When I started learning Excel 17 years ago, online courses were almost non-existent. Luckily for you, a lot has changed in the last decade, and Excel knowledge is now available for free or at very affordable prices. All you need to do is to dedicate a few hours of studying per week, and you’ll become better in no time.
Below you can find my list of the best Excel courses for beginners and intermediate users. Some are free, some are paid, some offer free trials, but they all provide great value. I update the list periodically to keep it up to date.
Last edit: April 5th, 2021
Microsoft Excel – Excel from Beginner to Advanced is the most sold Excel course in the world and for good reasons. It’s actually a bundle of four Excel courses covering:
You will start with the basics, building a solid foundation that will give you further knowledge as you progress into intermediate and advanced level topics.
18 hours of on-demand videos are recorded with Excel 2013 but work in 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 (Office 365).
Microsoft Excel – Basic & Advanced is a great course if you are starting. Ken Puls, who has been an Excel MVP since 2006, takes you from the basics to more advanced topics.
The course is full of practical examples, tips, and tricks on Excel formulas and functions. It starts with a quick presentation of the interface; then, it moves to basic and advanced functions, data sorting & filtering. In the second part of the course, Ken focuses on more advanced topics like using Pivot Tables for data manipulation, applying conditional formatting, using advanced charts to present data, and recording macros to automate repetitive tasks.
By the end of the course, you will get all the knowledge needed to accomplish your real-world daily tasks with ease.
The estimated study time needed to complete the course is 26 hours, with over 5 hours of video lessons. All course lessons apply to Excel 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 (Office 365).
PivotTables are essential for anyone working with data in Microsoft Excel. A Pivot allows you to explore and analyze data quickly, reveal useful insights, and provide fast, accurate, and intuitive solutions to complicated questions.
This class is Part 1 of a three-part series covering data analysis with Excel PivotTables and PivotCharts. In this course, you’ll learn when, why, and how to use PivotTables, advanced sorting and filtering methods, as well as how to use the calculation tools available for PivotTables. You will also understand how to prepare your raw data structure to make it appropriate for PivotTable use, change your PivotTable layouts and styles of your PivotTables, and use grouping tools.
The lessons are laser-focused on advanced VBA techniques which allow you to automate routine tasks.
Learning VBA in Excel is an excellent Excel training program on LinkedIn Learning. It focuses on Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming language, which allows you to automate routine tasks. The course is led by Curtis Frye, a renowned Excel expert, and author.
While this course may be categorized as short, with just a little over 3 hours of video materials, the lessons are laser-focused on advanced VBA techniques that can really help you in your day-to-day job. Exercise files are included for the entire course.
Completing the course will grant you the right to use a sharable LinkedIn certificate. You can also download it as a PDF or print it to share with others.
Having Power BI, Power Query, and Power Pivot skills is going to set you above most Excel users, with the potential to earn a higher salary.
Excel expert Mynda Treacy teaches this 6 hours Power BI course. The video tutorials are available to watch at your own pace. I strongly recommend this course to anyone looking to learn Power BI and to create beautiful interactive dashboards.
Power BI is Microsoft’s latest business intelligence (BI) and data visualization tool. It enables you to quickly create interactive dashboards that bring your data to life and enable you to monitor your business on every device.
With the world generating more and more data each year, creating meaningful dashboards becomes more important each day. Power BI allows you to model data from almost anywhere using the same Power Query and Power Pivot tools many Excel users will be familiar with.
A very well taught, comprehensive course on Excel, VLOOKUP, Pivot Tables, Pivot Charts, etc. I really enjoyed this course, and feel like I learnt a lot from taking it. The lectures were interesting, and the quizzes and course material were just right, not anywhere near overwhelming or difficult to understand.
If you want to use Excel in a finance role but don’t have a clear study plan, this course can really help you. It’s relatively short, it’s packed with practical examples, and you can take it for free. I rate it as one of the best Excel courses for data analysis and finance aimed at beginners.
The training program takes around 13 hours to finish and covers pivot tables, Excel charts, conditional formatting, graphing, and data manipulation. Excel functionality is introduced using easy-to-understand examples, which are demonstrated in a way that learners can become comfortable in understanding and applying them.
This course is part of the “Business Statistics and Analysis” specialization from Rice University. If you are unfamiliar with Coursera, these programs include a series of useful courses to develop high-demand skills. They are in-depth, and they provide sought-after certificates.