Excel is a widely popular tool used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. Unfortunately, many Excel spreadsheets are rife with errors, even those used by big corporations and governments. And to add to that, many people are unable to use anything more than the basic functions of Excel, if they can even manage that.
So how can you make sure you don’t make these same mistakes? And even better, what are some advanced Excel skills you can learn to help you become more marketable and better at your job?
Why Should People Learn Advanced Excel Features?
Are Excel skills important to learn? Absolutely!
There are several benefits of Excel skills that make it worthwhile to learn the more advanced side of Excel. The first is to help avoid costly mistakes. The second, and probably more important reason, is that people can do so much more once they utilize the full potential of Excel.
You don’t want to cost your company money or slow things down, which is why Excel training is so critical. Mistakes can be tough to find and costly to correct. Far better to do things right the first time!
Besides that, there is so much you can do with Excel if you know a lot of the advanced features. This will make it far easier to do your job while also allowing you to do more with your work. And a lot of the advanced features actually make it easier to do certain tasks, which makes your job that much easier.
And learning Excel skills also makes you a much better candidate when job hunting or looking for a promotion. Employers love to see someone who knows how to manipulate data, run analysis, and provide meaningful results. It’s even better when you don’t have to spend an hour watching a tutorial each time you want to try something new!]
You can practice some of these techniques simply by opening Excel and playing around with the features on the program. You can throw in some random data, then work with it to see how the functions work. However, it’s often a lot better to have a class where someone can walk you through it and teach you all the tips and tricks.
What Are Some Advanced Excel Skills to Learn?
There are a lot of advanced skills you should learn, and some are more useful in certain situations. Depending on what you’re using Excel for, you may want to focus on some of these and leave others for another time. Bear in mind that the specific directions for some of these functions will vary between operating systems and platforms.
In the long run, the best option is to learn as many techniques as you can! You never know when you might encounter a situation where some of these skills will come in handy.
But what are Excel skills you should learn? Here are a few advanced techniques that are useful in a lot of situations. They can be tricky to learn on your own, but thankfully an advanced Excel course can teach you all of these and more!
Lookup Functions
A lookup function is very helpful when you have a lot of data, and you need to use the value in one column to find the value in another column.
A common example of this would be products and their prices. If you know the name of a particular product, device, or anything else, you can use a lookup function to find it, and then output another value from that same row. For example, the price of said product.
This is particularly useful if you want to quickly get outputs of values based on what you put in. With a lookup function, you enter the product, get a price, and you’re done!
Date and Text
Working with dates in Excel can be tricky, but thankfully, there are a lot of ways to utilize date values. This is especially useful when you’re trying to form texts or text strings that involve dates! You want your text to read a certain way, but you don’t want to change your dates to accomplish this.
Even if you don’t use dates, creating text strings is extremely useful! You can create automated messages, output messages, and other sorts of texts, all with some pre-programmed functions.
You’ll need to learn, either from a course or otherwise, how to properly create text from Excel values. But the ability to use things like texts and dates is invaluable in many situations.
File Linking
Excel can do a lot once you learn to utilize the power of other files and links in your workbooks. You can add external links to your Excel files in a lot of ways, depending on your purpose for including them.
Additionally, you can link between workbooks to better utilize functions and create more complex programs. Maybe you have one Excel file that holds all your data, and you want another one to actually run the code and give you output. You need to know how to link and use them properly!
There are quite a few different ways you can add links to your files and use them, so it’s quite helpful to learn from the pros and discover all the ways you can link your files.
Try an Excel Course Today!
This only scratches the surface of the myriad potential uses for Excel. We offer advanced excel courses delivered for you and your team by experienced Microsoft experts, either on your premises or during one of our public sessions. You’ll be amazed how much it helps you with your work and your career!
If you’re eager to start gaining more skills with Excel, we’d love to help! Feel free to fill out our contact form or contact us at 01454 203 355 to learn more about the classes we offer and how we can help you upgrade your skills to the next level.