# I need to learn Excel, I think. Any course rec's? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 24, 2025, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746 "2025-02-24T20:45:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2025, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/21 "2025-02-25T16:34:52Z")
I would prefer to use Excel as well but my employer switched to the Google suite a few years ago and only those with really good reasons were allowed to retain Microsoft Office applications. (It’s a bigger issue for those who used Microsoft Project and Visio, since there are limited alternatives.) ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2025, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/22 "2025-02-25T20:34:33Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > It seems the OP has the barest basics down. Columns, rows, summing a column and a few other things maybe. Maybe not even that. In summing a column did he use the number themselves or the cell functions? Did he use the + sign or the =SUM( ) function? Or did he add them on a calculator and put that number in the cell? ---
**Author:** ![Eric1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3bc359/32.png) [@Eric1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eric1)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2025, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/23 "2025-02-26T22:57:05Z")
I hope the OP finds some guides, mild coursework or some appropriate tutelage. I remember spending six hours learning some Excel with a screenshotted tutorial book. It’s proven useful even for me. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/24 "2025-02-27T12:56:59Z")
I’ve got to give one of the free versions a try soon. I love Excel, maybe because I’m so comfortable with it after so many years, but I’m not sure the fairly basic things I use it for justifies the annual fee. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/25 "2025-02-27T23:33:48Z")
> [@saje](#): > > Part of my problem too is I don’t know the language, and it’s hard to ask for or take direction when I don’t know what I’m talking about. I hear you. Pretty much anything you might want to do, there’s already an answer out there on the Internet. I am googling stuff constantly. But knowing what to ask is often the hard part. Don’t be afraid to ask here. No guarantees, obviously, but people get bored and like puzzles. You can post directly from excel here (nothing propriety though) and it’ll format as a table. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/26 "2025-03-02T02:35:53Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#): > > I’ve got to give one of the free versions a try soon. I love Excel, maybe because I’m so comfortable with it after so many years, but I’m not sure the fairly basic things I use it for justifies the annual fee. Give Google Sheets a go. Excel light basically. And free. Excel is much more capable but (made-up number) Google Sheets does about 80% of what Excel does which is plenty for most people. I much prefer Excel but I gotta say I’ve gotten a lot more mileage out of Google Sheets than I thought possible. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/27 "2025-03-02T03:19:40Z")
Google sheets does 30% of what Excel does, but 90% of users only ever use a subset of that 30%. (More made up numbers, I suspect the real numbers are more like 10% and 99%) I’ve been using Excel for 30+ years, Lotus 1-2-3 for ten years before that and VisiCalc and Supercalc before that. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/28 "2025-03-02T03:24:27Z")
I like your made-up numbers better. I think they might be closer to reality. (really) ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/29 "2025-03-02T10:07:59Z")
I must warn you, as a software engineer, Excel is my absolute least favourite software (followed by MS Word) Google sheets, as mentioned above is less nasty, but as I mostly work with SQL, fortunately I rarely need to use it. OTOH, some people have taken to [Excel as an art form!](https://mashable.com/archive/microsoft-excel-art) (Link to a fairly ad-heavy site, Mashable) ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/30 "2025-03-02T10:29:57Z")
> [@scudsucker](#): > > I must warn you, as a software engineer, Excel is my absolute least favourite software (followed by MS Word) Why? (really asking) Personally, I think Excel is one of the best pieces of software out there. It does what it says on the tin and is probably the absolute best spreadsheet software in existence. Not least because it has been in existence longer than almost anything else so the bugs have (largely) been ironed out. It’s long existence is part of its charm. There are many years of people using it that provide help making support for it about as easy as can be. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/31 "2025-03-02T11:54:02Z")
I wonder how much of a generation gap there might be here. I’m 40, also a software dev, and grew up learning Excel in middle & high school, then went to college late with younger students. Nobody I know uses Excel anymore, except one older GIS teacher who was generally old fashioned in everything. All of my age peers (like 98%+) have a strong preference for Google Sheets as well. (And the kids younger than that, well, I don’t think they really use desktop computing much at at all; it’s all on their phones and tablets.) Part of it is that Google Sheets makes collaboration and version tracking much, MUCH easier, which was traditionally a huge pain point with desktop Excel. Having one single spreadsheet that everyone can work on together and is always up to date is a much saner experience than trying to send 10 versions back and forth across 3+ people. That’s super important in team environments, both in school and in the workplace. The Excel 365 online version somewhat alleviates that particular issue, but… I dunno, the Office collaboration experience in general still just feels really clunky and outdated compared to Google Workspace, especially in a workplace environment where stuff is always schizophrenically divided between SharePoint, OneDrive, email, Teams, and Windows network shares. You can never find the same file twice. Google Drive, being cloud-native, does