Microsoft Excel: Beginner to Advanced
Build a working budget and a sales dashboard, and learn formulas, lookups, PivotTables, charts and clean reports along the way.
One payment of $39. Instant online access to the full written course. No subscription. Refund policy.
You go from nervous to fast: formulas, lookups, PivotTables, charts and clean reports, proved by a finished budget and dashboard whose numbers you can check against an answer key.
Who it is for. Complete beginners who want to feel confident in Excel: people who keep lists and budgets, run a small business or side project, or need spreadsheets for work or study. No experience is assumed. The course also suits people who use Excel already but copy formulas they do not understand, and want a solid, correct foundation.
You finish with. The Coffee Cart Book: a working budget and a sales dashboard. Build one finished workbook, the Coffee Cart Book, that holds tidy data, formulas that calculate prices, sales and item costs, a budget with plan, actual and difference blocks, PivotTables, a sales dashboard with slicers, and checks that prove the numbers agree. Every figure in the practice data is made up, so a printed answer key lets you confirm each result. Then repeat the method on a small list of your own, such as a household budget or a side project, using the budget template in the workbook.
Certificate. Finish every lesson, resolve every quiz question with at least 50% right on the first try, and tick the capstone checklist — Apex Flow Academy issues a verifiable Certificate of Completion with a unique ID and a public verification page. It is a certificate of completion, not a degree, licence, accreditation or exam result.
01 · Find Your Way Around the Grid4 lessons
Learn the parts of Excel, move and fill quickly with the keyboard, understand what a cell holds versus what it shows, and set up the Coffee Cart Book with a Products list, a budget plan and two named Tables of practice data.
- 1.1The grid, and the workbook you will buildFREE
- 1.2Move, select and fill fast
- 1.3Number formats: what a cell holds and what it shows
- 1.4Set up data as a proper list: import, Tables, sort and filter
02 · Formulas That Do the Work4 lessons
Write formulas with cell references, control copying with the dollar sign, make formulas decide with IF and IFS, and join lists with XLOOKUP or VLOOKUP so the Coffee Cart Book calculates prices, sales and item costs for you.
- 2.1Your first formulas: operators, SUM and friends
- 2.2Copy formulas safely: relative, absolute and mixed references
- 2.3Let a formula decide: IF, AND, OR and IFS
- 2.4Look up a value: XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP and INDEX/MATCH
03 · Totals by Condition, Bands, Text and Dates4 lessons
Answer questions about slices of your data with SUMIFS, COUNTIFS and AVERAGEIFS, sort numbers into bands with approximate lookups, clean and split text, and build month columns from dates.
- 3.1Totals with conditions: SUMIFS, COUNTIFS and AVERAGEIFS
- 3.2Look up a band: approximate matching
- 3.3Clean and split text: TRIM, PROPER, LEFT, MID and FIND
- 3.4Dates: build months and use them in totals
04 · Summarize: PivotTables, Slicers and Live Lists4 lessons
Turn the sales list into reports with PivotTables, cross two fields, group dates into months, show percentages, filter with slicers, and build live formula lists with UNIQUE, SORT, FILTER and LET.
- 4.1Your first PivotTable
- 4.2Two-way PivotTables: columns, month groups and percentages
- 4.3Slicers: filter your PivotTables with buttons
- 4.4Live lists with formulas: UNIQUE, SORT, FILTER and LET
05 · Charts, Color Cues and Clean Entry4 lessons
Choose the right chart for the question, build it from a summary, make it clear and honest, color cells with rules and sparklines, and use data validation so bad entries never reach your lists.
- 5.1Build a chart from a small summary
- 5.2Make the chart clear and honest
- 5.3In-cell visuals: conditional formatting and sparklines
- 5.4Keep bad entries out with data validation
06 · Budget, Dashboard and Capstone4 lessons
Bring everything together: complete the plan, actual and difference budget, assemble the sales dashboard, build checks that prove your totals, then protect, print and verify the finished Coffee Cart Book against an answer key.
- 6.1Build the budget: plan, actual, difference and net
- 6.2Build the sales dashboard
- 6.3Check your work: errors, IFERROR and control totals
- 6.4Finish and share: protect, print and the final check
The grid, and the workbook you will build
You will be able to
- Find any cell by its address, such as C3.
- Type text, numbers and dates, and see how Excel reads each one.
- Save the first sheet of your Coffee Cart Book.
Why this matters
Every skill in this course sits on the same grid. When you can read the grid, formulas and pivot tables stop feeling like magic. You will build one workbook, the Coffee Cart Book, across all six modules. A clean start saves you rework later.
Learn it
An Excel file is a workbook. Inside it are worksheets, also called sheets. Sheets show as tabs along the bottom. Each sheet is a grid, and one box in the grid is a cell.
Every cell has an address: the column letter, then the row number. The cell in column C, row 3 is C3. The cell you have clicked is the active cell. Its address shows in the Name Box at the top left. Its contents show in the formula bar beside it.
The ribbon is the strip of buttons across the top. Its tabs, such as Home, Insert, Formulas, Data and View, group the buttons by job.
Excel treats what you type as one of three types:
- Text: words and labels. Left-aligned by default.
- Numbers: amounts and counts. Right-aligned.
- Dates: Excel recognizes many styles, such as 2026-01-05. Right-aligned, because a date is a number underneath. Lesson 3 explains why.
Alignment is your clue. A number sitting on the left is probably being treated as text.
To enter data, click a cell and type. Press Enter to move down or Tab to move right. Press Esc to cancel.
Which program? Desktop Excel is paid. Excel for the web is free with a Microsoft account, but it has fewer features than the desktop app, so check Microsoft's current details. Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc are also free. This course names Excel buttons and adds a fallback note where a free tool differs. Shortcuts are the Windows ones. On a Mac, many use the Command key in place of Ctrl.
