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Need to update MS Office skills

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My MS Office skills are out of date. I've been looking at various online courses, which vary from a couple of hundred pounds to almost two thousand pounds which I can't really afford at the moment. Can anyone recommend a cheap course that isn't just an online book. I need to be able to actually do the exercises rather than just read about them. I've had several books from the library but the screenshots are too small to be able to read easily.

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My MS Office skills are out of date. I've been looking at various online courses, which vary from a couple of hundred pounds to almost two thousand pounds which I can't really afford at the moment. Can anyone recommend a cheap course that isn't just an online book. I need to be able to actually do the exercises rather than just read about them. I've had several books from the library but the screenshots are too small to be able to read easily.

 

Have you looked at the xxx for Dummies series of books? They are very good and not that expensive.

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Yes, the Dummies books are good but these days, I pick things up better if I am actually doing specific exercises in whichever application it is. Just reading things like "press this key, select that, press enter" and so on, just doesn't stick in my memory any more. Plus the fact that my pc is quite old and I'm unable to afford anything more up to date with better spec, which is why I was looking at actual courses. It would be handy if I could get a kind of placement within a company for a few weeks, at no cost to the Employer, but in return for being taught the latest edition of MS Office. However, I very much doubt the Jobcentre would approve and would stop my JSA.

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Try edX.org. They have loads of different online courses, many of which are free! I searched for MS Office and found "Microsoft Office Fundamentals: Outlook, Word, and Excel". Hope this helps

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If you need the certs, why not self learn with something like CBT Nuggets, then do the exam.

 

I've not taken any MOS type exams so i'm only guessing that you can self learn then take the exams at a Microsoft test centre, as you can/could with likes of MCP, MCSE etc.

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My MS Office skills are out of date.

 

 

There are a lot of free MS Office/IT refresh courses around like this one from Reed:

 

https://www.reed.co.uk/courses/essential-it-skills-level-2/31701#/courses/free/microsoft

 

Old computers aren't a problem, anything from 2011 or so will run the latest versions of Office. If you're on Windows 7 you can almost certainly (still) update it to Windows 10 if you have the Certificate of Authority (CoA) sticker with the Licence key on it.

 

If not, refurb machines like a Dell 790 I3 are still very capable and will come with Windows 10 installed.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cheap-Dell-OptiPlex-790-SFF-Desktop-PC-4GB-DDR3-RAM-250GB-HDD-Windows-10-Pro/122870522740?epid=219538110&hash=item1c9ba76374:g:~O4AAOSwhclbSM1N

 

A lot of businesses are still using older versions of Office, but again, you can get a full version of Office Pro Plus 2016 very cheaply online. I paid a tenner for a legit licensed version last month. (I'm using a 2011 computer.)

 

Most Office questions are answered online if you get stuck. The easiest way to start is to dig in and work on producing documents with Word and Publisher, using tables and images.

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Thanks everyone. I'm going to check out some of these as I'd never heard of them before and, probably unsurprisingly, the Jobcentre never comes up with any of this type of information. Thanks again everyone.

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