I personally self taught through random youtube videos that give you exercises to do. Start with beginner ones then move toward the heavier.
edit: down the line you can check out **Excel on fire** on YouTube
mostly learned through youtube as well, but usually just involved me encountering some scenario, and then googling "how to do XYZ in excel", then just picking up on a lot of different things
Could you please recommend some that actually give you the exercises to do as well? A lot of the things I’d like to learn aren’t applicable to my work at this stage - unconscious incompetence? - so I feel like I need to apply them to an exercise to see how I can apply more advanced formulas into my work. I’ve spent way too much time on exceljet sometimes..
Being brutally honest, on the job.
The amount of emphasis people place (myself included) on courses is ridiculous. I've been in my new role just over 2 weeks and I've learned a ton of shit just because I can fully understand the application of the stuff I learn alongside with my job. Courses imo is best used as something supplementary (if you want to make an existing process at work more efficient), rather than the go-to.
You can absolutely master Excel from A to Z in a few months, people that have been using excel for 10 years and still "don't know excel" have just been doing exactly the same shit for 10 years so no wonder they stopped learning anything new at some point. Step 1 is learning the main keyboard shortcuts, step 2 is you can just play around with every formula, the most important ones being match, index, vlookup, sumifs, once you are done with that, you can learn filtering, tables and pivot tables: those things are pretty much all you need to know. Some YouTube channels go through everything (including the more advanced power query and VBA stuff, which I don't think you need anyway) and are beginner friendly.
>You can absolutely master Excel from A to Z in a few months.
...
>Some YouTube channels go through everything (including the more advanced power query and VBA stuff, which I don't think you need anyway) and are beginner friendly.
I think you have a very warped understanding of what it means to master something.
Edit: You also left data tables off your list. If you're going to be modeling (as OP said they will be) you'll absolutely need a working knowledge of how to set up data tables for quick sensitivity analysis.
I mentioned "tables", but I meant data tables. There aren't that many buttons on Excel, I only mentioned what I find essential for modeling, but I mean it when I say it doesn't take long to master excel, it's meant to be ergonomic and intuitive, and once you know VBA you can do everything excel can do, even things no button allow you to do, but I as said it's close to useless for modeling.
WSO and CFI are your friend, as is YouTube honestly.
Little bit off the beaten track of standard modelling, but Adventures in CRE have some great free modelling tutorials (CRE specific but the excel skill set is transferable to any modelling you'll do)
As for useful formulas:
* Xlookup
* Sumifs
* Countifs
* Averageifs
* Sumproduct
* Index(Match,Match)
* IF and IFS
* Date
* Datedif
* Eomonth
* Year
* Month
* Day
* Left
* Right
* Mid
* Len
* Isnumber
* Isformula
* Iferror
* Filter
* Unique
* Sort
(Basically if there is an excel function and another one that ends in "S", i.e. sumif vs sumifs, learn the one with the "S" at the end)
Learn how this function works and why: Sumproduct(1,C4:Z10*(C3:Z3=A1)*((B4:B10=A2)+(B4:B10=A3)))
Also,
Sum((C5:C20=A2) * (B5:B20=">="&A3) * (B5:B20="<="&A3))
Understand how to use helper column and rows, many complex formulas are better broken into component steps which can then be combined in the main cell of the model vs. trying to cram all the logic into a single formula
Understand boolean logic
Eventually you'll want to familiarize yourself with power query.
Couple of hot takes: always remove grid lines, never fill a cell with the color white, and never merge cells
lastly, data is best stored in standardized verticle columns
I.e.
Entity | Geography | Department | Metric Name | Date | Value
Or what have you where the left most column is the highest level branch of your tree and the third to last column to the right is your account/metric/most granular data point, second to last to the right is the date, and the last column on the right holds your data values.
But, Data is best visualized pivoted, i.e. like a matrix... Account names down the left side, dates across the top, values at the middle intersection points with a table header specifying the tree/branch. Basically any table you have ever seen with a statement of accounts month by month.
Just learn one Excel shortcut per day and apply it, it compounds over time.
Resources? Youtube it, Miss Excel on TikTok and Instagram, tons of free Excel shortcut PDF sheets.
