[IwannabeaCPA2017]

Hi guys
Back here for more questions- Not so much related to CPA. but anyone know of any crash courses or anywhere I can look to, to improve my excel skills. Im a better visual learner- Learn by watching examples and then working something similar and apply the knowledge. I have tried youtube videos but those are very simple and not exactly what I need.. I just want to know more like pivot tables and some fancy formulas like the “if” functions etc. I dont use excel that often now but wouldn’t hurt to know a bit more..

Thanks!

[Radez]

I don't think video is the most effective way to learn Excel, but if this is your chosen venue, then Lynda.com offers a bunch of training courses of varying level of complexity for $20 per month. The videos I watched there, which covered advanced functions and intro to VBA seemed like they'd be ok.

For myself, I found a book to be way more useful. I believe I used the Excel 2007 Step by Step book by Curtis Frye. I found working through the book to be very useful in familiarizing myself with the VBA environment. Most of the rest of the functionality I had picked up through google searches/experience, but still found useful nuggets here and there.

Beyond dedicating yourself to a structured course, I have found the only way that I have picked up additional knowledge is through encountering problems where I didn't already have a solution handy. This only takes you so far, though, because once you have a toolkit that is broad enough to somewhat effectively address most of the problems you encounter, you stop learning.

[Anonymous]

Use the forums at mrexcel.com. There's a link at the top for “Zero Reply Posts”. Users post questions varying in difficulty. Some are basic questions you can answer and help people out, some that will challenge you and many that you won't even know what the question is asking. Try answering some of the questions and if you don't know the answer, use Google… “Excel how to….” Even if I can't find a solution to a problem I still follow the users post to see the final solution.

I was never very good at following a book or youtube video either. It always seemed backwards, the data set and examples were designed for that lesson. It was backwards to me because the data is never neat and perfect in the real world. The questions posted on Mr. Excel are real world examples. I do this for a few hours a week and learn new stuff all the time. I still have a lot to learn, but over the course of a year I'm now very comfortable with Excel and would consider myself an advanced user. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Excel is such a big program that it's probably better to address your actual specific needs. It would be like a composer trying to master every instrument before composing anything. 🙂

[RE2PECT]

Your local library might provide free access to lynda.com. I'd look into that before paying for a subscription.

I agree with calvinus. Unless you use Excel on a daily basis and have specific uses for certain functions, you'll most likely forget most of the formulas and shortcuts these courses will teach you. I remember taking a course on lynda before starting my current position and I learned how to create pivot tables and do vlookups and sumif formulas, but I have no idea how to do them now since I never use them for my job.

FAR: 75 Roger & Ninja (notes/flashcards/audio/MCQ)
AUD: 73, 81
BEC: 71, retake 8/29
REG:

[Anonymous]

I'd almost recommend that you do what I did, and take the online Advanced Excel courses at Santa Monica College for like $150.00 each. I'd *almost* recommend it, but I won't, has an ‘F' rating on Ratemyprofessors.com!! Having said that, I did learn quite a few new things – not everything, but enough to get me started on the road to the most advanced aspects of Excel.

Hands-on is the only way to learn it. Passively watching Youtube videos about it is not usually wise unless you just can't figure out how the hell to do something and need clarification. Just go into Excel and create some stuff. Build an amortization table…that is useful for so many things in life. Car/mortgage payments, whatever. Or if you're doing bond problems in FAR, Excel is a great help.

Seriously, I would just get a user manual for Excel and learn all of the important formulas. VLOOKUP, SUMIF, AVERAGEIF, INDEX-MATCH, etc. Don't bother with the math-related ones or the hard-core statistical ones unless you're doing auditing or something else where you need to know them, then learn them. Also using GoalSeek and the other optimization-type commands is useful. One thing I need to learn how to do is write macros. Those who know how to do that are much the better for it. You need to know Visual Basic. Being able to build templates and forms in Excel is also a very useful skill (templates that other people can complete or use to upload data to other software programs as .csv or .txt files.)

It's interesting for me – I learned one aspect of Excel for my first BS degree in Chemistry (statistical analysis) and another aspect of it for Accounting (VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP, pivot table, etc.)
I love Excel. I use other softwares for different things in my job but that's always my favorite. Very powerful and at the same time, not hard to use. Part of learning it is making mistakes in it and playing around with formulas that maybe don't work for you right away.

[Author]

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