best online excel courses

Best Online Excel Courses

If you’re looking for an online Excel course that’ll turn you into a spreadsheet master all while being in the comfort of your home, then our review of some of the best online courses for Excel by Coursera and edX is the article for you! Let’s take a look at our selection and find the one that meets your requirements the best.

Top 4 Best Online Excel Courses

These are the best online courses for excel on the web, thoroughly reviewed to ensure you find the perfect one for your needs and skill level. The first 3 are taught by institutions (like Duke University and Macquarie) while the last one is taught by Microsoft itself – let’s take a look!

Excel Skills for Business Specialization Certificate – Macquarie University

best online courses for excelFirst on our list of best online courses for Excel is the Excel Skills for Business Specialization Certificate by Macquarie University. The self-paced online course is a beginner level course taught by Dr. Yvonne Breyer, who is the Program Director for Design and Experience, Global MBA, and will take approximately 3 months to complete.

This Specialization is suitable for those looking to develop digital skills in spreadsheet software and learning to operate the software confidently. In the course, you will learn Excel Skills for Business and on completing all the 4 courses in the Specialization, you can design spreadsheets, dashboards and also perform calculations by making use of Excel techniques and features. You can also learn to handle big datasets effectively and get meaningful information from them and present the information efficiently. You also learn the skills required to validate the data, ensure that errors are prevented, apply conditional logic and formulas to make decisions, create automation and develop spreadsheets that can help to model and forecast data.

The Specialization consists of 4 courses including:

  • Excel Skills for Business
  • Excel Skills for Business: Intermediate I
  • Excel Skills for Business: Intermediate II
  • Excel Skills for Business: Advanced

What You’ll Learn

By taking the course, you will learn how to:

  • Navigate Excel’s user interface comfortably and also how to enter, manipulate and format data.
  • Use functions and formulas to perform calculations and also automate data lookups and choices by making use of functions.
  • Create spreadsheets that are easy to use. Validate the data, find errors and correct them and the creation of navigation aids for large-sized workbooks.
  • Analyze the data and ensure that it is presented in a user-friendly manner. To create tables and charts that summarize the raw data effectively.

Skills You Will Gain

  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft Excel Macro
  • Data Validation
  • Pivot Table

Problem Solving with Excel – PWC

The Problem Solving with Excel course by PWC is a beginner-level course that has been created by PWC and takes around 12 hours to complete. The course is taught by Alex Mannella, Alumni & Former Principal and is available on the Coursera platform.

In the course, you learn how Excel is used as a tool and enables you to solve business problems. The course will teach you the basic functions of Excel via guided demonstration. Every week, you will have the opportunity to practice all that you have learned in the course and you will build on your spreadsheet skills. And, finally, you will have the opportunity to use the knowledge that you have gained in the final project.

What You’ll Learn from the Course

Overview of Excel

This module consists of 13 videos, 10 readings and 4 quizzes and in the module, you will learn the fundamentals of Excel navigation and functionality. You’ll learn how to navigate an Excel sheet and also learn how to use text, formatting, formulas and subtotals. You will also get an opportunity to complete a problem-solving exercise by making use of the basic Excel skills that you have learned.

VLOOKUP and Data Cleansing (16 videos, 8 readings and 4 quizzes)

This module will cover the various aspects such as VLOOKUP, text functions and value cleansing. You will also get an introduction to the PWC perspective on value cleansing and using suitable functions. Finally, you will complete a problem-solving exercise using VLOOKUP, text functions and value cleansing.

Logical Functions and Pivot Tables (17 videos, 5 readings and 3 quizzes)

This module will cover pivot tables and logical functions, where you will learn how to create and make use of pivot tables in order to solve business problems. You will also get the opportunity to practice how to create and use a pivot table in solving business problems. You will also receive PWC’s perspectives on how Excel can impact your work and career.

More Advanced Formulas (12 videos, 8 readings and 4 quizzes)

This module will cover more advanced Excel formulas and you will learn how you can create statistical formulas, financial formulas and perform index matches. You will also have the opportunity to use statistical formulas for problem solving and also the chance to practice what you have learned in the course by completing a final project.

