Course Description
Course Details
Take your Excel skills to the next level! Master charting, PivotTables, Slicers, Sparklines, and other advanced features of Microsoft Excel 2016, and discover how this powerful MS Office program can boost your productivity. In these hands-on lessons, you'll learn how to create informative, eye-catching charts and graphs, and harness the power of Excel's data analysis tools and AutoFilter commands. In addition, you'll find out how easy it is to create macros that let you manipulate data with the push of a button. You'll also discover how to use Goal Seek and Solver and apply them to real-world problems. And you'll set yourself apart from the casual Excel user by adding VLOOKUP, INDEX & MATCH, and Excel's other time-saving functions to your repertoire. So get ready for six fun, action-packed weeks that will make you an Excel expert! Benefits of Instructor-Led Courses: Two lessons are released each week, so you never feel overwhelmed with your workload Access an expert instructor to reinforce your learning and get feedback Learn from your peers and engage in weekly discussion forums
How It Works
This course is fully online, you require internet access and an email account. The course duration is 6 weeks, followed by a 2-week period to complete the final exam (online, open book). Lessons are released on Wednesdays and Fridays of each week, for a total of 12. You are not required to be online at any specific time. In addition to the specific lesson content, there is a discussion board with each lesson and often there is an optional assignment to apply the learning. Following each lesson, there is a short multiple choice quiz. Your score on these quizzes does not count towards the final mark but completing these helps solidify your learning as well as prepare you for the final exam. The final exam is an open-book, multiple choice exam and you need to achieve a minimum of 65% on the final exam to pass the course. There is only one opportunity to pass the exam. A certificate of completion from WatSPEED is available within four weeks of successful completion of each course and can be accessed in your student portal. Many of the Ed2Go courses are eligible towards the various online certificates offered by WatSPEED.
Requirements
Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows 8, or Microsoft Windows 10; Microsoft Office Home and Student 2016 or Microsoft Office 365 are acceptable. A free 30-day trial of Office 365 Home Premium may be available at (https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/try/). Then, a subscription can be purchased for as little as $9.99 per month. Please be sure to install the software on your computer before the course begins. This course is not suitable for Macintosh users, users of older versions of Microsoft Excel, or users of OpenOffice. Note: "Starter Version" and "Web App" versions of Microsoft Excel will not work with the full version of Excel taught in this course.
Syllabus
Lesson 1 - Excel Charts and Graphs. In our first lesson, you'll discover why Excel is such a powerful and user-friendly charting tool. To you, a workbook's numbers might tell an interesting story. But to others, that story might not be quite so obvious—they might just see plain old numbers. So, today, you'll find out how to choose the right chart for telling your story and then how to create, format, and edit your chart to help others clearly visualize that story.
Lesson 2 - More Excel Charts. There are so many great charting features and enhancements in Excel 2016, there's no way we could cover all of them in a single lesson. So, today, we'll continue exploring Excel's charting options—this time looking at the lesser-known options that are available to you. Even though they aren't well-known, these options can add tremendous value to your worksheets in the right situations. We'll walk through a few of them step-by-step, so you'll see the value for yourself.
Lesson 3 - AutoFilter and Sorting. Working with data in Excel can be quite easy—and sometimes even fun—when you know about the extra tools that are available once you have your data arranged in a table format. One of these great tools is the Auto Filter command. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to use Auto Filter to limit your table information to just the records you want. Not only does Auto Filter allow for finding exact matches, but it can also filter and sort based on cell shading or font color. How great is that?
Lesson 4 - Goal Seeking. Normally, you'll use your Excel workbooks as a place to enter formulas and get answers. But what if the formula isn't returning the answer you want? If you know what you want, but you just don't know what formula will get you there, then Excel's Goal Seek is exactly what you need. This tool will help you avoid the trial-and-error approach that most Excel users go through to get to the right answer. In this lesson, we'll walk through multiple examples together, exploring several ways to apply this great feature.
Lesson 5 - PivotTables. Today, you'll learn how to use one of the best features of Excel: the PivotTable. If you've heard about PivotTables before, then you know what I mean. There's no greater what-if analysis tool to summarize, reorganize, and report data. When we practice creating a PivotTable, you'll discover how "pivoting" your data helps you gain valuable insights by seeing the same information from a different perspective. This is a lesson you won't want to miss!
Lesson 6 - Advanced PivotTables. Just like charting, Excel's PivotTables are too big a topic to fit into one lesson. So, today, we'll take PivotTables to the next level by taking a tour through some of Excel's more advanced techniques. You'll learn how quick and easy it is to group your data to give your PivotTable even more power. Then you'll find out how a PivotTable can serve as your source and inspiration for some really nice charts, specifically, the PivotChart. Last, you'll become an expert in using the Excel PivotTable filtering tool called Slicer.
Lesson 7 - Solver. Have you ever worked with a financial model in Excel and wondered how you could speculate different outcomes by changing different input amounts? The Excel Solver can do just that. In this lesson, you'll learn how to use Solver to solve a complex problem based on the criteria and constraints we provide it. If you liked the Goal Seek lesson, then this Solver lesson is going to knock your socks off.
Lesson 8 - Sparklines. There's nothing more exciting than learning how to master a useful and eye-catching feature in Excel. In today's lesson, we'll explore in detail how to create all three types of Sparklines, as well as formatting options for each. By the end of the lesson, you'll have the skills to create dashboard-like mini charts sure to make you the envy of your office. If you enjoy creating charts, you'll really enjoy this lesson.
Lesson 9 - Macros. Today's topic is a student (and instructor) favorite. In this lesson, you'll find out how to use macros to turn boring, repetitive, time-consuming tasks into automated Excel functions. Tired of doing the same formatting on the same report month after month? Here's your chance to see how to record a macro that performs that time-consuming task in seconds with just one swift click of a button! How will you spend all the extra time that this lesson will save you?
Lesson 10 - Introduction to Functions. If you've used Excel for a while, you know there are hundreds of functions at your disposal. We're going to spend the last three lessons of this course going over exactly how and why you'd use them. We'll start today by going through a quick overview of all the categories of functions and the different methods you can use to create them. Then, later in the lesson, we'll ease into creating various functions using some from the Text category.
Lesson 11 - Math/Trig Functions. Next to learning how to create macros, most students want to learn as much as they can about Excel functions. In today's lesson, we'll dig a little deeper into using some of the slightly more complex functions that you'll find in the Math & Trig category. Specifically, we'll look at two of my favorites, the SUMIF and COUNTIF functions, and discuss how to use one of the more complex functions, SUMIFS. If one of your objectives in taking this course is to learn more about functions, you're in for a treat!
Lesson 12 - VLOOKUP, INDEX, and MATCH Functions. Since functions are such an important and integral part of using Excel, we'll spend our final lesson going over a few more of them. Today, you're going to learn how to use the extremely popular VLOOKUP function. If you're already accustomed to using VLOOKUP, don't feel short-changed, because we're going to add to the complexity. We're going to use the INDEX and MATCH functions to do something just short of amazing. This is another lesson you won't want to miss!