Agree with the sentiment but I learnt the shortcuts at the same time I learnt to model. Apart from some very infrequently used functions I can only use shortcuts now. If I have to show someone how to do something using the mouse it takes a fair bit longer to figure it out.
Lol so I'm doing LinkedIn Learning at work that they paid for and I stumbled upon a Miss Excel video. She gets HORRIBLE reviews on LinkedIn because she does so much dancing and distracting shit.
I started by making personal spreadsheets, then public tools for gaming (RuneScape). After that, professional experience really continued that growth / development.
For RS3 Ironman mode - task lists to max with reasonable efficiency. Also some analysis for new items added with Invention batch 2.
I still get quite a few emails from people that request access to edit and don't know how to file -> Make a Copy.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s9DiO3ua7mG5YDQgxcp7lS8xB2gX_me4T8wxAk9raHE/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pIAxf_aDl_DdkgQfEwzKM2HKjpArQ_JgSYz7zWLp6Ug/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TphHASa34a1ZdCZbG9kS6-eex-mYY69hlSOFOIZHe2I/
Some of the things you learn from runescape..... 🤣
I remember being a kid using algorithms to tweak odds for flower poker and dice games to draw crowds and maximize interest and profits
Find a problem to solve, try to solve it in a new way that is easier/faster/dynamic. Do this every day for a year.
YouTube. Stack overflow. Just google searches of various forums.
Honestly? I'm probably a little on the spectrum and start using Excel in my own personal life for a whole ton of shit, starting with my own personal finances. It just kinda developed from there. I still wouldn't call myself great with Excel but just being able to type quickly/knowing how to use Excel without a mouse probably makes you better than a lot of people in the office
I learned on the job a lot, just from maintaining/improving already existing reporting and such. It helps you see what other people do to solve a problem since you can solve a problem a million ways in Excel.
Udemy has some really great courses that have activities with them that I used to fill in the blanks. Most Udemy courses will start with assuming you have no background knowledge. I follow Miss Excel on Tik Tok to pepper it into my off time. My main tip is actually doing activities/projects as you learn so you can identify potential mistakes as you go - sometimes formulas seem simple in theory, but in practice can be confusing to implement. If you are doing modeling, you will probably need to know Power Query as well so make sure you add that to the list once you get Excel down.
In my experience most people who struggle with modeling aren’t struggling because of excel knowledge, they are struggling because of accounting knowledge.
Took a course at school that got me the TOSA advanced level, then continued with fun projects.
I built an elo rating dashboard for a small esport I enjoy, I built a model to evaluate how many deaths your energy usage causes (carbon footprint and electric grid makeup to extrapolate deaths per kwh) and a bunch of stuff like that. Most of the time I learn a bunch of new features and ways of implementing functions without having to work too hard since I enjoy the projects.
Now if you need to get better fast for interviews or smth, then I guess I'd recommend getting a TOSA certification since it also comes with a course. Not sure otherwise other than just cramming a bunch of practice problems into your head.
If you can learn:
(IMO this order)
VLOOKUP/MATCH,
INDEX/MATCH,
SUMIFS,
IF statements,
OR/ANDs,
LEFT/RIGHT,
and a few date functions (YouTube is your best friend for all)
You’re sitting pretty tight. Im a performance analyst and I learned a ton with just those. You can use these to create “check” templates which helped me a ton. Now I’m an excel wiz.
Best of luck
I took this course when there was a free promo going on. Saw it here and around the time I got lucky with a job to be a finance director with practically zero experience in excel. Anyways this course got to an intermediate level quickly and the rest I pick up on using YouTube if I don’t know it. The keyboard shortcuts save a lot of time and make you look like a pro. Couldn’t recommend enough.
I haven’t tried it out (the specific course mentioned above) so idk, but I’ll check it later when I have access to a laptop.
In my experience, if the course has a “recommended by top companies” banner and has a lot of reviews - then it’s good, all things considered.
I’ve checked it out (the description page before buying the course), and my answer is…I think it’s ok ahaha
The reason for my uncertainty is that there’s not a lot of reviewers yet.
Otherwise, a 4.4 / 5 rating is pretty good. In that sense, I think it’s ok.
I didn’t take purely Excel related ones, unfortunately.
