Course Details
Course Duration - Half day (3 hours)
Course Objectives
This course takes you from your first calculations in Excel (division, multiplication, addition and subtraction) through to using some of the Functions in Excel to make life easier.
Functions are the guts of Excel, they are one of the things that make it so special. Once you start to use and understand functions you can start to really see the power of the program.
In addition, we introduce a principle of Excel that makes calculations so much easier and much more flexible. The techie name is Absolute References, but if you have ever seen $ in other people’s formulas and wondered what they were doing there, all will be explained.
Course Content
Basic Calculations
- Learn to easily add, subtract, multiple and divide
- Percentage calculations - made easy
- Check your answers are correct the easy way (without resorting to a calculator)
- Total a whole load of numbers quickly and easily
- Learn easy ways of making sure your totals will include new figures you add in later
- See how easy it is to use the same calculation in more than one place
So what’s with the $ in formulas?
- Understand what the $ does in a formula
- Use $ in a formula
What if I don’t want to see $ in my formulas? Can I avoid them?
- The answer is “kind of”. Learn how to use a feature of Excel that lets you name parts of your spreadsheet and then refer to them using that name. This also has the benefit of making your fomulas much easier to read.
Functions (what are they and how do they work?)
- Explanation of what a function is and does
- Using functions - SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, MIN, COUNT and a few more besides
Prerequisites
This course does assume that you have some prior experience of using Excel, although not for creating calculations.
What's Next
It is best to get some experience now of working with Excel and trying out some of the basic calculations. Use some of the shortcuts and just get familiar with calculations in general.
If you are feeling ready, you might want to look at the Excel - Advanced Functions course.