What are your best tips for learning to use an application (programming language, really) like MS Excel? Here are some tips I came up with for my business students. Any advice I should add? 

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- Learn *what* Excel can do, so you know it's there when you need it someday. Explore the menus, experiment, read the docs.
- Know it's there, but can't find it? Know the way Excel organizes its interface: backstage, tabs, ribbon groups, dropdowns, more options menu. Also, keyboard shortcuts, mouse shortcuts, and right-click context menus.
- When all else fails, search intelligently: "site: Microsoft.com" in Google, StackExchange's SuperUser forum. 
- Don't know how to use it? RTFM! Help menu in Excel, documentation on MS sites, function signatures as you type formulas. 
- Trying to build something complex? Break it into pieces and test the pieces separately. 
- Have a working solution? Now ask, is there a better way? (Easier, more elegant, self-documenting.) Can I present my final solution more clearly, cleanly, compactly, beautifully? 

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 GM, replying to your note on wss://nostr.fmt.wiz.biz 

 Out of experience 
Majority of people don’t get even basic functionality of excel.
Including IT professionals.

If they can do complex functions without programming. They will learn to code out of a need to speed up their work. 

 One of my themes in class is that the bar is actually pretty low for becoming the local Excel "expert" is pretty low at most companies. I.e., just knowing how to write formulas with both relative and absolute references is a superpower. Today we added tables and names for cells/rages. Later will call some APIs and add some SQL. This is for business majors, not CS students, so really advanced stuff in context. 

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