[Twenty17]

Learned some of it in college, but would like to refresh my memory and learn more advanced things that I might need in the future. Any suggestions on good resources, I know you can youtube videos.. but any specific channels with comprehensive content, I am also good with following a textbook so please recommend those too if you know of any. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

You can learn Excel without courses or textbooks. You said the magic word – Youtube. Just about everything you could hope to do on Excel is covered in youtube videos. Mind you, some of them are about as interesting as watching an elephant drinking water, but some of them have very good “instructors” who give good examples. I did take an Excel for Accountants course awhile back and it was useful – it was an online course. But, the teacher didn't really teach anything, she just assigned work and gave timed exams online. The textbook we had was one of those “customized”, “author-less” course textbooks that are so popular nowadays – it was comprised of portions of like 3 different Excel textbooks, and I don't even know the names of the authors.
But, you might do a google search for “Things about Excel that Accountants need to know” or something like that. Off the top of my head, you need to know VLOOKUP (I use the command INDEX-MATCH instead, it's easier), SUMIF/COUNTIF/AVERAGEIF and SUMIFS, IF-AND and IF-OR, CONCATENATE, and one or two more. Using pivot tables is important. Working with multiple spreadsheets is important. Using Goal Seek/What-If Analysis is helpful (plenty of examples that you can google). Being able to construct amortization tables is good. Use of the Group and Subtotal functions on the DATA menu is pretty important for what I do in my job. Writing Macros in Excel is good if you know how to do it but requires a *lot* of knowledge. I don't know how to write macros at this time. Anyhow, I've probably said enough here. Youtube is a good place to begin, if you are currently at Square 1 as far as your Excel skills.

Is it true that they're putting Excel onto the CPA exams in the future? Oh joy.

[Superdude3000]

I posted about this a few months back and got great responses. The link is:
https://www.another71.com/cpa-exam-forum/topic/good-excel-practiceprogram-before-beginning-career-in-public/

I start November so I'm also hoping to get some Excel practice in after I take FAR next week. Really wanna be done so I can spend nearly two months prepping for my first year!

[Anonymous]

@Twenty17 – The forum on MrExcel is a great resource. Before I began studying for the CPA, I would go to MrExcel and look at unanswered questions and see if I could answer them. Most of the time someone more experienced in Excel had a better answer or beat me to the answer. If I didn't know the answer to a question, I would Google “Excel how to use vlookup with multiple criteria” and it would direct me to the what @crazyleon mentioned, Index/Match array formulas. If I couldn't find the answer using Google I stuck around the user's post to see how someone else answered. I learned a ton of VBA programming doing this.

[tskits75]

on Youtube there is a great channel called K2 Enterprises that have a lot of videos.

AUD - 92
BEC - 79
REG - August
FAR - TBD

[Anonymous]

Excel is all about trial and error. The best way to learn it is to just do it. Create your own scenarios and work them out on a spreadsheet – like, take a problem with bonds or something and make an amortization table in Excel. I have no idea about what typical B4 employees do with Excel but something tells me it's not very complicated. But, what you don't know, you will learn fast on the job. A lot of accounting is that way. You need to learn accounting, but real world accounting is nothing like what is covered in textbooks. It's the same for Excel.

[ageis0101]

https://people.highline.edu/mgirvin/excelisfun.htm – all you need. See first link, and all workbooks are on this site.

[Anonymous]

Something that will really help you be successful using Excel on the job is learning keyboard shortcuts. Just Google Excel keyboard shortcuts and you will find hundreds of them. Start with the basics and force yourself to use them over and over, even though in the beginning it will be slower than using your mouse. It will make you WAY more efficient in the long run (not to mention look more impressive 🙂 )

[Author]

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