Intermediate Microsoft Excel 2019

Lesson 1

Excel Charts and Graphs

In this 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, in this lesson, 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.

More Excel Charts

With so many great charting features and enhancements in Excel 2019, there's no way you could study them all in a single lesson. So, in this lesson, you'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. The lesson will walk you through a few of them step-by-step so that you can see the value for yourself.

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 this 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?

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. You'll go through multiple examples, exploring several ways to apply this great feature.

Pivot Tables

You'll learn how to use one of the best features of Excel: the PivotTable. If you've heard about PivotTables before, then you'll know what to expect. There's no greater what-if analysis tool to summarize, reorganize, and report data. When you 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!

Advanced PivotTables

Just like charting, Excel's PivotTables are too big a topic to fit into one lesson. So, in this lesson, you'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.

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 you provide it. If you liked the Goal Seek lesson, then this Solver lesson is going to knock your socks off.

Sparklines

There's nothing more exciting than learning how to master a useful and eye-catching feature in Excel. In this lesson, you'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.

Macros

This topic is a student 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?

Introduction to Functions

If you've used Excel for a while, you know there are hundreds of functions at your disposal. You'll spend the last three lessons of this course going over exactly how and why you'd use them. The lesson will begin 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, you'll ease into creating various functions using some from the Text category.

Math/Trig Functions

In addition to learning how to create macros, most students want to learn as much as they can about Excel functions. In this lesson, you'll dig a little deeper into using some of the slightly more complex functions in the Math & Trig category. Specifically, you'll look at two popular choices, 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!

VLOOKUP, INDEX, and MATCH Functions

Since functions are such an important and integral part of using Excel, you'll spend the final lesson going over a few more of them. You'll learn how to use the extremely popular VLOOKUP function. If you're already accustomed to using VLOOKUP, don't feel short-changed, because this lesson will add to the complexity. You'll also use the INDEX and MATCH functions to do something just short of amazing. This is another lesson you won't want to miss!