Microsoft Excel

To reduce carbon footprint, and reduce cost to you, we are a “paperless” course. Your course materials are available in digital format, and may be printed on-demand if a paper copy is required. This portal will serve as your one stop shop for all the information you need for your course. In this class, we will be using MS Excel. Depending on the version licensed to your computer, it may be a standalone application; or, it may be bundled under Microsoft Office, or Office 365.

What is Microsoft Excel? Excel is a spreadsheet program from Microsoft and a component of its Office product group for business applications. Microsoft Excel enables users to format, organize and calculate data in a spreadsheet. This class is focused on beginner through intermediate skills necessary to use excell in a corporate setting.

1. Beginner level Excel user skills include navigation & formatting of the worksheets, sorting, filtering, and basic calculation.

2. Intermediate level Excel user skills include options and methods to manage and work data in an efficient way, using spreadsheets, graphing, tables, formulas.

3. Advanced level skills in Excel means possessing the ability to use automation efficiently to process large quantities of data relevant to business tasks.

What is Microsoft Office? The term “Microsoft Office” refers to Microsoft’s entire suite of office productivity applications. Microsoft Word is one of the many applications that are grouped under the “Microsoft Office” umbrella.

What is Office 365? Office 365 is a service where you pay a monthly subscription fee (around $10 a month) to use Microsoft Office programs (as opposed to paying $100 or more up front, as was traditionally done). One benefit to using Office 365 is that software updates are free (for example, if a new version of Microsoft Word comes out, you can upgrade to that new version for free).

Intermediate level Excel skills include options and methods to manage and work data in an efficient way..

Some helpful Intermediate level Functions to know are

• SUMIF: Finds a specific piece of information by matching it against criteria. 

• VLOOKUP: Finds a value in a table and returns related information from another column. It's useful for combining data from different lists or comparing lists for missing or matching items. 

• INDEX-MATCH: Returns a value in a column to the left. It's an alternative to VLOOKUP, which returns an appraisal from a column to the right. 

• CONCATENATE: Joins information from different cells to make worksheets more dynamic. It's a powerful tool for financial analysts. 

• IFERROR: Catches and handles formula errors, returning a custom message if an error is detected. 

• COUNTIF: Counts cells within a specified range that meet a certain criterion. 

• IF AND: Creates a new field based on constraints from an existing field. 

• LEFT, MID, and RIGHT: Extracts parts of a text string. 

• OFFSET: Can be combined with other functions like SUM or AVERAGE to build complex formulas. For example, you can use OFFSET to shift the cell reference around.