Being able to use Microsoft Excel is an essential skill for anyone wanting to work in a career that deals with numbers. So, if you’re in a career that uses numbers and you’re looking to progress your Microsoft Excel skills further, we have spent the time researching the best Microsoft Excel courses that are available online. We have included both free and paid courses, that are suitable for all levels, to ensure that you can find a course best suited to you!
But first, let’s answer a very important question – what is Microsoft Excel?
Microsoft Excel is a computer spreadsheet program. It can be used to store and analyze large quantities of data. Excel has many functions that allow users to sort and analyze data. These functions range from basic mathematical equations to complex statistical analyses.
If you’re wanting to learn about Microsoft Excel for your career, you can do so through online learning. Suitable for all levels, I have spent the time researching the best online Microsoft Excel tutorials out there. So, if you’re looking to progress your word-based skills, there will be an online course out there for you!
1. Microsoft Excel – Excel From Beginner to Advanced (Udemy)
- Level: All levels
- Completion time: 18h 9m
- Cost: $79.99
- Certification: No
- Number of people who have completed the course: 953,815
- Course rating: 4.7/5 (out of 291,659 ratings)
As a Udemy bestseller, this course will allow anyone, from complete beginner to very advanced, to get up to speed with Excel. Excel can seem intimidating to begin with, but once you’ve completed this 18hour course, you should feel confident using the most common Excel functions.
Taught by Kyle Pew, a Microsoft Certified Trainer, you will learn how to maintain large sets of Excel data in a list or table. You will also be able to wow your boss by unlocking dynamic formulas with IF, VLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH functions and many more exciting equations. These skills will help you to harness the full power of Microsoft Excel to create dynamic reports and automate your day to day tasks through Macros and VBA.
2. Microsoft Excel – Advanced Excel Formulas & Functions (Udemy)
- Level: Advanced
- Completion time: 9h 41m
- Cost: $79.99
- Certification: No
- Number of people who have completed the course: 268,449
- Course rating: 4.7/5 (out of 60,069 ratings)
In another Udemy bestseller, you will master over 75 Excel formulas and learn advanced data analysis under the guidance of a top Excel and business intelligence instructor!
In just under 10 hours, you can master unique tips and techniques that you won’t find in any other Excel course online. By the end of the course you’ll be writing robust, elegant formulas and functions from scratch. This will allow you to easily build dynamic tools and Excel dashboards, create your own formula-based Excel formatting rules, manipulate dates, times, text and arrays and so much more. To top this all off, you also get LIFETIME access to project files, quizzes, homework exercises and 1-on-1 support, so that you can ensure you keep your advanced Excel skills for an entire lifetime.
3. Excel for the Real World: Gain the Basic Skills of Microsoft Excel (Skillshare)
- Level: Beginner
- Completion time: 1h 2m
- Cost: 14 day free trial
- Certification: No
- Number of people who have completed the course: 36,008
- Course rating: N/A
For just an hour of your time you can learn how to spend less time formatting and manipulating data in Excel and more time presenting insights.
You will follow class instructor, Al Chen who is an Excel power user, using an Excel for the real World File – this way you can learn by doing, meaning your skills will be more permanent.
In this course, you can submit a project at the end of the course so that you can get some real life feedback on your skills. You will learn how to use the Ribbon to your advantage, how to structure your Workbook, how to format a sheet, select data, write formulas, list and sort data so that it is easy to analyze and how to use paste special.
4. Excel Essentials: The Complete Excel Series – Level 1, 2 & 3 (Udemy)
- Level: All levels
- Completion time: 27h 55m
- Cost: $79.99
- Certification: No
- Number of people who have completed the course: 93,679
- Course rating: 4.6/5 (out of 24,274 ratings)
Taking over 24 hours to complete, this course is for anyone who seriously wants to learn how to master all levels of Excel!
The course covers 3 levels. By the end of level 1, you will be able to build your own spreadsheet from scratch and understand how they work! By the end of level 2, you will be able to create a fully functioning database and build charts in Excel for project planning. Finally, by the end level 3 you will be able to understand coding, how to fully automate report generation and how to develop complex full blown applications from scratch.
Although taking a long time, by the end you will have increased your chance of a promotion or getting a better paying job as you’ll have more understanding of the most widely used business software in the world.
5. Excel Diploma Course (Centre of Excellence)
- Level: All levels
- Completion time: N/Am
- Cost: $127
- Certification: Yes
- Number of people who have completed the course: 4,000
- Course rating: N/A
This Diploma Course offers an extensive overview of Microsoft Excel, from the fundamentals to the most advanced features, and teaches students by working through the software in a practical way. This diploma course will teach you the basic skills needed to use the program, and lays the foundations for further knowledge and exploration.
In the diploma, you will learn how to format spreadsheets to ensure that data is organized in a clear and comprehensible way. You will also be guided through the various formatting tools and be shown how to work effectively with fonts, colors, borders and patterns, as well as managing the size and content of cells. Finally, you will learn how to carry out easy calculations before delving deeper into more sophisticated methods of calculations and Excel’s more advanced functions.
6. Excel Essentials for the Real World (Complete Excel Course) (Udemy)
- Level: Beginner
- Completion time: 11h 3m
- Cost: $89.99
- Certification: No
- Number of people who have completed the course: 36,106
- Course rating: 4.7/5 (out of 9,947 ratings)
In this course you will master the essential Excel formulas and features to accelerate your career. You will cover a whole range of new Excel functions that are available. For example, you will learn about the Hash sign, the new errors and data validation drop-down lists.
Designed to help Analysts in the real world, this course will give you what you need to feel confident and succeed at work. By going over practical, real-world examples, you will understand the full potential of each feature so that you can apply Excel for a quick and painless data analysis.
