Old Stuff

I did go a little overboard on this class. Instead of the standard hour-long course, this baby is over two hours long. There were just so many examples I wanted to include in this one... so I hope you enjoy it!

I've got it listed on the site for a discounted price of just $19.99 which is $5.00 off the retail price of $24.99. The price goes up on April 1st, so make sure you order it now to take advantage of the discount.

If you haven't yet ordered VB101 and wish to learn how to program in Visual Basic, you can order the course for only $5.99 now and add the handbook on as an option. We have electronic (online) versions as well as printed manuals available too.

The videos are recorded. They'll be going online for MYOLP members shortly. Everyone else will be able to order the full class later today.

What's coming up this month? I'm in the middle of finishing up a whole bunch of new Microsoft Access courses. If you've been following along with our Access series so far, you're going to love these new courses. After that, look for new VB and ASP courses. Lots more to follow. Questions? Contact me.

This year, send them something that will help them use that computer that's been sitting in the corner collecting dust - or that they just play games on. What better gift could you send someone who might be getting a new computer for the holidays?

Best of all... our Gift CDs are great for giving to folks around the office. You've been learning Word and Excel with our videos. Great! Now, you're the go-to-guy or gal in the office who everyone comes to with questions. Here's a great gift idea for them... now they can learn Word and Excel on their own and will leave you alone.

For more information on how you can send a FREE CD to your friends and family, just visit our FREE Holiday Gift CD Page.

These were very intense courses to record. Both are jam-packed with information (which is why they took me so long to produce). They both deal with PivotTables, a very powerful feature of Excel. If you want to learn how to get the most out of your Excel data, you want to learn about PivotTables. There's a LOT to learn (believe me!) but it's well worth it.

Some weeks they might be existing lessons from our course library (like this week). Some weeks I might place samples of new courses that are in development and haven't been released yet. Other weeks I might mix things up a bit by putting custom-made lessons, seminar clips, live videos, or even special tips-and-tricks videos online. I plan on having lots of fun with this!

If you'd like to get notified when I post new lessons, make sure to subscribe to the FREE Lesson of the Week. Of course, I'll also post a notice here.

So... for the rest of this week, I'm going to work on the Handbooks for the Photoshop courses we currently have available. I've gotten a lot of emails from customers asking when the next Photoshop course will be coming out. Here's what I have planned...

I want to spend some time focusing on Photoshop Elements 3.0, the new release from Adobe. I know a lot of people use Elements, and the latest version has lots of cool new features. So after DP101, I'm going to record a few Elements classes with handbooks.

Then, after we've got a few Elements courses ready, I'm probably going to switch back to regular Photoshop and cover some of the more advanced features. It should be fun!

Now, all of you Access, Excel, Word (etc.) fans, don't fret... I'll be making more courses for you too. One of my personal New Years Resolutions is to get more courses out at a faster pace from last year. I'm going to try to release one new class a week. I'm going to try to accomplish this by making several new courses for one topic at a time (like I did for Access last year). It goes much faster because I don't have to "switch gears" going from one topic to another. So Photoshop Elements is the next topic to focus on.

I hope your New Year has been more productive than mine so far (sniffle, sniffle... blows nose). I'll keep you posted!

Also, there are a few hundred orders placed around Christmas time that will be shipping out this week. If you haven't received your order yet, just hang in there - it's on the way.

Finally, we'd like to give a warm congratulations to Jen, our customer service manager. She just welcomed a new baby girl to her family.

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One of the things I've gotten a lot of email about is our Chat Room. People always say that they have a hard time finding anyone available online to answer their questions. Well, you're right. We're a small company, and with all of the rest of the things our people have to do, it's hard to find time to sit in the chat room.

Personally, I'm going to make an effort to spend more time in there myself. I like chatting with my customers - and I love to hear your feedback, or offer help when I can. Just this evening, I got a really good idea for an Access database project while chatting with a nice lady who needed help with her MYOLP password.

Anyhow, I've updated the web site so that you will only see the icons and messages offering LIVE HELP if myself or one of my customer service agents are ACTUALLY online. This way, you won't have to go through the trouble of clicking on the CHAT link only to find nobody's home.

However... we do have a "callback" feature in the chat room. If you log into the chat room and nobody's there, you can put your name on a waiting list. As soon as someone comes online, you'll automatically get an email that there is an agent waiting to help you.

Again, I'm going to TRY to get online more often myself. I spend about an hour a day reading and responding to my normal email. I'm going to try to put myself in the chat room while I'm doing that (based on my work load, of course), and I'm going to tell everyone else here to try to do that too.

