Microsoft Excel97 Level 2 GE-B1703
Class:
Monday was fun, wasn't it. I thought so. Please take a few minutes to look through the last few pages that we covered, involving Rounding, Payments and Conditional formulae. We didn't get to the exercises which cover these sections, but they're just a few pages ahead. If you take advantage of the Edit Formula dialog box though, Excel walks you through the process (which I find helpful). The different argument requirements begin to blend together after awhile so it's nice to have the dialog box there to guide you.
On Wednesday, we'll start class on page 31, VLOOKUP. This topic can be intimidating, but I really think that it's a good one to understand. I'll spend extra time explaining it at the beginning so that we all are comfortable with the intent of the function --
As I mentioned in the last minute of class, we in Payloads use the VLOOKUP formula in a spreadsheet which calculates (looks up) a calendar date, given an airplane Roll-Out date (Constant), and a number of M-days (user entered) to back off from that Roll-Out.
An example would be in the case of passenger seats, where you need the seats to arrive on the Boeing shipping dock at say 30 days before airplane Roll-Out. We would need to provide a calendar date schedule to the seat supplier, which prior to the spreadsheet would involve hand-calculating the date (using the pocket Boeing M-day calendar and doing the math). By correlating M-days to calendar days in a master table, then looking up the M-day you want and pulling the corresponding calendar day, the process can become automated.
So, the spreadsheet has a master table on it, 2 columns by 1000 rows. The first column is an M-day reference, and the second column is the corresponding calendar date. VLOOKUP searches down the first column for the required M-day, then returns the calendar date stored in the cell (column) immediately adjacent.
For the course content, we should be able to get up to either page 72 or 92 in the book during Wednesday's session.
If you have any comments about the course so far, I'd really like to hear them. This course is here for you, and I want to make sure that it is of value to you all.
Thanks for your attention.
Page Me Anytime from within Boeing