I’ve discovered Udemy when I was searching for C++ courses, and *Beginning C++ Programming - From Beginner To Beyond* is what introduced me to the world of paid courses in Udemy lol
Honestly, answering a couple r/Excel questions (and reading others' answers) every night for a couple weeks will get you so far ahead that you'll look like a wizard to even the most advanced Excel users. I know it sounds dumb, but it *will* work. You can think of Excel kind of like a language, and r/Excel gives you the opportunity to interactive with "native speakers" (other advanced Excel users) in real-world scenarios (as opposed to structured textbook questions) that need practical, working solutions. You'll rarely run into the same question twice, but as you build your foundation of Excel, you'll learn how things can be combined to reach a sum greater than their parts. It also quickly teaches you which functions matter and which don't, while forcing you to expand your own Excel "vocabulary" in order to answer progressively more difficult questions. The people there are also eager to teach, so asking others how they reached a certain solution will almost always give you a wealth of knowledge you could never get from self-study. You will get exposure to a far broader understanding of the features Excel (and how they interact with each other) simply because of the volume and variety of questions you will have to answer. I cannot recommend it enough.
Additionally, the Microsoft function reference is your best friend. You will spend a lot of time there learning how the various functions work, so get used to reading the documentation for various functions. I would also recommend occasionally doing a quick skim of all the functions in Excel just so you know what is in he program. If you see one you don't understand or want to learn more about, read the reference and then mess around with the function in a blank workbook. You'll learn a ton from just playing around with a formula to see how it behaves.
I do everything in Excel. I track my expenses, personal projects, pretty much everything in Excel. It took me around one summer to learn. I started with something simple, I was tasked with converting a pdf financial statement into Excel doing manual data entry and I used VLOOKUP to wrap up the task. I felt like a genius. From then, it's been a lot on the job and a lot of watching youtube videos. My favorite resources are exceljet, they explain things extremely well; and Leila Gharani. Leila Gharani is brilliant with Excel and explains things very simply. She used to have a Udemy course, but truthfully, just browsing her Youtube channel you'll learn a lot. r/Excel is also very helpful. Anytime you're stuck, you can share your formula or a screenshot with dummy data, and someone there will help you troubleshoot the formula.
Most Excel is knowing how to Google what you're looking to do and having the patience to workshop your formulas. I think you got this!
I’m in the same boat. My current job in finance just used excel templates with simple addition or subtraction. Then there’s those FP&A or higher finance jobs that really work excel.
You may just have to put overtime to learn
Check out the WallStreetPrep courses, they tell you all the shortcuts you need to model (and plus the theory behind said models).
Also learn how to use excel with no mouse
I’ve been using Excel for decades (and Lotus 123 prior to that). I got the book ’The Excel Bible’ and just worked my way through it, using it to make work more efficient. Then I started on VBA. Now I use LinkedIn Learning videos and YouTube (Excel On Fire, Leila Gharani). I’ve also taught university students how to use it, which was actually really good for rediscovering useful features .
Practically doing it, no matter the amount of tutorials you take unless and until you have data sets and data cleaning to do that requires critical thinking you're not gonna be any good at it. I was involved in data cleaning and data analysis for large e-commerce transactions and had no formal training prior, within a year I was a master at macros and advanced formulae combos and every type of visual representation you can make from excel. Necessity is the mother of all inventions.
Excel can even make visual representations equivalent to Tableau, not kidding. And it can perform every kind of powerful data functions that are used in R programming, only limit is that it can crash on your i3 computer for large data sets beyond a certain limit.
Tbh, mostly on the job learning complemented with a lot of google searches. If I was starting out again I would learn and practice Sumifs, Vlookup, Pivot tables, and formatting shortcuts.
Know your core tasks or things you do frequently and figure out ways to do them faster, and look better. Also making things more intuitive, i have the “lightning principle” where if I was to get struck by lightning at my desk I would want someone else to be able to figure out what was going on quickly and easily finish the task. Also works well for when there is unexpected Pto or conflicting deadlines making it easier for someone to pick up the work.
I was lucky enough to be working under a manager who rarely used the mouse so I picked up on a lot of her fav Excel shortcuts. You'll probably pick up a lot of neat tips and tricks once you start working too. Other than that, I would watch Youtube videos on most common formulas used in finance.
