Description

Excel is still where most analysis actually happens, long before anything reaches a dedicated analytics tool. This course goes beyond everyday functions and into the calculation, modelling, and checking techniques that analysis depends on, including the auditing habits that keep an analysis from being quietly wrong.

Who This Course Is For

Analysts, operations and business intelligence staff, finance and commercial teams, researchers, and anyone whose job is turning a lot of data into an answer. It is also a sensible foundation if you are heading towards Power BI and want your Excel solid first.

What You Will Learn

Advanced calculations

Choosing the right function for the calculation in front of you, which is the skill everything else rests on.

  • Lookup tables and lookup functions, for joining datasets together
  • Text functions, for fields that arrived in the wrong shape
  • Time calculations
  • Date calculations
  • Conditions with AND, OR and NOT
  • Nested conditions
  • Conditional functions, to total or count only the records that meet your criteria
  • Array formulas
  • Calculating with copied values
  • Consolidation, for bringing several tables or sheets together
  • Financial functions

Simulations

Modelling what might happen, rather than reporting what already happened.

  • Double entry data tables, to see a result move across two variables at once
  • Goal Seek, to work backwards from the answer you need
  • The Solver, for problems with several constraints where trial and error stops being practical
  • Managing scenarios, to hold several sets of assumptions in one workbook

Spreadsheet audit

The part most self-taught analysts have never been shown, and the reason analyses get published with errors in them.

  • Detecting errors
  • Evaluating formulas step by step, to see exactly where one goes wrong
  • The Watch Window, to keep an eye on key cells while working elsewhere in a large model

Working in Microsoft 365

  • Creating and saving files in OneDrive, SharePoint or Teams
  • Editing a file from OneDrive, SharePoint or Teams
  • Sharing files with colleagues or with people outside your organisation
  • Co-editing a file, so analysis can be worked on by more than one person without versions by email

How the Course Is Delivered

The course is delivered online through our interactive learning system. It demonstrates each technique, then asks you to do it yourself in a live version of Excel, marking your work and correcting you as you go. That function is called the virtual tutor, and it is part of the software rather than a person.

You do not need Excel installed on your computer. Everything runs inside the training system.

Your CPD Certificate

The course is accredited by the CPD Standards Institute. Complete the training, pass the assessment, and you receive a CPD certificate in Excel for Data Analysis. The assessment and the certificate are included in the price.

Course Details

Start whenever you like, study at your own pace and keep access for twelve months. If you are training a team, ask us about group discounts and invoicing.