Excel To Dashboard: A Beginner's Guide To Excel

Discover how Excel unlocks career opportunities and salary potential, and learn to build executive dashboards from an introductory course that covers core tasks you will face daily.

Explore Excel as an electronic spreadsheet to store, organize, and manipulate data in workbooks and cells, and learn how to obtain it via a 30-day trial or Office 2016 purchase.

Download all course documents after video 3 in a single zip file, then use them with each of the 101 videos.

Learn how to access Excel, open a blank workbook, and master workbooks, sheets, tabs, and ribbons while identifying the active cell and navigation using keyboard and mouse.

Learn Excel by repeating each video to reinforce shortcuts and skills, instead of a quiz after every ten videos, as taught by Raphael across 100 videos.

Master Excel navigation with keyboard shortcuts: move with arrows and tab, jump to first or last cell with control home or end, and perform copy, paste, cut, undo, and save.

Discover how to customize the quick access toolbar in Excel to place frequently used commands, add popular tools on the ribbon, and reset to default using alt shortcuts.

Learn to enter, modify, and delete data in Excel, using the formula bar and wrap text. Explore how deleting affects data and formatting, and how to use basic formulas.

Learn how to use Excel's clear options to remove contents, formats, comments, and hyperlinks, or clear everything in a selection, with keyboard shortcuts.

Create and save Excel workbooks and manage worksheets with ease. Learn what a workbook is, how to save to a dedicated folder, and use shortcuts.

Learn to create and delete worksheets in an Excel workbook using mouse, right-click, and shortcuts like shift+F11 and Ctrl+S, then rename, color-code, and navigate tabs.

Copy and move worksheets within and across workbooks using right-click, copy or move, and drag-and-drop. Protect the workbook with a password and hide or unhide specific sheets to secure data.

Learn to view and switch between multiple workbooks efficiently in Excel using keyboard shortcuts and the ribbon, enabling quick copying and moving of data across books.

Learn to view and compare multiple Excel workbooks simultaneously, arrange them in tiled, horizontal, vertical, or cascading layouts, and copy or move data between workbooks with copy paste or drag.

Explore how a single cell forms a row and column, learn to select contiguous and noncontiguous ranges with mouse, keyboard, F8, and manage quick analysis and format painter options.

Discover how to create and format comments, perform find and replace with keyboard shortcuts, and use autofill to generate dates, numbers, months, and years in Excel, with quick navigation tips.

Convert raw data to Excel tables to instantly format and present data. Use tables to enable dropdown filters, totals, slicers, and duplicate removal.

Learn to format data in Excel using the home ribbon, including font, alignment, currency formatting, merge and center, borders, fill color, and text wrap for clearer end-user worksheets.

Master keyboard formatting in excel: navigate with arrows, toggle the ribbon with ctrl+1, select cells with shift+ctrl, and apply bold, italics, underline, merge, colors, and font changes.

Learn essential excel shortcuts for managing workbooks and worksheets, including creating new workbooks, saving and printing, zooming with the ctrl+mouse wheel, and automatic recovery to protect unsaved data.

Create and use Excel templates to standardize future files, including formatting and fields. Save templates as .xltx and reuse them to generate consistent expense reports with automated mileage calculations.

Learn to name ranges in excel, replacing cell addresses with names for easier reference in formulas and charts. Use the name box and name manager to create and manage ranges.

Create dynamic range names in Excel that automatically update as you add data, using a named range like cars and the name manager, enabling lookups and charts.

Learn to create and use an Excel data entry form to enter and manage records, including installing the form, adding a custom tab, and navigating entries.

Explore Excel printing from multiple access points, print active sheets or whole workbooks, set print areas, and configure headers and footers with date, time, and page numbers.

Explore how formulas power Excel, starting with the equal sign, and combine mathematical operators, functions, cell references, and named ranges like quantities and cost to perform calculations.

Learn how functions in Excel use pre-defined formulas with one to many arguments, starting with =, accessible via the function library and name manager, and how tables optimize function use.

Learn how to use cell references in Excel, mastering relative and absolute references, and how to reference cells across worksheets and workbooks to create dynamic formulas.

Identify and resolve common Excel errors in a dataset, such as divide by zero, name errors, not available, missing references, and value or number too large errors, with practical fixes.

Explore how to join text and numbers in Excel using concatenate, the ampersand, and the percent sign, with quotes for text and awareness of absolute versus relative references.

Learn how Excel uses character codes with code and char functions to convert characters to numbers (1–255) and back, including carriage returns and inserting symbols.