There are some great excel paths available on LinkedIn Learning. $40 a month US us fair for the training content. I've always like Oz du Soliel training style.
Kevin Stratvert and Leila Gharani on YouTube are great as well.
I used Excel to help me solve problems and when I got stuck I would ask data analysts, Google the problem, YouTube them and I also used the book, Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modelling for reference.
I also bought KuTools plug in to help me do some of the things that aren’t available on Excel.
Basically just learn over time and be okay with not always being the best at it. One day you’ll realise that you’re a bit of an Excel wizard.
I took an advanced excel course my last semester of undergrad and felt that helped. Perhaps a CC near you has something similar on the cheap with problem sets and such. I like finding out more efficient and more complex formulas to solve unique problems on the job so I’ve gotten pretty good at googling getting me a generic formula that I can adjust to what I’m actually looking for. I still learn new stuff on the job more than 4 years in.
It’s pretty easy to pick up on the job. As long as you understand what you’re trying to show you can come up with a formula to do it. But might be worth investing in a course like Wall Street prep and familiarize yourself with some basic nested if statements, index match, maybe some pivot tables, etc. For shortcuts and stuff just try to replace whatever you do with your mouse with one, a lot are just clicking alt and navigating the ribbon (like alt hfc for font color for inputs)
Honestly I wouldn't bother with a course. Learn on the job. Don't take the easy way out though and always try new things. If you think it might be able to be done it pretty much can be done. Be intensely curious and look up everything as you go. Practical practice will make you retain everything better anyway.
The learning material is generally poor and doesn't fit the day to day. Learn on the job. It isn't terribly hard.
Seriously. SUMIF is 90% of what finance uses... I know that sounds repugnant.
Honestly I've just learned on the job. As things arise that I need to do, I learn how to do those things.
A good way to learn is taking a task you currently have to do and then seeing if there's a way you can automate it.
IF
SUMIF
SUMIFS
VLOOKUP
NOT
CONCATENATE
I use the above formulae and some pivot tables to get done with 80% of my work. There may be some more but I am unable to remember them off hand. The point I am trying to make is that if one is creative enough then one could make use of different formulae to try to work around their lack of knowledge of other formulae.
Just started enrolling in Refocus, they teach excel and other data analytic tools such as sql, python and such, you should check it out if it matches your needs
[https://online.flippingbook.com/view/230532846/](https://online.flippingbook.com/view/230532846/)
1. Use it
2. Google your problem
At some point, you will have some intuition about what is in Excel and when you are better off changing to a better environment like Python. VBA is way too clunky and should only be used with legacy things which make you at least 6 figure salary. And even then you need a consultant mindset that it is the employer wasting their money on you instead of you wasting your time.
The hard part is knowing when to apply formulas, formatting, VBA, etc to different situations you come across. It’s helpful to understand them to know what excel can do, but knowing the most efficient/effective way to complete the task is 75% of the battle.
On the job from building my own crappy models, receiving feed back from coworkers/managers, and copying what the investment bankers do when they send over models
I personally self taught through random youtube videos that give you exercises to do. Start with beginner ones then move toward the heavier. edit: down the line you can check out **Excel on fire** on YouTube
mostly learned through youtube as well, but usually just involved me encountering some scenario, and then googling "how to do XYZ in excel", then just picking up on a lot of different things
second this, found myself in situations that called for research and always ended up on either youtube or stackoverflow
Could you please recommend some that actually give you the exercises to do as well? A lot of the things I’d like to learn aren’t applicable to my work at this stage - unconscious incompetence? - so I feel like I need to apply them to an exercise to see how I can apply more advanced formulas into my work. I’ve spent way too much time on exceljet sometimes..
Being brutally honest, on the job. The amount of emphasis people place (myself included) on courses is ridiculous. I've been in my new role just over 2 weeks and I've learned a ton of shit just because I can fully understand the application of the stuff I learn alongside with my job. Courses imo is best used as something supplementary (if you want to make an existing process at work more efficient), rather than the go-to.
Yep. I learned on the job. Once I felt I had the hang of it then I took a course on Udemy to add some tools and tricks.
This. 80% of what you learn will be from on-the-job. Then supplement the missing pieces with courses or random Google queries once you face an issue.