Skills You Will Gain

  • Microsoft Excel
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Cleansing
  • Pivot Table

Mastering Data Analysis in Excel – Duke University

Offered by Duke University, Mastering Data Analysis in Excel is part of the Specialization Excel to MySQL: Analytic Techniques for Business and is available on the Coursera platform. The course is taught by Jana Schaich Borg, Assistant Research Prof., Social Science Research Institute and Daniel Egger, Executive in Residence & Director, Center for Quantitative Modeling from the Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University. The course takes around 29 hours to complete.

What You’ll Learn from the Course

About the Course (2 videos and 2 readings)

This course focuses mainly on math i.e. concepts and methods of data analysis and uses Excel spreadsheets to do all the calculations and all the math formulas are available as spreadsheets.

The course prepares you to design realistic predictive models based on the available data and implement them. The course aims to demonstrate that as a data analyst, your role is to reduce the uncertainty for decision makers and quantify the remaining uncertainty.

In the course, you will learn how to calculate the important uncertainty measures that are used in business such as entropy of information, confidence intervals for linear regression and classification error rates and apply them to real-world scenarios. All the assignments for the course must be done using Excel spreadsheets and you will learn sufficient Excel to complete the assignments. You will get adequate practice with Excel and become fluent with the most common business functions and you will also learn any other functions of Excel that you may be required to use in the future. However, you will not learn pivot tables, visual basic, etc. in the course.

Excel Essentials for Beginners (8 videos, 1 reading and 2 quizzes)

You will learn important Excel skills that you need to address common business situations in the future in the module. The Excel functions and vocabulary that you will learn throughout the module ensures that you understand the other Excel spreadsheets that you will come across in other videos throughout the course.

Binary Classification (6 videos, 1 reading and 2 quizzes)

Most business data analysis projects have a specialized vocabulary of measures to compare and optimize the performance of the algorithms to classify collections such as buying this stock/don’t buy that one, etc. into 2 groups. In this module, you’ll learn how and why these different metrics are applied and also learn how to calculate the AUC (area under the ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) Curve.

Information Measures (7 videos, 1 reading and 2 quizzes)

The module teaches you how to calculate and apply entropy, also known as the uncertainty metric, which quantifies the total uncertainty of all the possible outcomes. In data analytics, entropy is an important measure which offers the framework for accountability and it gives you the ability to quantify the uncertainty of outcomes in the future that are relevant to your business twice – by making use of the available estimates before you start the project and after the predictive model is built.

Linear Classification (11 videos, 1 reading and 3 quizzes)

You will gain knowledge about the various concepts related to linear classification and correlation and how to use linear regression in the analysis of business data. In the module, you will also learn how to solve practical problems by using CLT (Central Limit Theorem). You will also learn to work with Gaussians.

Skills You Will Gain

  • Binary Classification
  • MS Excel
  • Data Analysis
  • Linear Regression

Master Excel’s Data Analysis Capabilities – Microsoft

The Master Excel’s Data Analysis Capabilities is an online course available on the edX platform and is a self-paced course that can be completed in 2 to 4 months. The course comprises 3 skill-building courses and the course is taught by Microsoft instructors, Dany Hoter, Solutions Architect DataRails, Ben Olsen, Sr. Content Developer at Microsoft, Jonathan Sanito, Senior Content Developer at Microsoft, Tom Carpenter, Data Science and Research Consultant and Trevor Barnes, Self-employed Content Developer.

The Excel Fundamentals course is a focused 3-series standalone course. The course covers all the fundamentals of Excel that will help you become proficient in Excel for various uses, right from pivot tables to decoding of complex math formulas. The approach of the course is a combination of self-directed and self-paced online learning along with hands-on lab, making use of the latest tools and techniques. You also have the option of enrolling into a shorter program that will allow you to gain a Professional Certificate more quickly and also the analytics skills required by employers at a discount of 10% on the course fees.

The 3-part course covers the following:

  • Fundamentals of data analysis using Excel
  • Using Excel to visualize data
  • Math and Statistics in Excel online

Conclusion

With any of these excellent learning programs by your side, you’ll be a spreadsheet expert in no time. With unmatched quality, effectiveness, credentials and value to boot, the choices above truly are the best online excel courses and they’re sure to give your life and career the boost it needs to reach the next level. Enjoy and good luck!

If you want to discover more learning opportunities, then be sure to take a look at our list of the best online courses. Thanks for reading and as always, have a great day!

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