Microsoft Office 2007 Specialist Certification?

I'm trying to get the certificates for Word and Excel '07.

Has anyone completed them?

I've taken the practice tests on certiport.com and they are proving to be very difficult.

(bump)

Emailed an instructor and he said I should have a score of about 750 on the practice tests before taking the tests. I am around 600 on one and 500 on the other. So I'm going to study some more. He said there is 25 questions on the test and you can only get up to two wrong and still pass.

Anyone have any studying tips? I'm planning on going through the elearning courses. I have already watched the DVD's from Microsoft that Kirk Kershaw made. (think thats his name)

Hi tranks,

Welcome to Vista Forums!

I've never taken these particular certifications (though they're on my list), but I've taken many others and in every case I found the same thing. The most helpful study tool was always, without exception, access to sample questions and the legal version of what are called "braindumps." Also helpful were some of the condensed study guides (just a few pages, but sometimes quite helpful - especially for those last few minutes in the car before you get up the nerve to enter the test center). Sometimes I found the exam questions were word-for-word the same. Several come with "guraranteed to pass or your money back" but I'm not sure if it's the money paid for the test or the money paid for the materials - and that's pretty much just a marketing gimmick. Some of the more famous ones are Transcender, PrepLogic, QuickCert, and TestKing - but while those were great when the company paid for them, they were a bit too expensive for me as a person (though some have come down in price and offer quantity discounts if you go all out and try to do the whole Specialist or Master at once). The ones that really helped me the most were all free (at the time) but they either don't exist any more (I checked all the sites I used for my certifications several or many years ago) or now cost (though some aren't too bad - one I saw was $20 for 30 days access to over 1000 certification test exam questions and study guides - though more like several hundred per exam).

The training videos and books are fine for learning the basics and even some of the special details and procedures (in some cases, I even read the entire 1300+ page Resource Kits for the OS tests), but they really don't seem to help that much in terms of passing the exams themselves. Experience helps, but there too, the questions are usually tricky and not things you encounter every day even if you've done it every day for years (or have several answers that could be right depending on how you interpret them and no matter what you know, you end up having to elimate those you know are wrong and make your best guess at those that remain). I've never taken a course so I don't know about them - they were all way too expensive for my pocketbook (or for the company at the time).

Search on Bing and Google for them. I spend an hour looking myself for you and found very few that were truly free - the download was free, but the questions cost (but you might get luckier, especially if you look harder and longer) - when I took the exams there were literally dozens of sites with hundreds of free questions (but again, I saved all of them as bookmarks for the future and none were still available or still free). Try searching for MOS, or the generic Microsoft Office Specialist category, or the Microsoft Office Expert category, and the specific tests with the test numbers (try the standard, expert, and even the master names and numbers). I assume you've been here for general information and what little they really have to offer to help with the exams (except expensive training options): Microsoft Office Specialist Certification l Office Specialist Certification l MOS Exam.

I assume you're going for the Specialist and not Expert or Master classifications - that means 77-601 and 77-602.

Here's some searches that might help (I focused on 601 - just edit the search to say 602 for information on that one or the expert or master numbers if you want to try looking for them though they will probably be much harder and harder than you need):

Microsoft Office Word specialist 77-601 certification braindumps - Bing

MOS 77-601 certification braindumps - Bing

MOS 77-601 certification free sample questions - Bing

MOS 77-601 certification free study guides - Bing

Seeing the searches I did above, you can try others to see if you find anything else worthwhile. BTW, I believe these are legitimate "braindumps" (at least the first few pages of each that I looked at) and not those containing real questions which are considered unethical by most people. Even if I knew, I would not provide links to those sites. Then you need to either satisfy yourself with the limited free offerings (there usually aren't many questions provided for free even when offered) or decide to spend some money to try out one of the others (and maybe check out their guarantees more thoroughly - but hopefully not need to REALLY verify them - LOL!).

Another option is to check newsgroups with a newsgroup program or your e-mail program (assuming your ISP offers the service) - but they will be harder to find. On the other hand, the posts there may actually be more helpful if you can find any.

I hope this helps.

Good luck!

Wow, thats the best reply i've ever gotten to a thread! Thank you very much for taking time to do some research.

You got it, I'm going for the 77-601 and 77-602 tests. I'll see if I can find some study guides.

What do you think of the Microsoft elearning courses?

Hi tranks,

Thanks for the kind words - they are appreciated.

I've never taken any elearning course so I can't comment on them from experience; however, I will say that my totally uninformed opinion is that they are most likely similar to book learning and experience and to some extent even study guides - they will help with the basics and with general knowledge and even specific knowledge (which is good), and they will get you past most of the questions if you really do understand the material presented and the programs, but I suspect they won't really help a lot with the exam itself as there the trick is to understand how they phrase the questions and how tricky they are with providing answer options that are very hard to choose even if you totally understand the question and the issue and have the underlying knowledge.

While I've never failed a certification test, I have come closer than I had hoped (and much closer than I expected). Some of the questions were just so ambiguous and the answers worded so poorly that even though I understood the issue, I ended up guessing at the answer not because I didn't know the material but because I couldn't figure out the trick that identified the correct response. That's why I suggest finding sample questions that approximate the exam as closely as possible (with the correct answers provided and explained) is the best way to prepare. It's probably not the best way to learn the subject matter, but knowing the subject and answering those questions are sometimes a lot different than they should be and much different than you'd expect. While the objective should be to learn as much as possible about the product, the real objective here becomes learning how to deal with their tricky and confusing questions and answers so you can pass the test.

Best wishes and good luck!