Online Advanced Microsoft Excel Course

Microsoft Excel provides a range of advanced functions that greatly extend its capabilities. Powerful analysis, forecasting, automation and presentation techniques offer wide-ranging business benefits for members of staff that have learnt to harness them.

Our CPD Certified Advanced Excel course will take your staff’s Microsoft Excel abilities to the next level. It demystifies the most complex areas of Excel using written text, screenshots and 160 videos.

By the end of the course your team will be proficient in the more complex functions and formulae used in Excel. They'll be able to apply these to their work to deliver more in-depth analyses and become more efficient in their spreadsheeting. The course is available for PC versions 2007, 2010, 2013 & 2016 and the areas covered include Advanced Range Names, Array Formulae, Visual Basics and Macros, PivotTables and PowerPivots.

Learning outcomes

• Use advanced graphics and presentation techniques to create impactful slides.
• Increase interactivity and automate your spreadsheet with macros and Visual Basic.
• Solve complex problems with superpower functions.
• Use PivotTables and PowerPivots to turn raw data into refined information to support key decisions.

Section 1: Efficiency and Risk

Unit 1.1 - Templates

Get a head start with templates. Set up an Excel template to save you an hour each time you create a new workbook. Create new default workbook and worksheet templates, learn how modular templates can make your spreadsheets more consistent and much quicker to set up. Your Excel, your way.

Unit 1.2 - Increasing Efficiency and Reducing Risk

Make spreadsheets more efficient and less risky by identifying how to build in checks and controls from the outset. Identify key techniques that reduce risk and increase automation and efficiency. Introduce standards to help your team and documentation and review tools.

Unit 1.3 - Data Validation

Understand extended uses of Data Validation, work with validation formulae. Understand lists and lists that depend on other list selections as well as other methods of tracking down invalid entries

Section 2: Advanced Techniques

Unit 2.1 - Functions with Superpowers

Finding the right functions: with hidden powers – MOD() for patterns, OFFSET() for simple choices, INDIRECT() to manipulate formulae and identify how references to ranges of cells adapt automatically for new data

Unit 2.2 - Array Formulae

One formula, one million calculations: SUMPRODUCT() - all the gain of an array formula with less of the pain

Unit 2.3 - Tables

Why Tables are so much more than just a new format. Make your spreadsheets more automatic with a single command. Understand table formulae and instant readability

Unit 2.4 - Advanced Range Names

Use the same name on different sheets using the Name Manager. Understand how to insert names in formulae – the efficient inclusion of Names, the use of intersections. Identify how to allocate a formula directly to a Range Name and why you might need to

Unit 2.5 - What If Analysis

Use Excel to help you make better decisions. Use Goal Seek to find where you need to start to get where you need to go. Use an Excel Data Table to calculate dozens of possible outcomes. Create and manage alternative scenarios. Make more profit or incur less expense by using Excel Solver to identify the best solution

Unit 2.6 - Problem Solving

Calculations that make decisions – understanding True and False. What Boolean Logic is and why it’s useful in practice, combining logic and arrays to solve complex problems

Section 3: Excel Interactivity

Unit 3.1 - Form Controls

Use Form controls to make life easier for users. Use a Spin Button to choose a value easily and an Option Button to choose with a single click. Also covers choosing from lists

Unit 3.2 - Visual Basic and Macros

Create macros by writing Visual Basic code. A macro that performs one or more actions on selected cells. Write your own Excel functions with VB code. Understanding volatile functions. Trigger a macro when a particular cell is changed. Handling errors elegantly. Exchanging information with VB code. Displaying a Message box. Asking for user input using an Input box. Create an Excel form with a List box containing values from a range of cells. Sample VB projects: an automatic index to sheets, printing selected ranges. Avoiding macros when they’re not really necessary

Section 4: Spreadsheet Impact

Unit 4.1 - Conditional Formatting

Beyond simple Conditional Formats. Basing conditions on a formula and deciding whether a batsman is out or not, choose currency symbols for a whole sheet by changing a single cell. Getting your rules in the right order and knowing when to stop. Graphical Conditional Formats – the detailed options. Using invisibility to your advantage.

Unit 4.2 - Charts that Inspire

What makes a good chart – is it really a 6.5 cucumbers? Simple steps to make your charts clearer. Why small can be better than large. Are pie charts evil? Why 3D charts can be 50% worse. Mixed chart types, trendlines and projections. Advanced chart techniques: break-even lines and waterfall charts. Pictures in chart columns

Unit 4.3 - Sparklines

In-cell charts – showing 12 times as much information in the same amount of space. Careful with that Axis. The different types of Sparkline: lines, columns and win loss. Sparklines based on a dynamic data range

Unit 4.4 - Graphics Tricks and Techniques

Further graphics tips and techniques. Taking dynamic pictures with the Excel camera. Use the Excel camera to combine areas from multiple sheets on the same sheet of paper. Formatting Excel Camera pictures. Power View – using the Excel 2013 data visualisation add-in including plotting values on maps and ‘playing’ bubble charts. Using 3D Map to create videos of animated visualisations of results by location

Section 5: Turning Data into Decisions

Unit 5.1 - Working with External Data

Identify the Get External Tools, understand relational databases in ten minutes to liberate your data, and create relationships within Excel using the Excel 2013 Data Model

Unit 5.2 - Advanced Uses of PivotTables

Use advanced PivotTable techniques to do more with your data, such as Calculated Fields and Calculated items. Use PivotTables as the calculation engine behind management reports, GETPIVOTDATA() and CUBE formulae to create flexible reports, as well as Excel 2016 slicers & timelines. Make your PivotTables more interactive, work with PivotCharts, and build interactive dashboards using PivotTables and Slicers.

Unit 5.3 - PowerPivot

Understand the Pivot add-in and PowerPivot data tools. Calculations in Power Pivot – an introduction to Data Analysis Expressions (DAX). Use DAX in table columns.,DAX to create new measures and calculated fields. Understanding advanced DAX expressions – functions that combine calculations and database technique, and the Time Intelligence DAX functions – why you need a table containing all possible dates

Unit 5.4 - Reporting with PowerPivot

Creating powerful reports with PowerPivot: Hierarchies, Perspectives and Sets, sdding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to a Power Pivot report. Creating CUBE formulae to report on your data in just the way you want to. Use all these techniques to turn millions of rows of data into a dashboard that supports better decisions

Section 6: Course Plenary

Unit 6.1 - Course Plenary

Revise what you have learned.

About the Author, Simon Hurst (BA ACA)

Simon Hurst is a Chartered Accountant and has been involved in computer software for 26 years during which he has provided a wide range of training services to professionals of all levels. His expertise lies in all the main Microsoft applications and he's been running hands-on Excel training courses for over 20 years, dealing with all aspects of Excel from basic competence to advanced data analysis. He is able to bring these years of practical experience to our Excel and Advanced Excel courses, ensuring that the courses explain advanced concepts clearly and concisely, and with real, practical applications and even the occasional joke.

• For expert Excel users looking to take their proficiency to the next level.
• Accountants, bookkeeppers, teachers, salespeople, managers. The list just doesn't end with Excel.

• PC with a full version of Microsoft Excel (any version from 2007 to 2016 or Microsoft 365).
• Not a requirement but a benefit to have some work-related projects to which you can readily apply what you learn.