Introduction to Microsoft Excel 2013

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.

Lesson 1
In our first lesson, you'll develop a solid understanding of the Excel interface. You'll become fluent in the secret language spoken only by Excel users, you'll discover the best way to correct just about any mistake you might make in Excel, and you'll find yourself gliding effortlessly from cell to cell, leaving behind expertly written labels, numbers, and formulas.

Lesson 2
In this lesson, you'll learn five simple steps you should always follow to ensure that your worksheets are always well-planned, well-constructed, and beautifully formatted.

Lesson 3
Our third lesson will teach you the tricks of the Excel masters: a wide variety of useful shortcuts guaranteed to save you time, energy, and frustration. We'll also spend some time working with the Quick Analysis and Flash Fill tools, introduced in Excel 2013. By the time you finish this lesson, you'll really start to feel like an Excel pro.

Lesson 4
Do you know the difference between a relative reference, an absolute reference, a mixed reference, and a circular reference? You will after this lesson. Today, we focus on writing sophisticated formulas that can help ease us through some rather sticky scenarios.

Lesson 5
With enough practice, most Excel users quickly become adept at organizing their worksheets across two dimensions: rows and columns. But only a select few will learn how to take their worksheets into the third dimension. Today, you'll join that exclusive group. Prepare to have your socks knocked off as you gain hands-on experience in the construction of three-dimensional workbooks.

Lesson 6
No Excel course would be complete without a discussion of Excel's amazing data-crunching capabilities. Today, you'll not only learn how to build a table in Excel, you'll also learn how to subtotal, sort, and filter.

Lesson 7
In this lesson, we'll explore the exciting world of charts. You'll build your first graph today, and you'll learn how easy it is to adjust the chart type, labels, titles, colors, and many other aspects of your chart.

Lesson 8
Today, you'll dig deep into Excel's charting capabilities. You'll explore everything from bar charts and line charts to more prosaic graphs like the pie chart and 3-D charts. You'll find out how to personalize your charts with photographs, text labels, and drawings. You'll also discover the best ways to format your chart for print or otherwise display the truly impressive charts that you'll be creating.

Lesson 9
Excel includes many powerful functions that can automatically perform some very complicated tasks for you. In today's lesson, you'll learn some very interesting ways to put these functions to work for you. You'll find out how to ask Excel to magically derive averages, modes, maximums, minimums, and other useful statistics from nothing more than a column or two of numbers.

Lesson 10
We'll continue our exploration of Excel functions with an in-depth look at Excel's handy financial functions today. By the time this lesson is over, you'll be able to figure out how much money you'll have when you retire, when your kids reach college, or just before your next vacation. You'll be able to calculate the monthly payment on just about any type of loan, and you'll know how to figure out how long it will take to pay off your credit cards. You'll even create an amortization table of your very own, just like the one lenders use to track a loan's payoff amount over time.

Lesson 11
Students often rank this lesson as one of their favorites. Today, you'll find out how to automate just about any task you find tedious or time-consuming. You'll discover how to move your most frequently used commands from their present, obscure locations to a much more convenient place: the toolbar that's always perched at the very top of your screen. You'll also learn how you can use macros to reduce just about any complex task to a single keystroke.

Lesson 12
I think you'll be intrigued by our final lesson, in which you'll learn how to use Excel to aid you in decision making. We'll use a special function in Excel that allows it to make comparisons and use those comparisons as the basis for important decisions.