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Debra's Top Excel Picks

Here are my top picks for Excel courses, add-ins, books, and Excel tools. See how to raise your skills to expert level, and get tools that will save you time.

Excel courses, books and tools

Excel Courses

You can learn Excel on your own, by reading, watching YouTube videos, and experimenting with your own Excel workbooks. That can take a long time though, and you might not know which topics are important, or in which order it's best to learn things.

If you want to learn quickly and efficiently, check out these Excel courses that I recommend. Led by Excel experts, this list has training for different skill levels.

There are courses for absolute beginners in Excel, and courses that take you to an intermediate or advanced level. There are also courses that focus on Excel's Power BI tools, or other special features.

A) General Excel Skills

  • Beginner: Mynda Treacy's Excel Skills course covers all the basics in Excel, and will get you up and running quickly.
  • Intermediate: After you've mastered the basics in Excel, enroll in Mynda Treacy's Excel Expert course. The lessons in this course will take you from Intermediate level, to Expert skills.

B) Special Topics

  • Pivot Tables: John Michaloudis leads the Xtreme Pivot Table Course -- with 200+ video tutorials, it covers everything you need to know about pivot tables, and more!
  • Dashboards: Learn new skills that could help you advance at work. Mynda Treacy leads a highly-rated Excel Dashboard Course, and registration opens a few times each year. Sign up to be notified, the next time the course is available.
  • Error Checking: In his new course, Ken Puls shows how to build an error checking system in your workbooks. Be confident that everything is calculating correctly, even if you haven't looked at the workbook in months! See how to create an error checking section on each worksheet, and a global check point for the entire workbook. The system even checks the pivot tables, to see if they've been updated -- that can prevent serious problems! Follow the course online, or download to watch offline too.
  • Macros: Learn how to automate Excel, and save time! Sign up for the one-hour free Macros & VBA Webinar from John Michaloudis. See how to record a macro, and set up a button to run it. Learn how to save and share your macros. Offered a few times each year, so sign up to be notified when the course opens.
  • Macros for Beginners: Allen Wyatt, from the Excel Tips website, has 4 free videos that give you a basic introduction to macros, and show how they can help you work more efficiently. Allen's full course is open a few times each year.

Excel Add-ins and Tools

Save time with these Excel add-ins and tools

1) Chart Tools - Create complex charts easily, with Jon Peltier's Chart Utilities.

  • Need a chart that’s not native to Excel? Peltier Tech makes Cycle Plots, Step Charts, Clustered AND Stacked Column or Bar Charts, and more.
  • Need a better version of a native Excel chart? Peltier Tech has several types of Waterfall Chart, plus Box Plots, Histograms, and Pareto Charts, all of which outperform Excel’s versions.
  • Need more powerful chart formatting and data editing capabilitites? This is the tool for you

2) Programming Tools - To save time while programming in Excel, use the AET VBE Tools from Andrew Engwirda.

  • It has tools to compare code between different procedures, copy code between projects, i
  • nsert code snippets, add or delete line numbers, and much more.

3) Speed Tools: Improve workbook speed and performance with FastExcel, by Charles Williams.

  • There are 3 major products in the FastExcel V4 family each targeted at different types of useage.
    • The Profiler gives you a comprehensive set of tools focussed on finding and prioritising calculation and VBA bottlenecks
    • FastExcel Manager contains tools to help you build, debug and maintain Excel workbooks
    • SpeedTools provides you with a state-of-the-art tool-kit to help you speed up your Excel Calculations

More Links

How to Install an Add-in

Sheet Navigator Add-in

Tools for Managing Workbooks

Debra's Top Excel Picks

Excel courses, books and tools - Debra's list

 

Last updated: May 18, 2023 4:27 PM