Microsoft Excel Essentials

Almost nobody is taught Excel. They are handed a spreadsheet on their second week in a job, told what to click, and everything after that is guesswork and colleagues. It works, in the sense that the numbers usually come out, but it leaves people quietly nervous about a program they use every day.

This day fixes that. Not by making you an expert, but by giving you the underlying picture, so that when Excel does something unexpected you have a reasonable idea why.

There is a great deal of free Excel content and some of it is very good. What it cannot do is watch you work. Most beginners are not held back by not knowing a feature exists, they are held back by one or two small misunderstandings that quietly break everything downstream, and those are almost impossible to diagnose on your own. A day in a small group with a trainer looking over your shoulder catches those in the first hour.

It also gives you a person to ask a fortnight later, when the spreadsheet you built at work does something you did not expect.

Five modules across one day, with hands-on practice in every one. The order matters: each module leans on the one before it, which is why we do not start with formulas even though that is what most people came for.

Teaching accounts for roughly half the day. The other half is you working in Excel, with the trainer available.

Roughly half the day is you working in Excel rather than watching someone else work in Excel. That ratio is deliberate for a beginner course. Watching a formula being written is not the same skill as writing one, and the gap between the two only shows up when you are back at your desk on your own.

Online delegates need a second screen or a device to watch the session on while working in Excel. One laptop screen split between the trainer’s demonstration and your own workbook makes for a frustrating day, and we would rather tell you that in advance than on the morning.

Online

Live with a real trainer and a small group, scheduled regularly. Same trainer, same exercises and same courseware as the classroom. £249 per person excluding VAT, or three interest-free instalments of £99.60 with Klarna.

In person

Small cohorts at our UK training venues, on machines set up and ready, which suits people who would rather not wrestle with their own laptop while learning something new. Price on request confirm before publishing

Onsite / closed

At your offices, using your own version of Excel and, if you want, your own spreadsheets as the examples. For a beginner course this is often the strongest option, because a team that learns the same habits on the same day stops producing five different versions of the same report. Best value for four or more. Ask for a quote.

Self-paced (Launching soon)

On-demand modules to work through at your own pace. Register your interest and we will let you know when it goes live.

Excel is the piece of software almost every organisation depends on and almost none of them train anyone in. It is treated as a thing people simply have, like the ability to use a phone, and so the cost of people not really having it never appears on anyone’s budget line.

It appears everywhere else. Someone spends an afternoon retyping figures that could have been sorted in ten seconds, because the data is laid out in a way that will not sort. A report goes to a client with the columns cut off, because nobody knew about print areas. A number is wrong for three months because a formula was copied down and the reference moved, and nobody could read the formula well enough to notice. A capable person avoids a task, or a promotion, because it involves spreadsheets and they have decided they are not a spreadsheet person.

None of that is a technology problem, and buying anything new will not fix it. One day and a couple of hundred pounds per person will, and for a skill somebody will use every working day for the rest of their career, that tends to pay for itself within the first month.