Introduction to Microsoft Excel 2010

About This Course

Do you work with numbers? Then you need to master Microsoft Excel 2010—and this is the place to do it. Even "non-techie" beginners will find it easy to learn Excel in this fun, step-by-step online course.

These lessons will teach you dozens of shortcuts and tricks for setting up fully formatted worksheets quickly and efficiently. You'll also learn the secrets behind writing powerful mathematical formulas and discover how to use the function wizard to quickly and automatically calculate statistics, loan payments, future value, and more.

In addition, you'll get tips on sorting and analyzing data, designing custom charts and graphs, creating three-dimensional workbooks, building links between files, endowing your worksheets with decision-making capabilities, and automating frequently-repeated tasks with macros and buttons.

This is not a tutorial, but an in-depth class where you'll get training, help, and personal support from an experienced instructor as you're learning Excel basics step-by-step. By the time you're done, you'll be using this vital Office 2010 tool like a pro.

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Chad Wambolt.

Chad Wambolt is a graduate of Boise State University, where he obtained his bachelor's degree in accounting. He has spent his entire professional career in the finance field, working for both privately and publicly held companies with sales ranging from $500 million to $3 billion. Through the course of his career, Chad has become an expert user of Microsoft Excel. His knowledge of Excel's capabilities has helped organizations streamline processes and save countless hours of labor. Chad has taught Excel to students of varying skill levels since 1997.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

In our first lesson, you'll develop a solid understanding of the Excel interface. You'll become fluent in the secret language spoken only by Excel users, you'll discover the best way to correct just about any mistake you might make in Excel, and you'll find yourself gliding effortlessly from cell to cell, leaving behind expertly written labels, numbers, and formulas.

Friday - Lesson 02

In this lesson, you'll learn five simple steps you should always follow to ensure that your worksheets are always well-planned, well-constructed, and beautifully formatted.

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Our third lesson will teach you the tricks of the Excel masters: a wide variety of useful shortcuts guaranteed to save you time, energy, and frustration. We'll also cover the art of file management in this lesson, so you'll have no trouble saving, retrieving, printing, and emailing your worksheets, or copying, renaming, and even deleting files. By the time you finish this lesson, you'll really start to feel like an Excel pro.

Friday - Lesson 04

Do you know the difference between a relative reference, an absolute reference, and a circular reference? You will after this lesson. Today, we focus on writing sophisticated formulas that can help ease us through some rather sticky scenarios.

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

With enough practice, most Excel users quickly become adept at organizing their worksheets across two dimensions: rows and columns. But only a select few will learn how to take their worksheets into the third dimension. Today, you will join that exclusive group. Prepare to have your socks knocked off as you gain hands-on experience in the construction of three-dimensional workbooks.

Friday - Lesson 06

No Excel course would be complete without a discussion of Excel's amazing data-crunching capabilities. Today, you'll not only learn how to build a database in Excel, you'll also learn how to subtotal, sort, and filter.

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

In this lesson and the next, we'll explore the exciting world of charts. You'll build your first graph today, and you'll learn how easy it is to adjust the chart type, labels, titles, colors, and many other aspects of your chart.

Friday - Lesson 08

Today, we'll dig deep into Excel's charting capabilities. You'll explore everything from bar charts and line charts to more prosaic graphs like the pie chart, the bubble chart, and 3-D charts. You'll find out how to personalize your charts with photographs, text labels, and drawings, and you'll discover the best ways to print or otherwise display the truly impressive charts that you'll be creating.

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

Excel includes many powerful functions that can automatically perform some very complicated tasks for you. In today's lesson, you'll learn some very interesting ways to put these functions to work for you. You'll find out how to ask Excel to magically derive averages, modes, maximums, minimums, and other useful statistics from nothing more than a column or two of numbers.

Friday - Lesson 10

We'll continue our exploration of Excel functions with an in-depth look at Excel's handy financial functions today. By the time this lesson is over, you'll be able to figure out how much money you'll have when you retire, when your kids reach college, or just before your next vacation. You'll be able to calculate the monthly payment on just about any type of loan, and you'll know how to figure out how long it will take to pay off your credit cards. You'll even create an amortization table of your very own, just like the one lenders use to track a loan's payoff amount over time.

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

Students often rank this lesson as one of their favorites. Today, you'll find out how to automate just about any task you find tedious or time-consuming. You'll discover how to move your most frequently used commands from their present, obscure locations to a much more convenient place: the toolbar that's always perched at the very top of your screen. You'll also learn how macros can be used to reduce just about any complex task to a single keystroke.

Friday - Lesson 12

I think you'll be intrigued by our final lesson, in which you'll teach Excel not only how to make decisions, but also how to act upon those decisions. We'll use a special function in Excel that allows it to make comparisons and use that comparison as the basis for important decisions.

Requirements

Microsoft Windows 8, Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, or XP; Microsoft Excel 2010 or Microsoft Office 2010 (the Home and Student Edition, Home and Business Edition, or Professional Edition) of Microsoft Office 2010 are all acceptable. You will need Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).

This course is not suitable for Macintosh users, users of older versions of Microsoft Excel, or users of OpenOffice.

Note: "Starter Version" and "Web App" versions of Microsoft Excel 2010 will not work with the full version of Excel taught in this course.