How do Beginners Learn Microsoft Office?

Microsoft Office skills are in demand in many industries. If you want to learn how to prepare documents, create spreadsheets, and put together a great presentation, here are some ideas for learning Microsoft Office as a complete beginner.

Getting Started with Microsoft Office

If you want to learn Microsoft Office because you are going back to school or looking for a job, it's a good idea to sign up for a bootcamp class or certificate course. This is the fastest, most efficient way to learn the new skills you will need.

Learning Microsoft Office can give you an edge over other job applicants and increase your job prospects. Here are some specific skills covered in a Microsoft Office course.

Word

From keeping a daily diary to writing a novel, you can use Microsoft Word for all of your document production. Word does more than help you write and edit documents. It will check spelling and grammar, let you add photos and images, and includes a collection of templates to help you create resumes, business cards, newsletters, brochures, and social media posts. The latest version includes Microsoft's new Copilot AI Assistant for writing assistance. 

Excel

Set up a budget, take inventory, keep lists of clients, and more with Excel. This spreadsheet program lets you Input data into individual cells, organize the worksheet into rows and columns, and perform calculations and computations according to preset or custome formulas. Excel lets you create graphs, tables, and charts for home or business.

PowerPoint

It's easy to create entertaining and informative presentations with Microsoft PowerPoint. You can choose from many different templates or create your own according to your personal style or brand. Add text, drawings, photos, or videos to the slides, and then choose transitions or animations to add punch to your presentation. When you save your file to OneDrive, you can access your presentations from any device anywhere to easily share and collaborate with others. 

Outlook

Despite more recent developments, email remains one of the most effective marketing tools out there. Microsoft Outlook helps you manage email, update a calendar, organize files, and schedule meetings easily and efficiently. Outlook can also help you stay focused and avoid distractions with an Ignore feature, and lets you set alerts that make sure you never miss an important message. Stay on top of your business with Outlook, whether you are at home, in the office, or on the go.

Teams

In today's new remote work environment, Microsoft Teams lets you work together with colleagues, hold meetings, and share files. The Whiteboard feature is a collaborative workspace where you can share ideas in real time. Bookmark important messages to access them later on and attend meetings on your phone or desktop. Teams is the perfect tool for any team looking to boost productivity and stay connected.

OneNote

Many people rely on a little notebook for taking notes and jotting down reminders. OneNote lets you do that digitally from different devices like laptops, desktops, tablets, or phones. You can organize the notes however you want or move them around and make them easier to find later. You can also add images to OneNote. Just snap a picture to remind yourself of a task or item you need to remember.

OneDrive

Microsoft provides 1 TB of cloud storage on OneDrive with every Microsoft 365 subscription. This is plenty of storage for files that you want to store safely and share with friends or colleagues from anywhere on any device.

Free Microsoft Office Tools for Beginners

You can find many free seminars and tutorials online. This kind of content can be helpful to get an idea of what is included in Microsoft Office and how the individual applications work. Noble Desktop offers seminars like Top 10 Beginner Excel Tricks You Need to Know and PowerPoint Presentation Design to introduce users to these powerful programs. Microsoft also offers free tutorials to help you get started with Microsoft Office. These are grouped by subject and are available on the Microsoft 365 website.

Live Microsoft Office Training for Beginners

Many people find live classes to be the quickest and most efficient way to learn Microsoft Office skills. Professional training centers offer bootcamp and certificate-granting programs for people who want to build technical skills. Classes meet in person or live online, on a part-time or full-time schedule. 

Bootcamp classes are perfect for beginners because they get you started quickly. Microsoft Office bootcamp classes last one to three days and focus on a single topic like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. These intensive classes begin with the basics and move through more advanced material.

The Next Step

After a bootcamp class or two, you may be interested in signing up for a certification course. These are usually made up of a series of bootcamp classes around a topic like using Microsoft Office applications. Certification courses are a good way to get a thorough education in using the different programs. 

You might also want to pursue a certification from Microsoft. You can earn a Microsoft Office Specialist: Associate certification that covers Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. In order to earn this certificate, you need to pass an exam.

Learn Microsoft Office Skills with Noble Desktop

Whether you want to learn Microsoft Office skills for home tasks, school work, or to find a new job, you can find many course options. These 6-12 hour courses are available in person in New York City or live online from anywhere.

