Recommendations for improving excel skills

[Anonymous]

Question in the subject, I guess: I am good at the basics but want to become proficient in tools like VLOOKUP and Pivot Tables. Any recommendations?

[Anonymous]

I went from a law firm to an accounting firm years ago and had to pick up Excel from scratch as a result. I'm pretty proficient now -- love VLOOKUP. I just figured it out problem by problem by googling. That is, whenever there was something I thought I should be able to do in Excel, I googled it and there would be an explanation, or a video, or a sample formula.

[Anonymous]

I think it's hard to become proficient in excel without actually working in it regularly. You can google videos for VLOOKUP and Pivot Tables OP, and learn how to do it. But you won't master it unless you can apply it to a project that you are working on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it's hard to become proficient in excel without actually working in it regularly. You can google videos for VLOOKUP and Pivot Tables OP, and learn how to do it. But you won't master it unless you can apply it to a project that you are working on.

+1

[Anonymous]

I would look into some cheap but well reviewed virtual courses on Udemy or similar. They'll give you some phony data and walk you through playing with it.

[Anonymous]

Download a sample flat file with lots of data and columns. Then practice! Start with a pivot table - once you get the hang of that, move on to VLOOKUP, IF functions, F4 referencing, and conditional formatting.

I found Microsoft tutorials to be worthless, but there are lots of free Excel guides out there. Or check out a book from a library. The key is practice with lots of data.

[Anonymous]

Vlookup is for newbies. Xlookup is where it's at.

[Anonymous]

+1 to just googling and figuring out as you go. Soon you’ll forget all about vlookup because you’ll be slinging index match match!

I used to give excel workshops and the number one concept I would start with is the difference between a “flat” data set and a table. Us non-data folks are often working with tables where an attribute is listed across multiple columns, like a pivot table that’s already been…pivoted. It’s really hard to use that. I don’t have a good example handy but if you can unlock the concept, it really helps.