Free MS Excel Courses Online

Microsoft Excel is a popular spreadsheet software offered as a part of the Microsoft Office suite. To date, it is one of the most widely used business tools worldwide. MS Excel is a tool used for organizing and analyzing data in rows and columns, performing calculations with formulas and functions, creating charts and graphs to visualize data, sorting and filtering information, and building reports and dashboards. The software features automatic calculations that update when data changes, along with built-in functions for math, statistics, and financial modelling.

Areas of Application for MS Excel

MS Excel is used in the following domains:

• MS Excel is used for creating financial statements, sales reports, performance dashboards, and business analytics. Companies rely on it to track KPIs, analyze trends, and make data-driven decisions.
• Financial professionals use MS Excel for budgeting, forecasting, and creating financial models. It is also used for cash flow analysis, investment planning, loan amortization schedules, and calculating various financial metrics like NPV and IRR.
• Organizations use Excel as a database tool to maintain customer information, product inventories, employee records, and project tracking. Its sorting, filtering, and data validation features help manage large datasets efficiently.
• Project managers utilize Excel for creating timelines, Gantt charts, resource allocation sheets, and project budgets. It helps track milestones, deadlines, and project progress through customizable spreadsheets and visual representations.
• Researchers and analysts use Excel for statistical calculations, hypothesis testing, and data visualization. Its built-in statistical functions and chart capabilities make it valuable for academic research and market analysis.
• Individuals use Excel for tracking personal expenses, creating household budgets, managing investment portfolios, and planning retirement savings. Its calculation capabilities help in making informed financial decisions.
• Teachers and students use Excel for learning mathematics, statistics, and data analysis. It is used for teaching formulas, functions, and data representation through practical exercises.
• Businesses use Excel to track inventory levels, monitor stock movements, calculate reorder points, and analyze sales patterns. Its formulas help automate inventory calculations and generate alerts for low stock.
• Human Resources departments utilize Excel for tracking employee information, managing payroll calculations, attendance tracking, and creating employee schedules. It helps in maintaining organized records of personnel data and performance metrics.
• Marketing professionals use Excel to analyze campaign performance, track marketing metrics, create customer segmentation models, and calculate ROI on investments. Its pivot tables and charts help in understanding customer behaviour patterns.

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List of Free MS Excel Courses

The following are free MS Excel courses that are beneficial for those who want to acquire skills to leverage all features of MS Excel:

1. Excel for Beginners 

Provider: Great Learning 

This free MS Excel course is meant for those who have just started with MS Excel. By enrolling in this course, students will learn about cell referencing, general functions in descriptive analysis, if-else conditions, sorting, filtering, tables, borders, date and time in Excel. Overall, students will learn to use MS Excel for effective data management.

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2. Microsoft - Work Smarter with Microsoft Excel 

Provider: Coursera

The course aims to help learners expedite tasks through Excel that would otherwise take many hours. Students will learn to create spreadsheets, work with basic formulae, functions and manage spreadsheets. Data visualization through charts will also be taught through this MS Excel course. 

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3. Excel for Intermediate Level 

Provider: Great Learning 

Once the beginner level is completed, students can move to the intermediate level course on MS Excel. After this, students will learn to create, calculate and analyze spreadsheets. They will also learn to use formulae in MS Excel for performing complex calculations for data analysis.

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4. Excel Tips and Tricks 

Provider: Great Learning 

The course covers from the basics of what is a cell in Excel to the entire layout of the worksheet. Further, students will learn the tips used in Excel to expedite the task. To improve work productivity, students will also learn the tips that will help in performing advanced Excel.

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5. Macquarie University - Excel Skills for Data Analytics and Visualization Specialization 

Provider: Coursera

This free MS Excel course is useful for learning MS Excel skills useful for data analytics and data visualization. Students will learn to create data models for effectively linking data and automating data completely.

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Free Resources To Learn MS Excel

1. Videos

YouTube has several videos that are helpful for those who want to learn MS Excel. Do remember if you want to showcase your expertise in MS Excel, you will have to enrol in an MS Excel course with certification.

1.1 Gulab Guru 

Channel: @gulabgurucomputer  

Gulab Guru has a complete playlist dedicated to teaching MS Excel to learners. The playlist is in Hindi and covers from basic to advanced concepts of MS Excel.

1.2 mybigguide

Channel: @mybigguidehindi

The channel has a video titled “Microsoft Excel in Just 60 minutes - Excel User Should Know - Complete Excel Tutorial Hindi”. This is a crash course video that includes tips and trips which can help in expediting tasks using MS Excel. 

1.3 My Excel Study

Channel: @MyExcelStudy

This channel is entirely dedicated to MS Excel which means that students can learn in detail about every topic related to the spreadsheet software. More than 80 videos related to Excel are available on the channel.

2. MS Excel Series

Those who want to study more about different functions, formulae and shortcuts in MS Excel can check out the MS Excel Series which includes different articles covering all the details related to the spreadsheet software.

MS Excel has numerous automation capabilities that can be used through macros and VBA programming. The different features of this spreadsheet software make it an essential software used across industries for tasks ranging from simple budgeting to complex financial modelling, data analysis, data visualization, project management, and inventory tracking. Whether it is a small business owner tracking expenses or an analyst working with large datasets, Excel's comprehensive features make it a very important tool for office setup.