Melissa Esquibel

Excel: Next Level Skills – Power Query, the Data Model and More!

Whether your Excel proficiency has been a proud banner you wave or something for which you always try to change the subject in an interview, you can’t deny the ability to sling data in a spreadsheet is often non-negotiable for a top notch administrative professional.

For years, Excel stayed pretty much the same. If you wanted to do anything extraordinary, you needed to know how to program macros or create SQL (structured query language) scripts. If you are using the most recent versions of Excel, come and see how Microsoft has put advanced tools directly in your hands, code free.

In this session, Melissa will introduce you to Power Query, the Data Model and pro secrets for churning out high quality reports and dashboards without needing to  know how to write code or learn a new application.

Outlook Inbox Management for Email Hoarders

Do you face each new day with an inbox of hundreds or thousands of emails. Makes you tired just thinking about it, doesn’t it? If you’re tired of stepping over mountains of messages just to find out what you’re supposed to do today, then this course is for you! In this course you’ll:

• – Learn 3 ways to reduce your inbox by hundreds of emails in just seconds without losing anything you absolutely must keep.
• – Learn what the Archive tool does and be confident about what’s happening to your archived messages.
• – Learn how to use Filtering Rules, Quick Steps and Ignore to keep everything in its place, automatically!
• – Finally, stop creating copies of emails, just so you can find them where you want them.

SharePoint Collaboration How it was Meant to Be

Are you wondering “What is this SharePoint thing and how am I supposed to use it?” If you answered “Yes!” help is here with SharePoint Collaboration How it was Meant to Be.

SharePoint offers a better alternative to managing your work team processes and communication. No more endless copies and attachments! No more being locked out of files while someone else is editing. You’ll finally be able to make sense of:

• – The basic elements of SharePoint: lists, libraries and pages
• – The right way to set up libraries to make files easy to find
• – Managing permissions
• – Team calendars and tasks
• – Integrating SharePoint and Outlook

OneNote for the Savvy Admin

Microsoft’s note taking application, coupled with the power of the cloud, is becoming an integral part of the admin pro landscape. After a brief introduction to the OneNote application, Melissa will show you these communication enhancing, sanity saving strategies from admins just like you.

• – Creating travel itineraries that are portable to any device!
• – Staying in touch with the boss without endless texts and e-mail messages
• – Managing projects and sharing tasks without losing control
• – Scramble-free meeting management in one tool.

Demystifying Excel Pivot Tables

One of the most powerful tools in Excel is surprisingly easy to use. Data is not getting any smaller. And, the information we’re being asked to provide isn’t getting any less complicated. So, why are Pivot Tables so important to our work? Well, Pivot Tables can help you aggregate, calculate and format large volumes of data in easy to understand tables and charts, and do it quickly!

Traditional tools like sort, filter, grouping and subtotaling can only get you so far. And the nature of these tools means that you’re either making multiple copies of the same data or designing reporting processes that are so manually intensive that errors are almost a guarantee! The flexibility and feature richness of Pivot Tables make them a must have tool in your toolbox for information analysis and reporting. We’ll cover:

• – Optimal data structures for Pivot Tables
• – Easy fixes to ugly data to get you on your way
• – Creating and Modifying Pivot Tables
• – Creating interactivity in Pivot Tables with Report Filters, Slicers, filtering and sorting
• – The impact of refreshing your pivot tables
• – How to create charts
• – Calculating with pivoted data

Excel Deep Dives by Application (HR/Payroll, Finance/Acctg, Sales/Marketing)

These courses are specifically designed for specific job roles, with a mix of formula and function solutions, as well as data analysis tools like tables, pivot tables, and dashboards.

Managing Projects with Everyday Office

Do you manage projects? Are you lucky enough to have robust project management applications that can manage task plans, track progress and help you plan? If you use the standard Microsoft Office Suite, you do! Microsoft Excel, Outlook and OneNote all feature powerful project-management tools. You just need to know where to look!

In Excel, you’ll discover:

• – How to use Filter to create instant status reports.
• – How to create charts that let you track resource usage and progress.
• – How to use Conditional Formatting to alert you of past due tasks or overcommitted resources

In Outlook you’ll learn:

• – How using categories can enable management of multiple projects at a glance.
• – How to create task plan “templates” for repeatable success
• – How to delegate tasks to others and keep tabs on their progress.