The Microsoft Office Fundamentals Bootcamp from Noble Desktop helps you gain the skills you need in essential Office applications like Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook. These four applications are used every day by businesses all over the world, and learning how to use them efficiently and effectively can help you start a new career. Instruction includes an overview of the Excel workflow, how to format worksheets and add visual effects, and how to create graphics. The course also covers creating PowerPoint presentations by choosing layouts, adding content, and running a slide show. In the Word class, you will learn how to navigate through documents, add images, and create tables, lists, and notes. Finally, the Outlook class will cover automated email searches, managing a calendar, scheduling, organizing contacts, and tracking correspondence. You get a 15% discount when you sign up for the 4-day bootcamp instead of taking each class separately. 

Microsoft Office Intermediate Bootcamp from Noble Desktop takes up where the Fundamentals class stops. You will learn about Excel Pivot Tables, advanced functions like VLOOKUP, and how to make your workflow smoother and faster with automation. The PowerPoint module covers creating reusable templates, how to import files from Excel, use multimedia and layered objects, and record a slideshow. The Word section covers automation tools, custom document styles, and productivity features. Finally, the Outlook class shows you how to configure email accounts, perform advanced searches, control spam, and manage calendars and contacts.

The Complete Microsoft Office Bootcamp from Noble Desktop will make you an Office expert. This advanced course offers 54 hours of instruction in PowerPoint, Outlook, Word, and Excel. The course goes from introductory material through advanced to give you comprehensive training in these important business skills.

Noble Desktop offers Outlook Bootcamp for new users who want to understand how to use this Office application for sending email and scheduling appointments to increase productivity. Learn about customizing, automating, and managing your email accounts, plus optimizing your calendar and organizing your contacts.

If you want to build confidence in your document preparation skills, Word Bootcamp from Noble Desktop can help you get there. This comprehensive class can take you from beginner to expert in as little as two days. Learn how to navigate through Word and format documents; work with text at the sentence and paragraph level; insert images, tablets, lists, and citations; track changes; customize document style; and use forms and mail merge features.

Noble Desktop's three-day Excel Bootcamp will take you from absolute beginner to expert in a few days. The course starts with the basics like performing calculations, creating graphs, formatting, and printing. Move on to more advanced features like pivot tables, VLOOKUP, SUMIFs, and advanced database functions like INDEX and MATCH. This course is available in person in NYC or live online from anywhere.

PowerPoint Bootcamp is a two-day course from Noble Desktop to help you learn PowerPoint basics like creating layouts, adding text, images, shapes, SmartArt, and more. Work with tables and charts to organize information in your presentations. Day two delves into more advanced features like how to create a reusable PowerPoint Theme/Template to make an easily updatable, engaging, consistent presentation. Add excitement with animations, add video, and learn how to manage large presentations with sections and custom shows.

Excel Level 1: Fundamentals from Noble Desktop covers the basic concepts of Microsoft Excel. This course covers how to do calculations, create graphs, format worksheets, and print or share them in Microsoft Excel. Class assignments are designed to help you practice concepts based on real-world examples as you learn them. Students also receive exclusive reference materials as part of the class. This course is available in person in NYC or live online from anywhere.

Noble Desktop's introductory PowerPoint Level 1 course covers the fundamental concepts of this popular presentation software. Learn how to create new presentations, choose slides and add content, add pictures and graphics and learn to adjust them, how to use SmartArt, draw lines and shapes, align objects, insert tables and charts, add transitions, and learn to run the final presentation. This course is available in person in NYC or live online from anywhere.

Microsoft Word is one of the world's most popular word-processing programs. This introductory Microsoft Word Level 1 course from Noble Desktop covers the fundamental concepts and skills, including preparing and sending mass letters, labels, and emails with one click, introductory formatting, and shortcuts to save time on routine tasks. This course is available in person in NYC or live online from anywhere.

Noble Desktop's Microsoft Access Level 1 will help you keep your Microsoft Office work organized. Access is a database program that can organize and manage data. You will learn to join, sort, and filter data from different tables, use forms to view, access, and input data, and create and format reports. The class will also cover designing a relational database, joining tables, validating data, using advanced queries, and organizing and customizing your database.