Which Microsoft Excel Course should I take?

Nine Excel classes is more than anyone needs, and the names do not make it obvious which one solves your problem. This is what each covers and who it is actually for.

Level 1 is not the class you think it is

Most people who use Excel every day taught themselves, one search result at a time. That works, up to a point. It also builds habits that quietly cost time forever: merged cells that break every sort and filter afterwards, tax rates typed into formulas so nobody can find them when the rate changes, the same edit repeated two hundred times because nobody mentioned fill.

Level 1 is where those get unpicked. It is not only for people who have never opened a spreadsheet, and it is the class self-taught users most often skip and most often should not. If you can do the job but suspect you are doing it the long way, this is the one.

If you genuinely learned Excel properly and are looking for something specific, the rest of this page is the useful part.

The four-level sequence

These do build on each other, so if you are starting from very little, take them in order.

Level 1 covers creating a workbook, entering and editing data, formulas, formatting, printing and multiple sheets. Beginners need all of it. Self-taught users tend to need about a third of it badly and find the rest a useful correction.

Level 2 is where most working people actually belong. Functions, named ranges, tables, charts, and the beginnings of data analysis. This is the class that fixes the everyday frustrations, and it is the one most often booked too late.

Level 3 covers data and formula integrity, working across files, text functions, what-if scenarios and an introduction to macros. Worth taking when you have inherited workbooks you do not trust and need to find out why they are wrong.

Level 4 is for people building things others will rely on. Take it when you have stopped being a user and started being the person everyone asks.

The specialist classes

These are not steps on the ladder. Each solves a specific problem, and you can take any of them without the numbered courses if you already have the groundwork.

PivotTables is the highest-return day on this list for anyone who reports on data. Level 2 introduces them; this class is the whole day rather than the module, and it goes further into grouping, calculated fields and slicers. Most people who avoid pivot tables tried once, got a confusing result, and went back to filtering by hand. A day fixes that permanently.

Functions and Formulas goes deep on the formula language itself: lookups, logical functions, text handling, nesting. Take this rather than Level 3 if your problem is that you cannot write the formula you need, rather than that you cannot trust the workbook you inherited.

Power Pivot is the step past what a worksheet can hold. If your data is too big for a sheet, or you are joining several sources, this is where to go. It is also the natural bridge to Power BI, and the concepts carry across.

VBA is programming. Take it when you are repeating the same twenty clicks weekly and would rather not. Do not take it expecting to learn Excel; take it expecting to learn to code.

Still not sure?

Eleven questions, about four minutes, no sign-up. Some of them ask how you would do something rather than whether you know it, because that is where self-taught habits show. It errs low: where the answer is borderline it points at the earlier class.

Which one, in one line each

• Never used Excel: Level 1
• Use it daily, taught yourself, never had training: Level 1
• Trained before and want more range: Level 2
• Report on data and dread it: PivotTables
• Cannot write the formula you need: Functions and Formulas
• Inherited workbooks you do not trust: Level 3
• Data too big for a worksheet: Power Pivot
• Repeating the same task weekly: VBA
• Building what others depend on: Level 4

Which version do these cover?

Microsoft 365, 2024, 2021 and 2019 are close enough that everyone attends the same class. The instructor points out the handful of visual differences; tell them which version you are on at the start.

Training more than one person

Past about four people a private cohort usually costs less per seat than public dates, and it lets the instructor use your workbooks rather than sample data. That is a bigger difference than it sounds: an afternoon spent fixing the spreadsheet your team actually argues about is worth more than the same afternoon on a fictional sales report.

If you are not sure which class your team needs, describe what they are struggling with rather than picking from the list. Getting this wrong is expensive in a way that showing up to the right class never is.