Explore Excel's text function repeat, which duplicates a string or number a chosen number of times, and see how it forms simple histograms to visualize data.

Discover how to use the Excel text box to overlay long descriptions independently of cells, saving space and handling up to 32000 characters with formatting options.

Learn to use the LEN and TRIM functions to count characters, including spaces, and remove leading or trailing spaces in Excel data, preventing errors in financial reports.

Learn how to use left, right, and mid functions in Excel to extract substrings from text, trim spaces, and format names, dates, and identifiers for clean dashboards.

Learn how to use the find function in Excel to locate characters, start positions, and extract first, middle, and last names from strings, handling case sensitivity and errors.

Apply a blend of left, mid, right, and find with length to extract first, middle, and last names from uneven data, and text to columns to split into separate cells.

Discover how to split a full name into first, middle, and last using Excel's text to columns wizard, choosing space as the delimiter for quick data separation.

Learn to fix numbers stored as text in Excel by using convert to number, identify text versus numeric data by alignment and the green triangle, and enable summing.

Learn to use the substitute and replace functions in Excel to modify text with old and new text, plus instance or position options.

Learn how to format text in Excel using upper, lower, and proper functions, split names with text to columns, and build emails with left and right and concatenation.

Explore how the exact function compares two strings for true identity, including spaces, and how the = operator performs case-insensitive text comparisons in Excel.

Learn how to use the dollar and fixed functions in Excel to format as currency or text, clean up varying decimals, and control decimal places with optional no commas.

Explore how Excel assigns date serial numbers starting in 1900 and convert text dates to numbers using datevalue, with hands-on examples and serial verification.

Convert text dates to Excel serial numbers by formatting cells as text and using the date value to reveal the serial; the lecture covers date functions and start-end date differentiation.

Explore date and time functions in Excel by formatting dates, extracting day, month, year, and time components, calculating ages, and using today and now to auto update data.

Learn to count working days between dates with the network days function, excluding weekends and holidays, using configurable weekend patterns (1-16) and holiday ranges for scheduling.

Learn how to use the workday function to add a grace period to a start date, skip weekends and holidays, and determine the invoice due date.

Use the weekday function to map dates to day numbers, convert to names with text, apply conditional formatting, and learn weeknum and pivot charts.

Learn how to use the edate and eomonth functions to calculate expiration dates and the last day of the month by adding months to a start date.

Explore how count, counta, countblank, countif, and countifs in Excel count numbers, text, blanks, and cells meeting multiple criteria using ranges and criteria.

Discover how to use sum, sumif, and sumifs to total values across a range, based on single or multiple criteria like region and state (west, California) with automatic updates.

Learn how to use dsums, dmax, dmin, and dcount database functions to retrieve data from large Excel datasets, using a criteria range, fields, and multiple criteria.

Master the vlookup function to pull data from the leftmost column using a defined table array and column index number, with exact-match false and real-life examples like grades and degrees.

Master horizontal lookups with the HLOOKUP function in Excel by learning how to search across rows, calculate bonuses based on years worked, and total salaries using proper arguments.

Learn how the match function finds a row and column position, then the index retrieves data from a cross section, as shown with months and sales reps.

Master the and and or functions in Excel; nest them in if statements; evaluate multiple criteria with true/false outcomes, including case sensitivity.

Master the if function in Excel, which evaluates a logical test and returns a value if true or false. Learn using and/or and nesting to build complex formulas.

Explore how nested if functions in Excel determine each student's letter grade from their average, breaking down the logic and translating scores into A, B, C, D, or F.

Learn to generate random numbers in Excel using rand and rand between, assign them to students, convert volatile formulas to static values, and apply randomization to ranges and dates.

Learn how to use the aggregate function in Excel to sum values while ignoring errors, including handling division by zero and lookup errors, with practical examples.

Explore arrays in excel, including horizontal and vertical one-dimensional arrays and two-dimensional ranges. Learn to enter array formulas with control shift enter, and use sum, large, and small within arrays.

Learn how to use the transpose function to switch rows and columns in Excel, using copy, paste special, and transpose to convert data like years, sales, and quantity.

Discover using PMT, IPMT, and PPMT in Excel to calculate monthly loan payments, interest, and principal by setting rate per period, periods, and present value.

Learn to create and format sparklines in Excel, using line and column sparklines to visualize six months of sales data in a single cell, with markers and axis settings.

Learn conditional formatting in Excel to highlight highs and lows, duplicates, and text patterns, apply top/bottom rules, color scales, data bars, icons, and custom formulas with manage rules.

Learn how charts visually summarize data in Excel, identify trends and extremes, choose effective chart types, and use quick analysis and the insert tab to build dashboards for upper management.