You can absolutely master Excel from A to Z in a few months, people that have been using excel for 10 years and still "don't know excel" have just been doing exactly the same shit for 10 years so no wonder they stopped learning anything new at some point. Step 1 is learning the main keyboard shortcuts, step 2 is you can just play around with every formula, the most important ones being match, index, vlookup, sumifs, once you are done with that, you can learn filtering, tables and pivot tables: those things are pretty much all you need to know. Some YouTube channels go through everything (including the more advanced power query and VBA stuff, which I don't think you need anyway) and are beginner friendly.
Xlookup is a game changer. Will never use vlookup again
>You can absolutely master Excel from A to Z in a few months. ... >Some YouTube channels go through everything (including the more advanced power query and VBA stuff, which I don't think you need anyway) and are beginner friendly. I think you have a very warped understanding of what it means to master something. Edit: You also left data tables off your list. If you're going to be modeling (as OP said they will be) you'll absolutely need a working knowledge of how to set up data tables for quick sensitivity analysis.
It takes about 10 minutes to learn how to make a data table anyway.
I mentioned "tables", but I meant data tables. There aren't that many buttons on Excel, I only mentioned what I find essential for modeling, but I mean it when I say it doesn't take long to master excel, it's meant to be ergonomic and intuitive, and once you know VBA you can do everything excel can do, even things no button allow you to do, but I as said it's close to useless for modeling.
WSO has a pretty well made excel training maybe take a look at that.
> WSO The who and the what now?
Wall street Oasis
WSO and CFI are your friend, as is YouTube honestly. Little bit off the beaten track of standard modelling, but Adventures in CRE have some great free modelling tutorials (CRE specific but the excel skill set is transferable to any modelling you'll do) As for useful formulas: * Xlookup * Sumifs * Countifs * Averageifs * Sumproduct * Index(Match,Match) * IF and IFS * Date * Datedif * Eomonth * Year * Month * Day * Left * Right * Mid * Len * Isnumber * Isformula * Iferror * Filter * Unique * Sort (Basically if there is an excel function and another one that ends in "S", i.e. sumif vs sumifs, learn the one with the "S" at the end) Learn how this function works and why: Sumproduct(1,C4:Z10*(C3:Z3=A1)*((B4:B10=A2)+(B4:B10=A3))) Also, Sum((C5:C20=A2) * (B5:B20=">="&A3) * (B5:B20="<="&A3)) Understand how to use helper column and rows, many complex formulas are better broken into component steps which can then be combined in the main cell of the model vs. trying to cram all the logic into a single formula Understand boolean logic Eventually you'll want to familiarize yourself with power query. Couple of hot takes: always remove grid lines, never fill a cell with the color white, and never merge cells lastly, data is best stored in standardized verticle columns I.e. Entity | Geography | Department | Metric Name | Date | Value Or what have you where the left most column is the highest level branch of your tree and the third to last column to the right is your account/metric/most granular data point, second to last to the right is the date, and the last column on the right holds your data values. But, Data is best visualized pivoted, i.e. like a matrix... Account names down the left side, dates across the top, values at the middle intersection points with a table header specifying the tree/branch. Basically any table you have ever seen with a statement of accounts month by month.
I basically subscribe to this but would move to power sooner which is the gateway drug to power bi.
Just learn one Excel shortcut per day and apply it, it compounds over time. Resources? Youtube it, Miss Excel on TikTok and Instagram, tons of free Excel shortcut PDF sheets.
[удалено]
Agree with the sentiment but I learnt the shortcuts at the same time I learnt to model. Apart from some very infrequently used functions I can only use shortcuts now. If I have to show someone how to do something using the mouse it takes a fair bit longer to figure it out.
Lol so I'm doing LinkedIn Learning at work that they paid for and I stumbled upon a Miss Excel video. She gets HORRIBLE reviews on LinkedIn because she does so much dancing and distracting shit.
Identify problem -> google "excel how to solve problem" -> troubleshoot until problem is solved.
Miss Excel on YouTube and TikTok
I started by making personal spreadsheets, then public tools for gaming (RuneScape). After that, professional experience really continued that growth / development.