All numbers in this course are made up for teaching.
See it in action
Example (illustrative numbers): you run a small coffee cart. You start a list of what you sell.
- Open a blank workbook. Double-click the tab named Sheet1, type Products and press Enter.
- Click A1. Type Product, press Tab, type Category, Tab, Price, Tab, Cost, then press Enter. Excel usually returns you to column A of the next row.
- Type the six rows below in the same way.
- Click F1, type 2026-01-05 and press Enter. It sits on the right, like a number. Click F1 again and press Delete to clear it.
- Press Ctrl+S and save the file as Coffee Cart Book.
| Product | Category | Price | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Latte | Coffee | 4.5 | 1.2 |
| Espresso | Coffee | 3 | 0.6 |
| Cold Brew | Coffee | 4 | 0.9 |
| Muffin | Food | 3.25 | 1.1 |
| Bagel | Food | 3.5 | 1 |
| Cookie | Food | 2.5 | 0.7 |
Common mistakes
- Typing units with numbers, such as 4.5 dollars. Excel then sees text. Type only 4.5 and format the cell later.
- Adding a space after a word, such as Latte followed by a space. It looks the same but breaks matching later. Type with no trailing spaces.
- Leaving a blank row inside your list. Many tools stop at the gap. Keep lists solid.
You are done when
Cells A1:D7 hold the list. Text sits on the left and numbers on the right. Clicking C2 shows 4.5 in the formula bar. The tab is named Products and the file is saved.
If this is not working:
- A number sits on the left: retype it with no spaces or letters.
- The tab will not rename: right-click it and choose Rename.
- You use a free tool: the steps are the same. Save with its File menu.
You finished the free lesson
That is one lesson from the course. The full course gives you every remaining lesson, a quick check and a hands-on task in each one, and the workbook of templates and checklists.
Full course$39
- A spreadsheet program. The lessons use Excel button names. Desktop Excel is paid (Microsoft 365 or a one-time purchase) and gives you every step. Excel for the web is free with a Microsoft account, but it has fewer features than the desktop app, so check Microsoft's current details. Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc are also free.
- Fallback notes are given wherever a free tool or an older Excel differs. For example, XLOOKUP needs Microsoft 365 or Excel 2021 or newer, and VLOOKUP is the fallback that works everywhere. UNIQUE, SORT, FILTER and LET need the same newer versions, and a PivotTable is the fallback.
- A plain-text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit to save the two practice CSV files that come with the workbook
- The workbook items that come with this course: the two practice data files, a build map, a function cheat sheet, a shortcut card, an answer key and three checklists
- About six hours in total. Each lesson is a short read plus a hands-on task, and every task ends with numbers you can check
- You can use a computer with a mouse and keyboard, and open and save files
- You can add, subtract, multiply and divide, and understand a percentage
- No earlier spreadsheet experience is needed
The Coffee Cart Book: a working budget and a sales dashboard
Build one finished workbook, the Coffee Cart Book, that holds tidy data, formulas that calculate prices, sales and item costs, a budget with plan, actual and difference blocks, PivotTables, a sales dashboard with slicers, and checks that prove the numbers agree. Every figure in the practice data is made up, so a printed answer key lets you confirm each result. Then repeat the method on a small list of your own, such as a household budget or a side project, using the budget template in the workbook.
- The Coffee Cart Book workbook with the sheets Products, Lists, Sales, Expenses, Totals, Live, Pivots, Charts, Budget and Dashboard (Modules 1 to 6)
- The Products sheet with statistics, margin checks, bands and a price-rise grid, and the Sales table with lookup columns (Module 2)
- The Budget sheet with Plan, Actual and Difference blocks, net figures, a status cell, highlights and two control checks (Modules 1, 2, 3 and 6)
- Two PivotTables with Location and Category slicers, and the live formula lists on the Live sheet (Module 4)
- The Dashboard sheet with three headline numbers, two PivotCharts, two slicers and cleaned charts with alt text (Modules 5 and 6)
- A one-page PDF of the dashboard and a dated copy of the workbook (Module 6)
- The answer key ticked off line by line, with a note on any difference you found and fixed (Module 6)
- Optional: the same method applied to a small list of your own with the budget template
- Workbook
- One Excel file. It holds one or more sheets, like a folder holds pages.
- Worksheet (sheet)
- One page of grid inside a workbook, shown as a tab along the bottom.
- Cell
- One box in the grid. It holds one thing: a word, a number, a date or a formula.
- Cell address
- The name of a cell: its column letter, then its row number, such as C3.
- Range
- A block of cells named by its two corners with a colon between them, such as B4:D10.
- Formula
- A calculation that starts with an equals sign. It shows an answer and updates when the cells it uses change.
- Function
- A ready-made tool with a name, such as SUM, that you use inside a formula.
- Cell reference
- A formula's way of pointing at another cell, so the answer follows that cell's number.
- Relative, absolute and mixed reference
- Relative references shift when you copy a formula. A dollar sign locks the column, the row or both, so that part does not move.
- Number format
- A setting that changes how a cell looks, such as money or a date, without changing the value it holds.
- Serial number (dates)
- The number Excel really stores for a date. It counts days, so 2026-01-01 is stored as 46023.
- Table
- An Excel list with a name, filter arrows and shading. It grows when you add rows and keeps rows together when you sort.
Browse the full Academy encyclopedia
23 checks were run and recorded while writing this course (code, formulas, commands and facts), and it lists 60 official sources it was checked against. Prices, features and policies of outside tools can change, so check each tool's own website.
Created by Apex Flow Academy with AI assistance. For education only; not legal, tax, financial or medical advice. Results depend on your effort and circumstances.
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