Microsoft Excel

One or more half/full days | Online or in person

Microsoft Excel is the benchmark spreadsheet application for organisations across the globe. Everyone knows someone that "loves a spreadsheet", and yet it's complex formula-driven world can be terrifying to many. Despite this, self-proclaimed technophobes often overcome their fear become experts that can create complex data analyses in no time at all, with just a little training.

This course is aimed at anyone that wants to get to grips with how Excel works, how to work with some of the core functions and formulae and how to present data visually to make it easier to understand. While only scraping the surface of what Excel can do, we will focus on features that you can pick up quickly and put into practice in real world scenarios, while giving you a primer for digging a bit deeper when you need it.

What's Covered

All courses open with a short discussion about what attendees want to use Excel for. This goes further than the standard icebreaker for a training course, and really aims to make sure the course focuses on the parts that will be of the most benefit.

Course 1: Getting Started With Excel
The first half day course focusses on getting to grips with the basics, with plenty of chances to practice and explore manipulating data in a spreadsheet. It covers:

  • Navigating around worksheets and workbooks
  • Entering data and formulae into cells: including cell references and filling cells
  • Naming cells and ranges: including using named cells in formulae
  • Formatting cells and the Format Painter: text, numbers and borders/shading
  • Common numeric functions: SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT and more
  • Tables of data: Sorting and filtering
  • Making it look right: Hiding rows/columns, freezing panes and print areas
  • Visualising data: Simple bar, line and pie charts

Additional half days are available offering more depth:

Course 2: Beyond the Basics
  • Data validation and lists
  • Other number formats: Currencies, decimals, percentages and custom formats
  • More formulae: An exploration of some functions the trainees might need
  • Advanced charts: More types, more styles, adding legends and tweaking data sets
  • Protecting sheets and workbooks
  • Adding comments and collaborating with others
  • Excel and Wolfram data types (Microsoft 365 only)

The additional functions explored in this half day will be determined based on the needs of the trainees; there will only be time to look at a small number. For a more in depth session about functions and formulae, please consider the other half day course below:

Course 3: Functions and Formulae
  • Formulae between worksheets
  • Conditional formulae: IF, AND, OR, COUNTIF, SUMIF and more
  • Conditional formatting: Automatic, looking for specific values and using formulae
  • Date and time functions
  • Basic lookups: VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP (and XLOOKUP for Excel Online/365/2021)
  • Handling errors: Types of error, tracing errors and using IFERROR & IFNA
  • Text functions: Functions and tips for working with text data
  • Finding more functions: The Formula tab and Help

Half day courses focus the time on touring the features listed, offering some time to focus on specific areas of interest for trainees. For the complete experience, full day sessions are available to fully explore what Word can do, allowing more time for examples and working with trainees to apply the skills to their own situations.

These courses require trainees have access to Excel during the course, at most shared with one other person. The course differs slightly if you only have access to Excel Online rather than having Microsoft Office installed on a computer. Please get in touch if you are unsure or want more information.

Courses covering other advanced topics (e.g. Data Analysis, PivotTables and macros) can be arranged on request.
All course content can be adjusted for you or your organisation. The course descriptions offer an overview of topics and do not represent an exact format or structure. If you need us to focus on a particular area or would like is to include something we don't mention, just let us know and we'll do our best to make it work for you!