What are the best ways (online ideally) to learn advanced excel skills?

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I am after recommendations of where to go to get better at excel. Lots of options out there so any that people have used and liked will be helpful.

I would say I am 'decent' as excel. Can do a very basic graph, can do some conditional formatting, pulling data from other tabs (but not sheets) and formulas. Things I have heard of but cant do are pivot tables, IF and doing generally more advanced stuff. Ideally something online that I can learn then apply as part of the tutorial as for me practise is best rather than theory/reading
 
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Microsoft+Excel+guide ;)

Seriously though,as good a way as any. Even the inbuilt Excel help should be, er, helpful.

Lol. Lots of options (I had already done that!) but keen to know if anyone else had used anything specific they would recommend. I am not a techno-phobe or useless at excel, but neither am I a whizz and while I could use excel help I would need to know what I am looking for help for. I would ideally like something to guide me though the various process. Some like pivot tables I have heard of but there will be many things I have not. Always prefer to get a personal recommendation than just rely on google!
 
Lynda.com?
 
Lynda.com?

Looks good, thanks. Only downside is there are lots and lots, so I need to know what I am looking for. Ideally after a small number of tutorials that cover everything.
 
It's tricky, I think you need to learn by having a genuine requirement.

I'm more or less self taught (with the help of google and lots of relevant sites) but I've built knowledge from volunteering to build various tools.

I know people who've been on advanced training courses but have no residual knowledge, because just 'learning' doesn't help. You really need to have a use for the knowledge, practice and then it sticks.

To qualify my knowledge level, larger spreadsheets, linked across networks, some vba, form building, embedded HTML, application building, a bit of statistical reporting with dashboards, graphics etc.
 
It's tricky, I think you need to learn by having a genuine requirement.

Pretty much this.

I've been using Excel for over 20 years and I still probably don't know 90% of it. You can do courses and cram as much knowledge as you can but, unless you actually use it, it'll soon be forgotten. Work out what it is you want to do then research that aspect specifically, build up your knowledge as you go.

You mention pivot tables but not vlookups, do yo u know how to use those? They are pretty much the key starting points with Excel and they'll give you a strong starting point. As for IFs, using the functions tool is a good way to learn, same for most formulas.
 
I'm a fan of google and YouTube, normally if I need to do something I will google it and look through the options. This has helped with all man of formulae. I now understand nested IF, Match, Offset, Pivot tables and all other manners of more complicated statements
 
Even the inbuilt Excel help should be, er, helpful.
Trying to find out how Excel works by looking at the Help system is like trying to find out how a word is spelt by looking in a dictionary.
 
The problem with trying to find Excel help is if you're looking for a specific function or method you need to know what it's called in order to find any help about it, but if you know what it's called you probably don't need much, if any, extra information about it.

And as with most things code/script based, once you start getting to more complicated requirements there are many different solutions to the same problem so asking for advice or guidance will result in a miriad of different answers.

As others have alluded to, you'll only really learn by looking for solutions to specific problems as generic 'advanced' training won't be useful in the real world.
 
I started off with excel in 1989 soon after it was launched, upgrading from SuperCalc and Lotus1-2-3. While I made good progress addressing real requirements, there was a book called "trade secrets of excel" that came out in 1992 and that really opened my eyes to the possibilities. So I recommend a combination of solving real requirements with learning new tips from YouTube and other online sources. If you get stuck there are excel online forums where you can get help. And if it's making important calculations for your business build in plenty of double checks, it's easy to make an error and not notice.
 
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Here's another thought. Before I start, I need to stress that this is not a personal criticism of @Phil V. I hope he knows me well enough to appreciate that, but other people might not.

Anyway...
To qualify my knowledge level, larger spreadsheets, linked across networks, some vba, form building, embedded HTML, application building, a bit of statistical reporting with dashboards, graphics etc.

Obviously it depends on the context, but trying to be too ambitions with Excel can be a very bad idea. The problem is maintainability: checking that a spreadsheet is correct and is giving the right answers can be incredibly difficult; and the more of these "advanced" features you use, the harder it is to check. It can be very difficult even for the person who created the spreadsheet, and much more difficult for anyone else. (And remember, "anyone else" includes future versions of you. If you build a complex Excel model now, it will be hard for you to maintain it in the future.)

My wife is into spreadsheet modelling. She currently works for one of the major electricity generators, modelling the potential revenue streams arising from investments in new generating capacity. These days most of the action is in small-scale plants which can be switched on and off rapidly to plug the gaps when the sun goes in or the wind stops blowing, and as you can probably imagine the modelling is incredibly complex. It has to take account of supply scenarios, demand scenarios, and National Grid's contractual mechanisms relating to availability and utilisation. Anyway she recently inherited responsibility for a big asset valuation model which has been in use for some years, but unlike some of her predecessors she's not comfortable using a model unless she's been able to verify that it's working correctly. So she dug around its innards and after a couple of weeks of work she had a long long list of outdated assumptions, incorrect references, redundant formulae, and so on. She reckons that if she were to rebuild it from scratch, it would be 90% smaller and run 100 times faster. All because the original builders seem to have got carried away with building a complex model and don't seem to have designed it to be maintainable.

In a similar vein, In a former life I used to do modelling and analysis in the rail industry, and I once discovered a spreadsheet error with 9-figure price tag (>£100,000,000) on it. Seriously. I worked on railway franchise bids, and it's well publicised that the Department for Transport got its fingers badly burned by faulty analysis which they couldn't spot was faulty. They eventually solved it by dictating that any spreadsheet model used in a bid had to have a very rigidly enforced structure: strict separation of inputs, calculations and outputs; every column in a spreadsheet having exactly the same formulae in each row; indirect and referencing functions banned; VBA banned; linking across sheets banned; that sort of thing. It forced us to plan the structure of a spreadsheet model carefully before starting to build it, but that's not a bad thing. Advanced spreadsheet modelling is really no different from software engineering, but the vast majority of spreadsheet users don't treat it like that.
 
Thanks for the input guys. Looks like this weekend will be trying different exercises!
 
At work we use something called pluralsight. I think you can get a free month trial - it covers many areas, lots for developers \ devops type roles but also has bits on excel (and photoshop I think!). I like the way it's structured.

Otherwise as others have said, google and youtube have most things.
 
I agree that learning by having a requirement is the way forward with excel - I have been on various courses but tbh I have learnt more by googling! I have found this site / blog helpful in the past though:

http://chandoo.org/

http://chandoo.org/wp/
 
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