Hi all,

I’m looking for a structured Excel course that takes me from the basics all the way to advanced/expert level. I already know the fundamentals and then some (formulas, formatting, basic functions, etc.), but I want to start fresh with a proper structured course rather than having scattered knowledge — I want to make sure I’m not missing anything and build a solid foundation upward.

Ideally the course would cover:

Core functions and formulas (VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, etc.)
Pivot Tables and Power Pivot
Power Query
Data visualization / dashboards
Some VBA/macros (nice to have, not essential)

I’m open to free or paid resources — YouTube series, Udemy/Coursera courses, books, whatever has worked well for others. Would love to hear what actually helped you level up, not just what’s popular.

Thanks in advance!

I'm learning Excel for bookkeeping. What are the most useful formulas for beginners?

If you already have two columns of data, for example, one column has the item, and the other column has a date.

All you need to do is smash them together in a new column using the &.

Now you can look up each one separately using the smash column.

Like Bob February becomes
Bob-February A2 & “-“ & B3

You can join my subreddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/GetNoticedNow/s/ZSSvslKP2K

Don’t you hate that xlookup only finds the first result?

Easy trick.

Just number them.

A A-1
A A-2
A A-3

You can use a formula to do it quickly for the whole row.

Do it on both sides and look them up.

Or on the first side, you can just have the number separate, and look up cell A1 & “-“ & A2.

What if Sheet2 is blank and Sheet1 says:

A
A
B
B
C
C

They gets a new row on the side that calls them:

A 1-1
A 1-2
B 2-1
B 2-2
C 3-1
C 3-2

Now go to a blank page and enter those numbers and look them up.

If you like the tip, be gracious and leave a comment

Please join r/GetNoticedNow

Most people are using Excel in a way that guarantees their file will eventually break.

The biggest mistake I keep seeing is people stuffing all their logic into IF/IFS formulas like Excel is a programming language.

It works at first… until the file grows. Then suddenly you have 10+ nested conditions, hidden assumptions everywhere, and one new “job type” breaks half the sheet.

There’s a much more scalable way to do this that almost nobody bothers with.

Instead of writing logic inside formulas, you move the logic OUT of the formula completely.

You create a simple table that defines the rules.

For example, instead of:

“If Job = A and Title = X and Type = Y then calculate rate like this…”

You store everything in a structured table:

Job | Title | Type | Rate | Multiplier | Adjustment

Then your main sheet does something much simpler:

It just pulls the correct row using a lookup (multi-criteria key or FILTER), and calculates:

Net Hours × Rate × Multiplier + Adjustment

That’s it.

No IF chains. No nested logic. No rewriting formulas every time the business changes.

The painful part most people don’t realize is this: every time you hardcode logic into a formula, you’re actually moving business rules into the most fragile place possible.

So when the business changes (and it always does), your spreadsheet becomes technical debt instead of a tool.

Once you switch to a proper lookup-table structure, Excel stops breaking every time something new is added. You don’t “edit formulas” anymore—you just add rows.

It’s a small shift in thinking, but it’s usually the difference between “why is this broken again?” and “this just works even after changes.”