Excel for work: formulas, PivotTables and clean reports

Excel is still the tool many teams use to track, calculate and report. Most people learn it by copying formulas from colleagues and searching online, which leaves gaps and fragile workbooks. This course gives you a solid, modern foundation, so your spreadsheets are faster to build, easier to trust and simpler to hand over.

What you will learn

We use a realistic sales and expenses workbook for a small company and improve it step by step.

• Preparing clean data and turning ranges into Excel Tables
• Relative, absolute and mixed references, explained once and for all
• Everyday formulas: SUM, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, IF and IFS
• XLOOKUP and the dynamic array functions FILTER, SORT and UNIQUE
• LET for readable formulas and sensible error handling
• Text and date functions for messy real data
• PivotTables with grouping, slicers and PivotCharts
• Conditional formatting, clear charts and printable reports
• An introduction to Power Query for repeatable data cleaning

Version

The course uses Excel for Microsoft 365, the subscription version, on Windows and Mac. Excel 2021 and 2024 include almost all the features shown, including XLOOKUP and dynamic arrays. Where a function is only in Microsoft 365, such as GROUPBY, I point it out and show an alternative.

Who it is for

Office workers, managers, administrators, small business owners and students who use Excel regularly but feel unsure beyond the basics. You should know how to open a workbook, enter data and write a simple SUM. Practice files are included for every section.