Excellent way to look at this issue. We have been taught how to be concise and persuasive with our writing. Why not apply this same philosophy we do with our memos and emails and apply it to our spreadsheets. Rather than dumping the whole load in an unformatted spreadsheet on our reader, the presenter shows how we can tighten our schedules so that what we want our reader to learn jumps off the sheet. I even learned some ideas even though I am considered an expert in Excel by many others in finance. Lots of good pointers presented very clearly with good graphics. The finance world would be better if we all used his ideas. I would also add throw in some color when you can as well.

The course had a very nice flow from raw data to a standalone spreadsheet that provides information that the reader wants and needs to make a good decision based upon the information provided. The course put in perspective that the spreadsheet is an extension of good communicating. I would be interested in purchasing and reading Mr. Bolten's book, "Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand You."

The presentation was solid but fairly basic. That said, like most Excel courses I've viewed, it was 90% redundant knowledge and 10% "That's cool - I didn't know I could do that!" I liked your "in the bag" ratio and was unaware of Excel's ability to format cells in thousands (without adjusting the underlying data) - although I had to Google how to actually do that.

Great course. Randall presented a number of ideas which you would think would be common sense for all accountants. However I know from experience, that this is not always the case. I have unfortunately been subjected to too many financial presentations where the numbers did not foot, the key data was missing (or not easily determined). Thanks for the reminders!

I like the idea of the premise of the course: present as if you are writing a memo or position paper. However, the sample P&L data that was elaborated upon is very common in business. I thought the course would start with this design and present different ideas on how to tell a story with the data. Other possible tools are graphs, tables, pictures, etc.

I thought this course was very informative and the topic was explained and presented very clearly. The instructor gave great insight and tips that will be useful in the professional world. I would recommend this course to others.

Good logical build up showing initial raw data report to final viewer presentation report. Emphasis on white space valid for ease of reading. Graphs, charts, font colors are also usual and would like to have covered.

This is a great course. I found the analogy between writing and presenting a spreadsheet to be on-spot and very interesting. I'm already thinking of ways to improve my spreadsheets to be more user-friendly!

Easy to follow and brings up some good points to think about when creating spreadsheets. It would have been interesting to hear more about formulas, colors of fonts, if there are industry standards, etc.

good refresher and some helpful tips. but presenter could have talked faster and included more tips in this hour. He was talking so slow about some basics that I had trouble staying attentive