Learn to create and customize Excel column charts, including clustered, stacked, 100% stacked, and 3D variants, by selecting data, inserting charts, and adjusting titles, axes, and grid lines.

Learn how to customize column charts in Excel, including changing chart type, switching data orientation, moving charts to new sheets, and tailoring colors, titles, axes, and gridlines.

Create and format pie charts in Excel to visualize proportions, including pie of a pie, data labeling, sorting from largest to smallest, exploding slices, and 2D or 3D styles.

Learn how to create and format a multi-series donut chart in Excel for dashboards, including inserting the donut, adding data labels, and displaying category names and percentages.

Create a line chart to display trends over time by month, using a legend to identify each sales representative and customize axes, colors, and formatting for clear interpretation.

Learn to create a scatter chart in Excel, plot temperature against convertible car sales, add axis labels, format the chart, and include a trendline to show the relationship.

Learn to create a combo chart in Excel by combining a clustered column with a line chart on a secondary axis, including formatting the series.

Learn how to create a histogram chart in Excel to show data frequency in bins, such as grade distributions, and adjust the default five bins, bin width, and axis formatting.

Create a waterfall chart in Excel to visualize monthly variance between target and actual registrations, with positives in green and negatives in red, computed as actual minus target.

Learn to create a pareto chart in Excel by sorting data from high to low, calculating total and cumulative percentages, and visualizing the 80/20 impact with a combo chart.

Learn to create a tree map to visualize hierarchical department data in Excel, using sorted categories, labeled rectangles, and color coding to compare revenue across subgroups.

Learn to create sunburst charts in Excel to visualize hierarchical data in a donut format, with the inner circle as the top level and each ring representing deeper categories.

Learn to create a gantt chart in excel to schedule and track tasks, such as home renovation activities, using start dates, durations, and a stacked bar chart to visualize progress.

Insert pictures or logos from the insert tab, resize with handles, and set them to move and size with cells for a clean, business-ready layout.

Learn to use data validation to restrict entries to whole numbers and valid dates within defined ranges. Use dropdown lists to enforce data integrity and provide clear guidance with messages.

Create outlines in Excel to group data by a chosen column, compute subtotals and a grand total, and easily expand or collapse details by sales rep.

Learn to consolidate data from multiple worksheets into a single summary with the consolidate tool, creating grand totals and subtotals across West, East, North, and South regions.

Link data across workbooks to build a dashboard by pulling grand totals from Japan and USA into a third workbook, then observe dynamic updates when source data changes.

Learn to protect workbooks and worksheets in Excel by setting passwords, locking cells, and restricting edits to specific ranges while keeping essential data safe.

Apply cell styles to unlock selected cells, protect the worksheet with a password, and restrict edits to color-coded cells only.

Learn to import data into Excel from heterogeneous sources—including Access databases, the web, text and CSV files—using the data tab and import wizards.

Master pivot tables in Excel to quickly group and summarize large data for analysis, using recommended pivot tables or building from scratch with proper headers and rows, columns, and values.

Explore pivot tables to summarize data by year and quarter, expand detail by customer and product, and use filters and slicers to analyze and refresh results.

Learn to create a pivot chart from a pivot table in Excel, selecting product and quarter to visualize sales by quarter. Format the chart and use worksheets to prepare dashboards.

Explore how to use Excel's what-if scenario manager to forecast outcomes under different salary and bill scenarios, comparing best, worst, and status-quo cases and their impact on bank deposits.

Explore what-if analysis using goal seek in Excel to hit a charity target of 850,000 by adjusting car prices and charity percentages, with examples on sales totals and exam averages.

Discover how Excel macros automate repetitive data formatting, such as currency formatting, proper casing, and concatenation for full names, using the developer tab and recorded macros.

Create dashboards from raw Excel data by building pivot charts, tables, and slicers to provide visual metrics for upper management. Format and arrange charts for a clean, actionable view.

Learn to build a dashboard from pivot tables and charts, showing total sales by product and company, with slicers and formatting for clear, interactive insights.

Build interactive Excel dashboards by linking charts to slicers, configuring report connections and pivot tables, and arranging columns to filter data for individuals while engaging upper management.

Explore how to access Excel 2016's 'Tell me what you want to do' help feature, discover tutorials, videos, and support, and learn lookup and pivot table basics to build dashboards.

Build on a solid Excel foundation and advance toward dashboards by continuing practice, using the tell me what you want to know tool, and embracing lifelong learning.

Discover continued learning with more Excel courses, and learn how to download a document to claim a $10 coupon.