About
Thanks for visiting the Excel Theatre blog, which features Excel video tutorials, Excel games and puzzles, Excel humour, and other topics on the lighter side of Excel.
For a large collection of detailed Excel tutorials, videos and sample Excel files, please visit my Contextures web site:
I’m Debra Dalgleish, an independent computer consultant who specializes in Microsoft Office programming and development. Self-employed since 1985, I’ve learned a lot about business efficiency through my own experiences and experiments (some successful, some not so much). I’ve also seen the wide variety of systems and practices that my clients use, and have learned much from them.
Publications
I’ve written three books on Excel pivot tables, and you can read the outlines here:
How It Started
When my business started, it was mainly word processing, and I did everything on a Macintosh (upgraded to 512K), with an external floppy drive, and no hard drive. The first two programs that I used were MacPaint and MacWrite. Soon I got MultiPlan and Microsoft Word, and was excited by all the new things they could do. The next big program I got was Excel, and I expanded my business into that area. There were a few new Macs along with way, including a Mac Plus, a PowerBook and an LC 475.
In the mid 90s, when Windows 3.1 was released, I gradually switched to a PC, because that’s where the money was. I did computer training, wrote training manuals, still did some word processing, and created spreadsheets. In 1996 I was asked to teach an introductory course in Access 2.0, so I learned that too. At the end of that year I created my first database for a client. Since then, we’ve converted the database to newer versions, but it’s still going strong!
Now my working hours are about 40% Excel programming, 40% Access development, and 20% other Microsoft Office stuff. A few clients are still using Office 2000, a couple have upgraded to Office 2007, and the rest use Office XP or Office 2003. It’s tough to remember where the commands are in all those versions!
Also, I’m proud to have received the Excel MVP award from Microsoft, every year since 2001.
Contact Me
Email: Debra Dalgleish — ddalgleish AT contextures.com
Phone: (905) 824-1853
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