not have this problem… everything is just there, neatly organized by team and folder. And Google Sheets is totally free and available on every web browser. Excel still requires both a purchase and a download, has only limited functionality on a Mac (it’s a watered down version compared to the Windows one), and isn’t available at all on Linux. The web version is also watered down, both compared to desktop Windows Excel and Google Sheets. I’ve learned and use both and am probably considered a power user compared to the average user, and I think the feature difference between the two is exaggerated here somewhat. Certainly Excel still has strengths, like certain chart variants and better sparklines and analysis tools and formula tracing and integrations with Access and other Microsoft things. But Sheets also has some of its own strengths, like easier web-based table and data lookup, a SQL like query() function, fantastic regular expression support, a rich scripting system and ecosystem of plug-ins and snippets, etc. Excel offers a lot of that by way of add-ins and tagalongs like Power Query, but for a long long time that wasn’t available on the Mac or Web. Again, a huge hindrance in collaborative team environments, when you can’t guarantee that your recipient/teammate can use all the spreadsheet functions you’ve incorporated. And in any case, most casual users will never use the advanced features of either one anyway. In my experience, the spreadsheet fluency of the average home or office user never even gets near pivot tables, much less anything more powerful. It’s a glorious day when I see someone even use cross-sheet formulas and named references, and I cry in joy when I see an actual lookup or index/match. For many database-like use cases, I think software like [Airtable.com](http://Airtable.com) is a better fit anyway, combining Excel and Access into a simpler to ease (and beautiful) experience. People try to shoehorn a lot into Excel inappropriately and end up with nested IF()s ten levels deep that’s really hard to read and reason about, when a dead simple database would’ve been better. It’s often just powerful enough for people to shoot themselves in the foot. I say Excel in particular, because that more commonly happens in Microsoft environments when your tools are limited by your IT department’s contracts with Microsoft. Web-based teams generally don’t have that issue and freely mix and match the best tools across vendors to support their needs. In the end both are more then enough for the typical home user, but Google Sheets is a lot less of a hassle since it doesn’t require a purchase or download. Kinda wins by default there for casual use. And for advanced users, there are legitimate reasons to prefer one over the other. I don’t think there is an automatic winner there. Totally depends on the use case, licensing, integration needs, and of course personal preferences. Sorry for the tangent, lol. I don’t get to talk about this stuff very much anymore, but I think it’s interesting… ---
**Author:** ![natureboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/4491bb/32.png) [@natureboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/natureboy)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/32 "2025-03-02T11:55:52Z")
Probably mentioned already, but ChatGPT can be a good source if you have specific technical questions. LinkedIn has some good courses, too. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/33 "2025-03-02T12:52:52Z")
Thanks for this response. If Google Sheets will do a few basic functions like Sumif and Large, then it will be good enough for me. I assume it has sheets within a workbook that can be linked and macros for repetitive calculations? I honestly don’t think I ever used even 5% of what Excel was capable of doing but it’s a comfortable old friend by now. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/34 "2025-03-02T14:42:14Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Sorry for the tangent, lol. I don’t get to talk about this stuff very much anymore, but I think it’s interesting… Thanks for the modern insight on all this. I’ve been an Office power user since about v1.0. As I ease past newly-retired into “just don’t give a shit about administration”, I find my full-suite Office365 gets less and less use for anything, much less everything. I’m still kinda locked into Outlook, but have considered how I’d break that too. One of my huge constraints historically was the need to be able to do everything while offline. That is not nearly the actual constraint it used to be, but in my semi-subconscious vetting of options, it’s still checkbox #1 to be checked. I ought to re-evaluate that. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/35 "2025-03-02T14:53:46Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > One of my huge constraints historically was the need to be able to do everything while offline. Gmail and Gcal do have offline capabilities (see [Use Gmail offline](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1306849?hl=en) and Use [GCal offline](https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/1340696?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop)), but they’re meant for temporary lack of connectivity, like a few hours’ plane ride or maybe a few days away from the internet at most. It’s not a truly permanent desktop app like the traditional Office and Outlook are. Eventually the browser will evict them from its cache, and some features are outright unavailable unless/until you’re online. [Thunderbird](https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/desktop/) is still around too, which is a real (and free) app that can sync with Gmail & GCal (and Outlook, for that matter). But, you know… who cares what the kids think? 😉 You worked hard your whole life, and the least you can do for yourself in retirement is use whatever goddamned office app you want, on Windows XP if you prefer!! ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2025, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746/36 "2025-03-02T16:39:22Z")
If I were to rank various spreadsheet programs, I’d put Excel January 1, 1900. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-learn-excel-i-think-any-course-recs/1014746.md?page=1)