Ask HN: Best way/resources to learn Excel? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best way/resources to learn Excel?

41 pointsgoatherders13 comments

I am an average Excel user. Work and whatnot necessitate that I need to get closer to expert level, particularly with regard to pivot tables and pulling data from one sheet/column/row And feeding it into other places as a sum, percentage, ratio, etc.

I would prefer an actual course with structure and a coherent curriculum instead of random YouTube videos. I know there was a startup here about 8 months ago touting Excel training. Any suggestions? Thank you.

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You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c

Search for ExcelIsFun You Tube Channel. This guy is a truly incredible teacher, thousands of videos from basic to guru level. I suggest you learn: Excel Tables, Index Function (lookup and reference versions) Match Function, SumIfs, CountIfs - inside out - better than Pivot Tables - plus how to write UDFs and Macros in VBA - then maybe PowerBI now part of data tab in Excel 2016.

ExcelIsFun helped me so much! Working with Excel and trying to make more complicated solutions is what got me interested in programming and led to the job I have now.

I've also really enjoyed "Excel 2013: Power Programming with VBA" by Walkenbach.

I don't know anyone who has learned it well via a course. It's almost always a group activity, looking at how peers solve problems in their spreadsheets in Excel. Perhaps the courses are worse than programming courses because they tend to assume a lower starting point, and can be too abstract without trying to solve a specific problem at hand.

The first chapter of "Data Smart" (https://www.amazon.ca/Data-Smart-Science-Transform-Informati...) gets into some more advanced but practical tasks in Excel. The material is accessible to the beginner and assumes little prior knowledge of Excel.

https://chandoo.org/ taught me a lot. It’s a pretty intensive repository :)

Lynda.com has some tutorials. This crash course at wallstreetprep (https://www.wallstreetprep.com/self-study-programs/excel-cra...) looks to cover many of the basics. I haven't taken it though.

This isn't strictly a recommendation because I've never used it, but this always looked helpful to me. They have some self-contained tutorials and courses that are all within an Excel workbook

https://exceleverest.com/

Excel couses on EdX are good if you are interested in Excel pivot & BI features.

Look for Dany Hoter. He will take your skills to a complete different level much above all others.

Took a look the dummy books or at udemy?

Check r/excel and youtube - excelisfun.

Pluralsight has a couple of videos that are ok. But they mostly focus on vba.

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