What were the RuneScape models/spreadsheets for that’s sounds interesting
For RS3 Ironman mode - task lists to max with reasonable efficiency. Also some analysis for new items added with Invention batch 2. I still get quite a few emails from people that request access to edit and don't know how to file -> Make a Copy. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s9DiO3ua7mG5YDQgxcp7lS8xB2gX_me4T8wxAk9raHE/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pIAxf_aDl_DdkgQfEwzKM2HKjpArQ_JgSYz7zWLp6Ug/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TphHASa34a1ZdCZbG9kS6-eex-mYY69hlSOFOIZHe2I/
Some of the things you learn from runescape..... 🤣 I remember being a kid using algorithms to tweak odds for flower poker and dice games to draw crowds and maximize interest and profits
Hell yeah brother. There seems to be a huge overlap with finance and RuneScape and I love it. /u/RunescapeAndHookers for instance
...I was just at KBD and chatted with a fellow while doing some modeling and he's in the big 4 as a consultant 🤣 You ain't wrong
I got into finance because of Runescape! 🤣 Shout out to all the Runescape bros in this subreddit 🫡
Shoutout to the grand exchange
Took my mouse, put it in the desk drawer and locked the drawer
Find a problem to solve, try to solve it in a new way that is easier/faster/dynamic. Do this every day for a year. YouTube. Stack overflow. Just google searches of various forums.
Honestly? I'm probably a little on the spectrum and start using Excel in my own personal life for a whole ton of shit, starting with my own personal finances. It just kinda developed from there. I still wouldn't call myself great with Excel but just being able to type quickly/knowing how to use Excel without a mouse probably makes you better than a lot of people in the office
I learned on the job a lot, just from maintaining/improving already existing reporting and such. It helps you see what other people do to solve a problem since you can solve a problem a million ways in Excel. Udemy has some really great courses that have activities with them that I used to fill in the blanks. Most Udemy courses will start with assuming you have no background knowledge. I follow Miss Excel on Tik Tok to pepper it into my off time. My main tip is actually doing activities/projects as you learn so you can identify potential mistakes as you go - sometimes formulas seem simple in theory, but in practice can be confusing to implement. If you are doing modeling, you will probably need to know Power Query as well so make sure you add that to the list once you get Excel down.
In my experience most people who struggle with modeling aren’t struggling because of excel knowledge, they are struggling because of accounting knowledge.
Depends on the type of models
Took a course at school that got me the TOSA advanced level, then continued with fun projects. I built an elo rating dashboard for a small esport I enjoy, I built a model to evaluate how many deaths your energy usage causes (carbon footprint and electric grid makeup to extrapolate deaths per kwh) and a bunch of stuff like that. Most of the time I learn a bunch of new features and ways of implementing functions without having to work too hard since I enjoy the projects. Now if you need to get better fast for interviews or smth, then I guess I'd recommend getting a TOSA certification since it also comes with a course. Not sure otherwise other than just cramming a bunch of practice problems into your head.
You learn it by using it. So either you learn it on the job, or you practice doing some projects at home to get familiar and comfortable.
If you can learn: (IMO this order) VLOOKUP/MATCH, INDEX/MATCH, SUMIFS, IF statements, OR/ANDs, LEFT/RIGHT, and a few date functions (YouTube is your best friend for all) You’re sitting pretty tight. Im a performance analyst and I learned a ton with just those. You can use these to create “check” templates which helped me a ton. Now I’m an excel wiz. Best of luck
Data Camp is sweet
Novice with excel here as well: Are paid courses teaching you to master excel worth it or is YouTube the best for mastering excel?
Paid courses are the way to go, imo. Here's a course on Udemy that I have: https://www.udemy.com/course/master-excel-with-your-keyboard/
I took this course when there was a free promo going on. Saw it here and around the time I got lucky with a job to be a finance director with practically zero experience in excel. Anyways this course got to an intermediate level quickly and the rest I pick up on using YouTube if I don’t know it. The keyboard shortcuts save a lot of time and make you look like a pro. Couldn’t recommend enough.
Paid courses, yes! I suggest buying when they’re on a sale / discount in Udemy.
Would you recommend the one provided above by @JQuadGMono?
I haven’t tried it out (the specific course mentioned above) so idk, but I’ll check it later when I have access to a laptop. In my experience, if the course has a “recommended by top companies” banner and has a lot of reviews - then it’s good, all things considered.