7. Microsoft Excel Tutorial for Beginners | Excel Training |Free Online Excel Course (YouTube)
- Level: Beginners
- Completion time: 10h 30m
- Cost: Free
- Certification: No
- Number of people who have completed the course: 864,978
- Course rating: 15,000 ‘likes’
Offered on YouTube, this course is a beginners guide to Excel that is completely free. You will be able to learn MS Excel in simple and easy steps so that you can use it for the rest of your career/life.
In this 10 hour course, you will learn how to enter and edit data, format numbers, fonts and alignments, make simple pivot tables and charts, create simple Excel formulas and how to use Excel functions IF and VLOOKUP. To finish off your learning, you will also learn common Excel functions that are used in any office, so that you can then create dynamic reports and build Excel formulas to analyze all types of data.
8. The Complete Microsoft Excel Course (New Skills Academy)
- Level: All levels
- Completion time: 40h
- Cost: $180
- Certification: Yes
- Number of people who have completed the course: N/A
- Course rating: 4.9/5 (out of 3,086 reviews)
As a CPD course, this course will offer you an internationally recognized certification to show off your new Excel skills! Whether you’re brand new to the world of Excel, or you have training and knowledge of the software and are looking to improve your skills, this series can help you. By the time you finish this course, anyone of any level can feel confident using Excel.
Some of the highlights of this course include a basic overview of Excel, calculating sums, averages and totals, counting cells, learning formulas, pivot tables, inserting comments, wrapping text, merging cells, pasting and sorting columns and creating graphs and charts.
9. Microsoft Excel 2016 Bootcamp – Zero to Hero Training (Skillshare)
- Level: Beginner
- Completion time: 1h 54m
- Cost: 14 day free trial
- Certification: No
- Number of people who have completed the course: 15,467
- Course rating: N/A
Suitable for complete beginners, no previous knowledge of Excel is needed to complete this course. To make it understandable, you will stick closely to the powerful built in features of Excel and will not get bogged down in confusing code and complicated formulae.
What makes this course so spectacular is that it is project based. You will start with a simple company branded invoice, so that you can understand, in a real life situation, how to calculate totals and tax. You will then cover other useful skills, such as how to workout profit and loss and how to sort out all types of financial data.
10. Excel Skills for Business Specialization (Coursera)
- Level: Intermediate
- Completion time: Approx 6 months at 5h/week
- Cost: Enroll for Free
- Certification: Yes
- Number of people who have completed the course: 381,755
- Course rating: 4.9/5 (out of 37,125 ratings)
As an Excel for business specialization, this course is suitable for those who want to develop the most critical and fundamental digital skills today. By learning to confidently operate this software, you can add highly valuable assets to your employability profile… and this course will show you how.
There are four courses in this specialization. The first is Essential Excel skills, in which you will learn the basics of the Excel interface. The course then goes onto focus on more advanced Excel skills, such as how to clean and prepare data for analysis and work with dates and financial functions. At the end of this intense specialization, you will be able to use the Excel functions for any business.
11. Microsoft Excel Courses (Pitman Training)
- Level: All levels
- Completion time: Various
- Cost: Free
- Certification: No
- Number of people who have completed the course: N/A
- Course rating: N/A
Pitman training offers a range of different courses that are designed to teach users how to manage, calculate and format data in a clear and visually appealing way. Courses cover a wide range of topics, including making basic calculations, displaying data as graphs or charts and creating complex formulas.
Head to the website and explore the huge range of courses that they have. The Excel Expert course, for example, provides you with the knowledge and skills to use Excel programs to an advanced level. The Microsoft Excel Level 3 is tutor-led and ran over the course of one day and gives you practical experience in using Excel for workbooks and auditing worksheets. Other courses include Excel Level 2, Excel level 1 and Excel 2016.
12. Professional Certificate in Excel for Everyone (Edx)
- Level: All levels
- Completion time: 5 months at 3-5h/week
- Cost: $340
- Certification: Yes
- Number of people who have completed the course: N/A
- Course rating: N/A
Suitable for those who want to use Excel for models and analysis in the workplace, this thorough courses covers specific Excel functions. You will take a look at the core foundations of Excel, which includes data wrangling, spreadsheet management and basic data analysis. You will then take a look at data management, which involves looking at larger datasets and more complex data wrangling. Finally, you will look at data analysis fundamentals, which helps you to analyze data to make strategic decision-making.
By the end of this course, you will be able to create attractive data visualizations for easy consumption. This includes generating, modifying and formatting various charts and dashboards.
Conclusion
So, there you have it… the 12 best Microsoft Excel courses that are available online. These classes are all suited to anyone who is wanting to develop their skills and become a pro and handling spreadsheet documents of all types.
Having excellent Excel skills will aid you in landing hundreds of exciting careers. Specific careers where these skills are particularly helpful include:
- Accountant
- Actuary
- College Professor
- Editor
- Lawyer
- Legal Secretary
- Management Consultant
- Marketing Manager
- Medical Secretary
- Psychologist
- Sales Manger
To gather the Microsoft Excel skills that will allow you to progress in lots of careers, there are lots of online courses available for you. There are free courses that take only a few hours to complete. Then, there are more expensive courses that take over 18 hours to complete! Some courses are suitable for those with no previous experience with spreadsheet documents. Whereas other courses are better suited for those with lots of experience using Excel, but are looking to further their knowledge and understanding.
The online classes in this list are the best of the best. Each is taught by an experienced and dedicated teacher, and they all have lots of satisfied and happy customers.
So, which course you decide take depends on your experience, funds and spare time. Are you someone who has lots of Excel experience? Or, are you completely new to this? Do you have a huge amount of money to spend on your skill development? Do you have a lot of spare time? Or are you just looking for a quick, but effective, skill top up?