If you've sent any email in to our customer service department recently (via the Web Contact Form, of course) you should be happy to see that you got a reply FAST. We're averaging about 24 hours to get back to customers right now - which is MUCH better than we used to be.

Oh, and some of you have (strangely enough) asked to see a current picture of me, since the image elsewhere on the Web site is really old (about 4 years old now). I've lost about 150 pounds (and the moustache) and don't look anything like I used to. See my weight loss web site if you'd like to know how. If you have some of my Word or FrontPage classes where I put the picture of myself in the document, that's a real old picture. I'll try to post a current picture soon. >Richard

Only classes 220 and 221 are finished right now and are available for download. You can pre-order 222 thru 224, but they won't be ready for another couple of days.

There is also a discounted Combo Package available for all of the Data Analysis courses - so you can take advantage of a significant discount if you want to order all five classes. Again, you will be able to get started right away on 220 and 221, but the rest will be available in a few days when they're finished.

For the rest of you - I'll try to get Excel 220 and 221 available in the online ordering section later tonight so you can purchase and download them.

Personally, I've been busy recording new Excel courses...

Microsoft Excel 220 and 221 are finished. The videos are "in the can." All I have to do now is compile them together and package them up and they're good to go. Expect to see them both available on the Order Page very soon. Next I'm going to be working on the handbooks for both of these courses which usually takes a day or two - then you should see the full outline on the web site, and the handbooks will be available online as well.

Of course, MYOLP members will have first access to them - so they can email me and tell me how good or bad they are. Ha ha ha.

What's covered in these classes? Well, if you're a student of my Excel tutorials, you might have noticed I skipped a few numbers. I went from 202 right to 220. Why? The 220- series is going to be all about Data Analysis. Remember that little survey I sent out back at the beginning of September (look down the list here and you'll see it). Well, people overwhelmingly want to learn how to use things like data lists, grouping, subtotals, and the number one request: Pivot Tables. So, the 220 series will focus on just that.

Excel 220 starts off with the basics: creating lists, formatting lists, using data entry forms, advanced list sorting techniques, and customizing toolbars (because there are a ton of data analysis features that we need to drop on a custom toolbar so we don't have to spend hours clicking deep in the menus every time we want to do something).

Excel 221 looks at filtering with AutoFilters, custom AutoFilters, advanced filters, custom views, the SUBTOTAL function, and generating automatic subtotals. We'll also go off on a side project where we'll use advanced filtering techniques to generate late notice mailing labels (using Word) for a select group of customers with past due balances. This was a fun class to record.

Both of those courses are FINISHED. Next, I'm going to write up the handbooks for them, and then work on Excel 222, which will start getting into Pivot Tables. You really should learn the material from 220 and 221 first, however, before embarking on the big quest... Pivot Tables when used properly have a lot of cool and powerful features.

I don't have an exact number for the total list of 220- series classes, but we'll probably have at least four or five of them. I also want to cover Excel database functions, importing and exporting data (so when someone hands you a disk or emails you a file, you can get that data into Excel), scrubbing data (so you can clean up that mess they send you before analyzing it), and then of course scenarios and the solver. Plus there's more... I'll get into that in more detail later.

I'm going to try to finish up ALL of these courses this week (the week of October 9th). We'll see how it goes. Handbooks can sometimes take more time than the actual classes, but I like to write them myself instead of having one of my staffers work on them - it's a good chance for me to quality control the videos PLUS as you know (if you've read any of my handbooks) I always like to throw in little extras that I don't think of until after I'm done with the videos.

What's next? After the Excel Data Analysis series? That all depends on you. Send me your feedback. Do you want to learn more Excel? Or should I move on to a different topic. I know a lot of people have been emailing me for more Access and Photoshop courses. You tell me what you want to see! Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Thanks for reading all of this. I'll try to update this page more often. Until next time, enjoy!

>Richard

We want to know what YOU want to see covered in the next Excel class. Tell us specifically what topics you want to see us cover in Excel. Give us examples. Send your comments to us here: Excel Ideas!

Whew! That was a long one... it's not that the DP101 material was very difficult... but introductory classes just take so much longer to prepare (lots of pictures and slides)... plus I have to go at a slower pace (beginner material). Not to mention it's a 90 minute class. A lot of work went into this one! If you want to learn more about digital photography - or don't know anything and want to start using your digital camera properly - this is the course for you. I'll have a full outline on the web site in a few hours so you can see exactly what this course covers.

Now it's on to some new stuff! Excel and Photoshop are next.

Following that, we have some new Photoshop and Excel classes coming out - including New Handbooks for both our existing Photoshop and Excel courses (you'll have the opportunity to get them when the new classes come out). We'll end the month with a new Microsoft Access release or two. Any questions, please contact us.