Advanced Excel Training

Excel spreadsheets.

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program created by Microsoft and updated every couple of years to provide users with the most advanced features and organizational tools. Although Microsoft Excel provides a basic spreadsheet and its popular features are easy to use and understand, Microsoft Excel also offers many advanced features that make organizing your spreadsheets and data even easier.

Advanced Formulas

Microsoft Excel offers an almost endless number of formulas to make collecting and gathering the data on your charts easier. Say you are tracking expenses over the course of a year, and you have in-depth charts for each month. You can simply put in an SUM(X:Y) command where X is the first cell that you want to add and Y is the last cell you want to add. Excel will automatically sum up all cells in between and put your answer in the cell where you put the command.

Advanced Filters

Advanced filters are special codes that will go back along the selected graphs and hide sensitive information, or clear your spreadsheet of any information you find irrelevant. This code can be used to show relevant purchases in a chart that has both small and large dollar values, to show areas that you exceeded a set budget in, or for many other organization tasks. The advanced filter can also be used to dissect large portions of your chart and extract them to another chart so that you don't have to manually input each set of data.

Text to Columns

Text to columns is an advanced feature that allows you to separate two text entries that were in one cell into multiple cells with a few easy clicks and without having to rearrange and mismatch all the data on your chart. This is good for if you want to alphabetize a list of names and money each person spent. Using text to columns, you can easily change the first row, splitting up the first and last names while keeping the names aligned with the dollar value of money spent.

Pivot Tables

Pivot tables are tables that sort, summarize and count various cells of data and export the summarized data to another spreadsheet to make it easier for viewers to see the bigger picture. Pivot tables are also useful to create cross tabs, which allow people to express the same array of data in various formats and break down the details of each graph, building up to the bigger picture without manually creating each table.

Training

There are many different ways to learn all the advanced features in Microsoft Excel. There are numerous online training seminars, along with various workshops with Excel programmers who are willing to teach you the ins and outs of Microsoft Excel for a small sum. When getting advanced Microsoft Excel training, it is important to know which method works better for you. If you like to work from home at your own pace, the online courses would be better. If you like to work with another person physically showing you the way to go, seminars and workshops would be better.

References

• Advanced Excel Training; Cool Tips
• Contextures; Advanced Filter Introduction
• WorldStat; MS Excel Textin Into Columns