I’ve got a handful of employees that are what I would call basic Excel users. Trying to find a good course or training program that would help them build their skills up to a moderate/advanced level. Any recommendations of something I can look at?

I was fortunate to have a couple classes in school that focused heavily on Excel and it’s uses. I just don’t know where to look for something aimed at working individuals trying to increase their skills.

I think most Excel or any computer program training course will just give the basics of that program. The way I learned Excel was driven by my work needs. I need to learn how to add for example so I learned the SUM formula all the way to "I wanted to add a column based on different attributes of several other columns and I learned the Sum Array formula or to look up a value based on an attribute so I learned VLOOKUP which is now XLOOKUP.

I needed to automate or find I had to do repetitive things so I learned Excel VBA programming. I used to buy several Excel books with each new version of Excel. But nowadays, google is so much better in looking for solutions to different problems.

But I have followed this YouTube Channel Leila Gharani. She has YouTube videos on Microsoft Office but she made her mark doing Excel videos. She also has an website that sells courses called XELPLUS.com. Based on her youtube videos, I feel confident in recommending her courses. I see three courses for Excel: Excel Essentials for the Real world, Black Belt Excel Package, and Power Excel Bundle. I think the first two are appropriate for your people. And if any of them handle large data sets and involving importing from databases, then the third course I think would be appropriate.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Rey HRH,

Have you checked with your local community college?

+1

quote:

Originally posted by SpinZone:
Have you checked with your local community college?

Several years ago, after our local library system advertised MS Office classes, I requested and signed up for a crash course on Excel. I had occasionally used it before, both professionally and at home, but wanted a bit more understanding of it.

It took several weeks for the library to schedule a 1 on 1 with a qualified librarian, but I was able to spend @ an hour or so with her in a conference room, and left with a bit more familiarity with Excel, along with a couple handout sheets she gave me that I took some notes on.

LinkedIn Learning (formally Lynda.com) offers some excellent professional development courses, including some that include professional certifications, including an MS Excel course.

Lynda.com required a subscription to use, however our library system was a subscriber so all patrons with a library card had access to the courses. Not sure but I think LinkedIn Learning also requires a subscription, however I believe they offer a free trial period.

quote:

Originally posted by SpinZone:
Have you checked with your local community college?

I thought about that, but my biggest concern there is that they'd be spending their evenings/weekends in class. I'd rather find something they can do in 15-20 minute shots as they have down time at work.

Rey HRH - Thank you for the suggestion; that looks like the ticket for our needs. I've actually watched a few of her YT videos when I myself have been looking for ways to accomplish what I want. Her program is broken up into dozens of smaller bite-sized lessons that should work out well.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I think most Excel or any computer program training course will just give the basics of that program. The way I learned Excel was driven by my work needs.

This assumes that you either have the time to do this or that the immediate payoff from the problem you solve is worth the initial investment to learn the solution.

I take a lot of C.P.E. courses through a company called CPAacademy.org because, well, it's free. The reason it is free is because various companies use it to market their services.
One such company is called Excel University. I took a free course that they offered through CPA Academy and was impressed enough to buy their introductory package which was like 20 hours for some cheap price.

Now full disclosure, I have not taken any of the paid for classes yet. But you can go out to cpaacademy.org and search for Excel University classes and listen to one of their webinars, then decide if it is worth pursuing further.

I gotta tell you, "Simon Sez IT" and other channels on YouTube may give you what you need. They have beginner, intermediate, and advanced free online videos. They even give you the documents/spreadsheets they use in the video for free.

Another good one is "Excellsfun", although the presenter's voice irritates me some.

I have been using Excel for a LONG TIME. I would consider myself an advanced user. If I have an issue I am trying to figure out, these are the first 2 channels I look at. I rarely cannot find what I need. So much so, I have ditched all of my Excel reference books.

Just my $0.02

W3schools
I use it a lot, but you have to know what you want to learn, it's more specific function tutorials & syntax vs a class.

quote:

LinkedIn Learning (formally Lynda.com) offers some excellent professional development courses, including some that include professional certifications, including an MS Excel course.

^^^This for sure.

Look up Oz du Soleil, he's a bit of a weirdo, but he knows his shit.

Besides Oz's content, there is so much more from managing employees to HR to software of many types.

I was skeptical when added to our software library, but in the end super happy.

You can range from 15min to 3hr to 60hr classes.

quote:

Originally posted by Broadside:

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I think most Excel or any computer program training course will just give the basics of that program. The way I learned Excel was driven by my work needs.

This assumes that you either have the time to do this or that the immediate payoff from the problem you solve is worth the initial investment to learn the solution.

If your work needs it, you're going to have to make the time and figure it out before the work deadline. Fulfilling the work requirement makes it worth the investment to learn the solution versus telling your boss, "I don't know how to figure it out."

For example, I was always good at manipulating data to calculate what was needed to be calculated. But until I started preparing reports for senior management, I didn't bother learning how to "make things pretty" because it was just presenting the numbers to the next level management or to my peers. But when I started providing analysis reports for senior management for use in decision making in their meetings, I learned to do "dashboards," use conditional formatting to highlight values, and create macros to reconfigure reports on the fly during the meeting.

But if, early in my career, I bothered to study how to make dashboards for senior management, it would have gone to waste as I wouldn't have used it and by the time I actually needed to learn the skills, the iterations of Excel offered different methods on how to accomplish it.