually consider myself a developer\/programmer. I\u2019d been looking for support jobs as that was what I was interested in but I\u2019d included the stuff in my CV to show some of the skills I\u2019d learnt.<\/p>\n

So I went for the interview and before i knew it I\u2019d got a full time job coding. Moving from VBA to "full fat\u201d Visual Basic wasn\u2019t a huge leap and I also did some Visual FoxPro later on. <\/p>\n

Development wasn\u2019t their primary focus though. They provided support to local small businesses and this was where my first exposure to Small Business Server came in. It wasn\u2019t long before I was getting more involved on the support side of things and was duly sent off on the MCSE courses and I guess the rest is history! <\/p>\n

I never saw myself as a \u201creal\u201d developer so it was only natural I\u2019d move back to what I\u2019d started out doing. A lot of the skills I learnt during that time are still relevant now though. I have a better understanding of what goes on \u201cunder the hood\u201d of software and writing scripts (batch, vbscript, powershell) is something that I regularly need to do. <\/p>\n

So there you go, if it hadn\u2019t been for Excel giving me that initial foot in the door I wouldn\u2019t have ended up where I am today. It\u2019s not a conventional route into the IT industry but it worked out ok for me.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That\u2019s a rather bold title I know but having read a rather entertaining piece on 8 Bit Dad titled, An Open Letter to My Son About Microsoft Excel. It got me thinking about how Excel actually had quite an impact on my career. Back when I was in college I had a part time job<\/p>\n

<\/span>Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Microsoft Excel Shaped My Career - Andy's Techie Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/08\/30\/how-microsoft-excel-shaped-my-career\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Microsoft Excel Shaped My Career - Andy's Techie Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That\u2019s a rather bold title I know but having read a rather entertaining piece on 8 Bit Dad titled, An Open Letter to My Son About Microsoft Excel. 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