I am wondering if any of the forum readers who work in strategy consultancy have taken any advanced Excel or advanced Powerpoint training courses provided by am exteranl provider. If you have undertaken such training, would you be able to post the name of the training provider and give me some feedback as to whether you would recommend them or not? I would also be interested to hear if the training was tailored around typical strategy applications.Thanks

For Pete's sake, buy a book. Most good consultancies have internal training courses

Dude, take it easy.I learnt Powerpoint and excel on the job, like almost everyone else.If you absolutely have to learn it do some googling. Im sure there'll be something good enough around.At the end of the day, after you've gotten the knack of the tools, they are pretty simple...

I challenge anyone at a small consultancy to just "learn" Excel's finer points without a colleague to help etc.I know that Parity training used to run these courses but I don't know if they still do. The problem the more advanced you become, the more unlikely it is that any off-the-shelf course will address your needs.You could do worse than find someone in a PFI / PPP practice and ask them for guidance.Re PowerPoint - more difficult in a way to understand how a more advanced approach would help - the National School of Government used to do courses like this and may still.Good luckDeacs

Mckinsey's quarterly thought leadership pieces has some awesome usages of excel and powerpoint. I think it is excel that they use, but it's certainly a step-up from all the turgid rubbish that spouted out by the rest of you lot.Zbigniew Brzezinski

Ahhh.. insightful as ever.My best tip is to connect your computer to the 'net, open excel/powerpoint and press F1.then select training under the Microsoft Office Online box... and away you go. and its free

Thank you to those who have posted constructive responses.

you can try QA-IQ in Liverpool St. ok courses, decent teachers. You get a few bankers, analysts and consultants there and the course is flexible enough to deal with individual probelms.

We can highly recommend a trainer, who is ex Goldmans and JP Morgan and does some of our advanced training and modellingPaul WilliamsonT: +44 (0) 20 7839 6314M: 07711 701 800