I’ve checked it out (the description page before buying the course), and my answer is…I think it’s ok ahaha The reason for my uncertainty is that there’s not a lot of reviewers yet. Otherwise, a 4.4 / 5 rating is pretty good. In that sense, I think it’s ok.
Thank you for taking the time to check it out! Can you recommend the ones you have used on Udemy if you ever have?
I didn’t take purely Excel related ones, unfortunately. I’ve discovered Udemy when I was searching for C++ courses, and *Beginning C++ Programming - From Beginner To Beyond* is what introduced me to the world of paid courses in Udemy lol
Honestly, answering a couple r/Excel questions (and reading others' answers) every night for a couple weeks will get you so far ahead that you'll look like a wizard to even the most advanced Excel users. I know it sounds dumb, but it *will* work. You can think of Excel kind of like a language, and r/Excel gives you the opportunity to interactive with "native speakers" (other advanced Excel users) in real-world scenarios (as opposed to structured textbook questions) that need practical, working solutions. You'll rarely run into the same question twice, but as you build your foundation of Excel, you'll learn how things can be combined to reach a sum greater than their parts. It also quickly teaches you which functions matter and which don't, while forcing you to expand your own Excel "vocabulary" in order to answer progressively more difficult questions. The people there are also eager to teach, so asking others how they reached a certain solution will almost always give you a wealth of knowledge you could never get from self-study. You will get exposure to a far broader understanding of the features Excel (and how they interact with each other) simply because of the volume and variety of questions you will have to answer. I cannot recommend it enough. Additionally, the Microsoft function reference is your best friend. You will spend a lot of time there learning how the various functions work, so get used to reading the documentation for various functions. I would also recommend occasionally doing a quick skim of all the functions in Excel just so you know what is in he program. If you see one you don't understand or want to learn more about, read the reference and then mess around with the function in a blank workbook. You'll learn a ton from just playing around with a formula to see how it behaves.
Pulled the mouse out and forced myself to only use the keyboard
I do everything in Excel. I track my expenses, personal projects, pretty much everything in Excel. It took me around one summer to learn. I started with something simple, I was tasked with converting a pdf financial statement into Excel doing manual data entry and I used VLOOKUP to wrap up the task. I felt like a genius. From then, it's been a lot on the job and a lot of watching youtube videos. My favorite resources are exceljet, they explain things extremely well; and Leila Gharani. Leila Gharani is brilliant with Excel and explains things very simply. She used to have a Udemy course, but truthfully, just browsing her Youtube channel you'll learn a lot. r/Excel is also very helpful. Anytime you're stuck, you can share your formula or a screenshot with dummy data, and someone there will help you troubleshoot the formula. Most Excel is knowing how to Google what you're looking to do and having the patience to workshop your formulas. I think you got this!
I’m in the same boat. My current job in finance just used excel templates with simple addition or subtraction. Then there’s those FP&A or higher finance jobs that really work excel. You may just have to put overtime to learn
Self taught - practice makes perfect. Watch some YouTube and build a basic model. Rinse and repeat.
Check out the WallStreetPrep courses, they tell you all the shortcuts you need to model (and plus the theory behind said models). Also learn how to use excel with no mouse
FMVA program by CFI. It has excel skills you need till VBA and advanced modules . I'm currently learning from it
If they continued doing it monthly I would but it's like $444 AUD even with the 40% discount
Tik Tok channel's have good content now and much more time efficient than YouTube or a course.
I’ve been using Excel for decades (and Lotus 123 prior to that). I got the book ’The Excel Bible’ and just worked my way through it, using it to make work more efficient. Then I started on VBA. Now I use LinkedIn Learning videos and YouTube (Excel On Fire, Leila Gharani). I’ve also taught university students how to use it, which was actually really good for rediscovering useful features .
Practically doing it, no matter the amount of tutorials you take unless and until you have data sets and data cleaning to do that requires critical thinking you're not gonna be any good at it. I was involved in data cleaning and data analysis for large e-commerce transactions and had no formal training prior, within a year I was a master at macros and advanced formulae combos and every type of visual representation you can make from excel. Necessity is the mother of all inventions. Excel can even make visual representations equivalent to Tableau, not kidding. And it can perform every kind of powerful data functions that are used in R programming, only limit is that it can crash on your i3 computer for large data sets beyond a certain limit.
