My MCAS journey

[zyzzyva57]

If you are trying to get certified in M$ Office products, you might appreciate my journey this year



I finally got certified in Office 2007's Word, Excel, PP, and Access

I used the official study guide

then MeasureUp, because it also showed me how things were done

I also used YouTube a lot (most forget YouTube has many excellent training videos, some better than others)

Another excellent source of help is offered FREE by M$!

Also, the Help files with a particular product CANNOT be discounted

My tests were Certipoint

Speed is the big deal, so you have very little time to think, and this is rough with the more obscure things you can do with Office products

I found Excel hard with charts, because you can change so much with coloring and legends and axises, etc...Otherwise, I had NO problems

PP was hard for me, because I am NOT artistic and care little about all the crap you can do with coloring and gee-whiz graphics

I am one of the few who loves Access, so I breezed through this test--only one chart question, and I did NOT answer the two on Pivot Tables

The future...

When Office 2010 comes out, I plan on investigating more Certipoint's products since this company does the testing

What I will be looking for is does its products show you how a question is done, as does MeasureUp

With MeasureUp, this company offers great deals, so look for the best price or ask for it or get on its mailing list

The weakness to the Official M$ study guide is the example questions does NOT show you how to do them

[Matrix]

Congratulations!! You are now a certified specialist!

[zyzzyva57]

Thanks

It was rough journey

But, but, I did do my main 2009 New Year's resolution!!!!!!

I got so freaking sick of all those darn obscure things you can do with these Office products and failures and setbacks, I thought it would never ever end

In fact, for Access, I went in just to take it to get a feel for the test and I looked down and I had 15 minutes to spare -- thankfully, Access is my favorite Office product

PP (of all things) was a nightmare, because the questions took the whole time

Hating PP didn't help my cause either

[Matrix]

I believe so, it's definitely not easy to pass all tests.

Access is quite different from other software, it's more about programming. Here it got a dedicated forum, and more active!

PP needs some design sense.

[zyzzyva57]

The learning curve with Access is very, very steep

For example, with its Tables, Queries, and Forms (set in a datasheet view) looking like an Excel spreadsheet, Access calls BOTH columns and cells Fields, which I find to this day, positively weird -- once this dawned on me, things went better

I am glad I am not alone is finding PP at times illogical

I know there are a zillion ways to do something in one of the Office products, but with time, I caught onto the logic, which continues to elude me with much of PP

It helps, too, if you are artistic with PP, which I am not, as for example, being able to color this and that right down almost to the pixle level--GAWDDDDDDDDDDDD

Excel is logical, but oh, how, I hate charts, but oh, how, the test loves em

Word, well, Word is Word, your generic work horse you neither love nor hate, though I did come to hate all the darn clip art stuff and, and, of course, those charts -- M$ so loves em -- I can only imagine what it will do with Office 2010

Only Access spared me of question after question on charts and clip art