In OneNote, you’ll see:

• – How task lists can synch with other programs
• – How project status reports practically write themselves
• – Change control features that let you know who changed what when
• – Clever uses for tags that keep everyone on task

Tackling the Big Document: Advanced Word Skills

Everyone thinks they know enough Microsoft Word until… THE BIG DOCUMENT! From creating sections, headers, footers, tables of contents, tables of figures and precise page numbering, working on the big document can be daunting and time consuming, unless you know the right tools to use! Right from the beginning you’ll be amazed at the time savings you’ll realize in keyboard shortcuts and styles. You’ll understand how to create a multi-sectioned document that displays different headers based on the section title, different footers based on the document portion (cover and table of contents, body, appendix, etc). You’ll even master those custom numbering schemes often found in technical documents, procedure manuals and RFPs (requests for proposals). Stop struggling and start taming that big document before it takes over your life!

PowerPoint on the Fast Track

Create PowerPoint presentations in minutes instead of hours. Yes, I said it! Do you spend an entire day creating a presentation? Are you nudging objects and tweaking text formatting on each individual slide to get it to look just right! Let Melissa give you back your time (and your sanity) with this eye-opening course on the RIGHT way to create a PowerPoint presentation. You’ll discover:

• – Why PowerPoint may not be the best place to start!
• – Why manual formatting changes to individual slides is costing you hours of time and frustration.
• – How to create slick graphics and even animate them in just a few clicks.
• – The RIGHT way to get Excel data, charts and graphs in a presentation to protect sensitive information and allow it to be responsive to changes.
• – Tips along to the way to be a superstar presenter and meaningfully engage your audiences.

PowerPoint Razzle Dazzle: Animation and more

Have you ever seen an over-animated presentation and just rolled your eyes? Getting things to flash and fly across the screen may be fun, but it is not useful if it does not communicate your message. But, PowerPoint does enable you to create some pretty slick animations that keep your audience engaged and really help drive you message home. This course goes beyond bullet points that fly and fade in to video-quality animation. You’ll learn how to:

• – Work with the animation timeline to be more precise about when an animation starts and stops.
• – How to approximate movement using object transform effects.
• – Take a simply SmartArt diagram and make it come alive on the screen.
• – Animate charts and graphs so you can break down a complicated diagram into simple bite-sized explanations.
• – You’ll even learn how to use the new Morph transition and 3-D objects

Organizing Chaos: The Email Inbox

This session is run in conjunction with Dr Monica Seeley

Dr. Monica Seeley and Melissa Esquibel, MCT, MOSM, will examine the why and wherefore of organization, then take you into the nitty gritty of folders, categories, labels and stars in both Outlook and Gmail.

There are many ways to organize and process email. Is your method working well or do you find it falling apart midstream leading you into another massive clean-up operation? Perhaps you are hoarding email, squirrelling away messages in folders so you don’t have to see the chaos (organized chaos is still chaos).

After this lively session with the authors of 100 Tips to Supercharge Your Productivity (due for release Autumn 2020), you’ll walk away with new insight into why you keep messages, how to find them, where you keep them, and for how long.

Wrapping your head around Office 365

There are so many myths and guesses about what Office 365 is and isn’t. When you hear the announcement that your organization is going to Office 365, it can start a panic. What does it mean? This program will dispel the myths and give you a game plan as you consider transitioning to Office 365. Already gone? Then this program will help you grasp how all the elements fit together, how they are meant to interact, why online apps and desktop apps are both included and how they are related. This program is highly customizable and can be extended to manage rollout training, generate job aids, and custom solutions.

Keynote Presentations

Producing a conference? Begin with the end in mind by launching it with a keynote that sets up your attendees for success by giving them a strategy for taking notes, organizing takeaways and constructing a trip report or making a presentation that will enable them to attend more events like yours!

• – Bringing it Back with Impact: Showing ROI for conference attendance
• – Getting ahead by getting out front: Presenting for the reluctant

The role of technology in career success is virtually in extricable. When you see a toddler operating an iPad and grade schoolers writing programming code, it’s time to start realizing that being comfortable with technology on the job is really not optional. That said, technical prowess alone isn’t enough to be a standout professional. You must know how to use it to support the most important elements of business, people and communication.

• – Worshipping Idols: The mistake of tech for tech’s sake:
• – Overwhelmed by Technology: Staying relevant in a fast-moving world
• – Talking Tech across the Generation Gap (and other Bias Blocks)