Advanced Data Manipulation with Excel with Ian Schnoor

I've repeatedly heard from various people at Rotman that Ian Schnoor's courses were quite good. This particular course was offered by the Rotman PACE (Professional and Career Essentials) team. Also, I think that most people don't realize the awesome potential in Microsoft Excel. I would even go so far as to suggest that most people probably classify themselves intermediate / advanced when they are really beginner (a great metaphor for business knowledge and the biases and models we study in FIT).

I was a little skeptical about learning "Advanced" data manipulation techniques in Excel, the same way I was skeptical about the Intermediate Excel Rotman Pre-MBA session. It turns out that each of those was REALLY useful, even for myself who heavily used Excel in my Analyst Wireless Consultant position at RIM.

We reviewed pivot tables, VLOOKUPs, OFFSETS, text parsing functions, advanced filters and other REALLY useful topics in Excel. There are so many scenarios where these tools apply which can easily save you HOURS per project (or days in your life). With time being precious, it's often tough to justify spending a precious Saturday on something that isn't direcly MBA nor socially related, but this was definitely worth it.