Course description

Already use Excel at work and want to do more with it? This course takes you beyond the basics, step by step, from proper tables and smarter formulas to Power Query, pivot tables with slicers and a one-page dashboard.

It's a full course, not a few quick tips. There are 10 sections and 50 written lessons, each with exact steps, formulas written out in full and a practical exercise. Every section has a practice workbook built on a realistic year of sales and workshop data for a fictional three-branch bike shop in Cornwall, plus model answers and a cheat sheet. You follow its finance and operations assistant as she rebuilds the business's reporting.

What you'll learn

• Good habits: well-structured data, Excel tables, structured references and named ranges.
• Logical formulas: IF with AND and OR, IFS, SWITCH, IFERROR and IFNA.
• Conditional sums: SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, AVERAGEIFS, MAXIFS and MINIFS with dates and wildcards.
• Lookups: XLOOKUP in depth, INDEX and MATCH, two-way lookups and price bands.
• Dynamic arrays: FILTER, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE and LET.
• Text and dates: splitting and cleaning text, working days and month ends.
• Tidy data entry: drop-down lists, validation rules and conditional formatting with formulas.
• Power Query: clean a CSV and combine a whole folder of files automatically.
• Pivot tables in depth: Show Values As, grouping, calculated fields, slicers, timelines and PivotCharts.

The final project

You'll run what-if analysis with Goal Seek, scenarios and data tables, protect your workbook, and build a one-page dashboard that brings the year's figures together.

Who this course is for

• People who use Excel at work and want to save time and make fewer mistakes.
• Anyone who has finished an Excel beginners course and wants the next step.
• Office, finance, operations and small business staff who produce regular reports.

How the course works

Read each lesson with Excel open, follow the steps in the practice workbook, then check your results against the model answers. Excel for Microsoft 365, Excel 2021 or Excel 2024 is best; lessons give alternatives for older versions. You keep lifetime access, so you can come back whenever you need a reminder.

What will I learn?

• Structure data properly with Excel tables, structured references and named ranges
• Write logical formulas with IF, IFS, SWITCH, AND, OR and IFNA
• Summarise data with SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, AVERAGEIFS, MAXIFS and MINIFS
• Use XLOOKUP, INDEX and MATCH, two-way lookups and approximate matches
• Build self-updating lists with FILTER, SORT, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE and LET
• Clean text and dates and calculate working days
• Combine and clean files automatically with Power Query
• Build pivot reports with slicers and timelines, run what-if analysis and design a one-page dashboard

Frequently asked questions