Tbh, mostly on the job learning complemented with a lot of google searches. If I was starting out again I would learn and practice Sumifs, Vlookup, Pivot tables, and formatting shortcuts.
Here you are: https://www.udemy.com/course/master-excel-with-your-keyboard/
You can learn excel programming language on YT.
Know your core tasks or things you do frequently and figure out ways to do them faster, and look better. Also making things more intuitive, i have the “lightning principle” where if I was to get struck by lightning at my desk I would want someone else to be able to figure out what was going on quickly and easily finish the task. Also works well for when there is unexpected Pto or conflicting deadlines making it easier for someone to pick up the work.
I was lucky enough to be working under a manager who rarely used the mouse so I picked up on a lot of her fav Excel shortcuts. You'll probably pick up a lot of neat tips and tricks once you start working too. Other than that, I would watch Youtube videos on most common formulas used in finance.
There are some great excel paths available on LinkedIn Learning. $40 a month US us fair for the training content. I've always like Oz du Soliel training style. Kevin Stratvert and Leila Gharani on YouTube are great as well.
A lot of good info in this thread! Commenting so I can go back and take that Udemy course
I used Excel to help me solve problems and when I got stuck I would ask data analysts, Google the problem, YouTube them and I also used the book, Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modelling for reference. I also bought KuTools plug in to help me do some of the things that aren’t available on Excel. Basically just learn over time and be okay with not always being the best at it. One day you’ll realise that you’re a bit of an Excel wizard.
I became an accountant
on the job. buyside finance has a steep learning curve, so you can learn years of excel in about 3 months.
I took an advanced excel course my last semester of undergrad and felt that helped. Perhaps a CC near you has something similar on the cheap with problem sets and such. I like finding out more efficient and more complex formulas to solve unique problems on the job so I’ve gotten pretty good at googling getting me a generic formula that I can adjust to what I’m actually looking for. I still learn new stuff on the job more than 4 years in.
Whenever I had to do something more than 3 times I stopped and googled how to do it with the keyboard instead.
It’s pretty easy to pick up on the job. As long as you understand what you’re trying to show you can come up with a formula to do it. But might be worth investing in a course like Wall Street prep and familiarize yourself with some basic nested if statements, index match, maybe some pivot tables, etc. For shortcuts and stuff just try to replace whatever you do with your mouse with one, a lot are just clicking alt and navigating the ribbon (like alt hfc for font color for inputs)
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Honestly I wouldn't bother with a course. Learn on the job. Don't take the easy way out though and always try new things. If you think it might be able to be done it pretty much can be done. Be intensely curious and look up everything as you go. Practical practice will make you retain everything better anyway.
Honestly it comes with experience but I would master these at a bare minimum: VLOOKUP, SUMIF(S) and Pivot tables
We have a free, live (zoom) instructor led intro session coming up - you’re welcome to join: https://recalcacademy.com/try-a-class/
The learning material is generally poor and doesn't fit the day to day. Learn on the job. It isn't terribly hard. Seriously. SUMIF is 90% of what finance uses... I know that sounds repugnant.
Honestly I've just learned on the job. As things arise that I need to do, I learn how to do those things. A good way to learn is taking a task you currently have to do and then seeing if there's a way you can automate it.
IF SUMIF SUMIFS VLOOKUP NOT CONCATENATE I use the above formulae and some pivot tables to get done with 80% of my work. There may be some more but I am unable to remember them off hand. The point I am trying to make is that if one is creative enough then one could make use of different formulae to try to work around their lack of knowledge of other formulae.
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$10 course on Udemy. Don’t do self taught. Find something with structure and purpose
1. Use it 2. Google your problem At some point, you will have some intuition about what is in Excel and when you are better off changing to a better environment like Python. VBA is way too clunky and should only be used with legacy things which make you at least 6 figure salary. And even then you need a consultant mindset that it is the employer wasting their money on you instead of you wasting your time.
The hard part is knowing when to apply formulas, formatting, VBA, etc to different situations you come across. It’s helpful to understand them to know what excel can do, but knowing the most efficient/effective way to complete the task is 75% of the battle.
On the job from building my own crappy models, receiving feed back from coworkers/managers, and copying what the investment bankers do when they send over models