Microsoft Excel: Functions and Tools: Hands-on Introduction

Course Overview

In today's workplace Microsoft Excel is the de facto tool for working with data on the desktop. Knowing how to leverage Excel enables you to simplify complex tasks and is essential to daily work responsibilities. In this introductory course, you gain the skills to create Excel worksheets, develop formulas and apply sophisticated formatting to capture and present your data.

On completion of the Microsoft training course, Microsoft users will be well equipped to use Excel

Related Courses

• Microsoft Excel: Introduction for Beginners (1 day)
• Microsoft Excel: Data Analysis Decision Making/Solve Business Problems (1 day)
• Microsoft Excel: Visual Basic For Applications (VBA) Programming (2 day)
• Microsoft Excel: Formulae & Functions (1 day)
• Microsoft Excel: Data Analysis Decision Making/Solve Business Problems (2 day)
• Microsoft Excel: Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Programming (4 day)
• Microsoft Excel: Charts, Pivot Tables & Macros (1 day)
• Microsoft Excel: Financial Modelling (2 day)
• Microsoft Excel: Business Modelling for Telecoms (2 day)
• Microsoft Office: Word, Excel & PowerPoint: Introduction for Beginners (1 day)

Audience

Anyone who uses Microsoft Excel and needs to acquire the knowledge, skills and techniques to design formulas, create and edit worksheets, and present data results. No previous experience with Excel is assumed.

Skills Gained

You Will Learn How To

• Summarise data with Excel by incorporating formulas, formatting, and charts and graphs
• Efficiently navigate and manipulate multiple spreadsheets in a workbook
• Optimise your worksheets using templates, graphs and formulas
• Design simple-to-complex formulas by nesting Excel functions
• Present data visually using Excel tables and charts
• Import, fine-tune and share Excel data in your workgroup

Course Outline

Hands-on Training

Throughout this course, exercises provide you with experience applying Excel features, formulas and formatting. Hands-on exercises include:

• Navigating the Excel interface for efficiency and speed
• Formatting existing data for greater visual impact
• Designing formulas to manipulate, summarise and refine raw data
• Troubleshooting and tracing formula errors
• Charting your data for clearer presentation
• Recording macros to streamline tasks
• Linking worksheets with references

Introduction to Microsoft Excel

The spreadsheet model

• Worksheets and their contents
• Differentiating workbooks and worksheets

Navigating the interface

• General navigation
• Office Button
• The Ribbon
• Customising the interface
• Managing large spreadsheets by zooming
• Identifying worksheet tabs by color
• Changing worksheet views

Basic data editing

• Modifying cell contents and formats
• Inserting data with AutoFill
• Knowing when to use Paste Special
• Finding and replacing data

Acquiring and Conforming Data

Importing data from outside sources

• Integrating data from other Excel sheets
• Utilising data from servers
• Managing external links
• Finding and removing duplicates

Excel tables and lists

• How Excel tables work
• Converting text to columns
• Sorting and grouping table data
• Adding data in a table or list

Worksheet Formatting and Presentation

Initial formatting

• Configuring cell numeric formats
• Aligning data within cells
• Efficient presentation using the Format Painter
• Fitting cells to data size
• Naming cells and cell ranges

Worksheet presentation

• Freezing worksheet areas
• Hiding content in worksheets
• Editing, modifying and saving templates

Innovative formatting

• Styling cells and sheets with pre-built styles
• Conditionally formatting cells and data
• Rotating and wrapping text

Leveraging Formulas and Functions

Formula basics

• Determining the order of operations
• Specifying relative and absolute cell references
• Automatic sums with AutoSum
• Conditionally summarising data
• Introducing conditional logic in formulas
• Nesting expressions in formulas

Extending formulas and functions

• Putting strings together with concatenation
• Finding data with a formula: VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP
• Copying and pasting formulas and/or values
• Handling formulas with dates

Auditing worksheet formulas

• Deciphering tagged cells with errors
• Identifying formula error indicators
• Tracing spreadsheet formula errors

Creating a Visual Presentation of Data

Charting your data

• Determining when charts are required
• Creating and modifying charts with wizards
• Adjusting chart layouts, title and labels
• Switching chart type or data source

Printing workbooks

• Setting options on the Page Layout tab
• Viewing and adjusting page breaks
• Developing appropriate headers and footers

Introducing Advanced Excel Features

PivotTable basics

• Creating a PivotTable with wizards
• Pivoting existing PivotTable data

Final workbook touches

• Reviewing and adding comments on worksheets
• Protecting and sharing worksheets
• Tracking shared worksheet changes

Creating and managing macros

• Macro basics
• When to use a macro
• Recording effective macros
• Launching macros from buttons