What is 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. 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.

Open the Microsoft Excel: Beginner to Advanced course page

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.

These are the prerequisites the course lists:

• 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

These are the tools and materials the course lists:

• 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

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 finished deliverables are:

• 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

Microsoft Excel: Beginner to Advanced has 24 lessons in 6 modules, a workbook of 9 items and a capstone project. It is planned at about 6 hours in total. The lesson text runs to roughly 16,600 words.

Microsoft Excel: Beginner to Advanced has 6 modules:

• Module 1: Find Your Way Around the Grid. 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.
• Module 2: Formulas That Do the Work. 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.
• Module 3: Totals by Condition, Bands, Text and Dates. 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.
• Module 4: Summarize: PivotTables, Slicers and Live Lists. 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.
• Module 5: Charts, Color Cues and Clean Entry. 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.
• Module 6: Budget, Dashboard and Capstone. 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.

All 24 lesson titles, module by module:

• Module 1: Find Your Way Around the Grid. 1.1 The grid, and the workbook you will build; 1.2 Move, select and fill fast; 1.3 Number formats: what a cell holds and what it shows; 1.4 Set up data as a proper list: import, Tables, sort and filter.
• Module 2: Formulas That Do the Work. 2.1 Your first formulas: operators, SUM and friends; 2.2 Copy formulas safely: relative, absolute and mixed references; 2.3 Let a formula decide: IF, AND, OR and IFS; 2.4 Look up a value: XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP and INDEX/MATCH.
• Module 3: Totals by Condition, Bands, Text and Dates. 3.1 Totals with conditions: SUMIFS, COUNTIFS and AVERAGEIFS; 3.2 Look up a band: approximate matching; 3.3 Clean and split text: TRIM, PROPER, LEFT, MID and FIND; 3.4 Dates: build months and use them in totals.
• Module 4: Summarize: PivotTables, Slicers and Live Lists. 4.1 Your first PivotTable; 4.2 Two-way PivotTables: columns, month groups and percentages; 4.3 Slicers: filter your PivotTables with buttons; 4.4 Live lists with formulas: UNIQUE, SORT, FILTER and LET.
• Module 5: Charts, Color Cues and Clean Entry. 5.1 Build a chart from a small summary; 5.2 Make the chart clear and honest; 5.3 In-cell visuals: conditional formatting and sparklines; 5.4 Keep bad entries out with data validation.
• Module 6: Budget, Dashboard and Capstone. 6.1 Build the budget: plan, actual, difference and net; 6.2 Build the sales dashboard; 6.3 Check your work: errors, IFERROR and control totals; 6.4 Finish and share: protect, print and the final check.

The course is listed at beginner level and planned at about 6 hours in total. It has 24 lessons, each with objectives you can check yourself against.

Lesson 1 is "The grid, and the workbook you will build" (Module 1, Find Your Way Around the Grid). By the end of it the course says you will be able to:

• Name the parts of the Excel window: workbook, worksheet, cell, address, Name Box and formula bar
• Type text, numbers and dates, and tell how Excel treats each one
• Start the Coffee Cart Book, the one workbook you will build across this course

Microsoft Excel: Beginner to Advanced defines 22 terms in plain words: Workbook, Worksheet (sheet), Cell, Cell address, Range, Formula, function, Cell reference, Relative, absolute and mixed reference, Number format, Serial number (dates), Table, Tidy list, Lookup and key, Exact and approximate match, Criteria, Helper column, PivotTable, Slicer, Spill, Data validation and Control total.

WorkbookWorksheet (sheet)CellCell addressRangeFormulafunctionCell referenceRelative, absolute and mixed referenceNumber formatSerial number (dates)TableTidy listLookup and keyExact and approximate matchCriteriaHelper columnPivotTableSlicerSpillData validationControl total

Microsoft Excel: Beginner to Advanced lists 60 official sources that were opened and checked while it was written, from 5 websites.

• support.microsoft.com
• microsoft.com
• support.google.com
• help.libreoffice.org
• wiki.documentfoundation.org

Microsoft Excel: Beginner to Advanced costs $39 (USD) as The Codex, the full written course with its workbook and templates. Studio (narrated video lessons) and the Full Operator path are not on sale yet.

How much do courses cost?

Microsoft Excel: Beginner to Advanced was prepared by Apex Flow Labs with AI assistance and checked before it was published. Every code sample, formula and command the course includes was run before it went in, the course records 23 verification checks, and it lists 60 official sources it checked. Do not take the label on trust: open the sources and run the examples yourself.

How Apex Flow Academy checks its courses

Yes. The course lists this prerequisite: "No earlier spreadsheet experience is needed." It is listed at beginner level. It also asks for:

• 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. Microsoft Excel: Beginner to Advanced teaches and checks a skill, but it cannot promise an outcome. The course's own disclosure reads: "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."

Yes. Microsoft Excel: Beginner to Advanced includes a verifiable Certificate of Completion, issued by Apex Flow Academy when you finish every lesson, resolve every quiz question with at least 50% right on the first try, and tick the capstone checklist. It has a unique ID and a public verification page. It is a completion certificate, not a degree, licence, accreditation or exam result. The Full Operator path, with a final exam and capstone review, opens later with its own separate, stronger credential.

Is there a certificate?