Course Requirements

Learners should have basic IT skills before taking an Excel course. They should be comfortable in the basics of using a computer, opening programs, entering and editing text, formatting, saving, files and folders. If learners are complete beginners to computers, they should take a Basic IT course first.

Typical Beginner Subjects

Subjects taught during a course depend on the length of the course, learner’s skills, their ability to learn and the effort they put in to practising outside of lessons. Learners skills are assessed at the beginning of each course with a questionnaire. See

Typical subjects taught to beginners include the following;

• The Ribbon & Tabs - similarities to the Ribbon and Tabs in Word
• Cells and Cell Reference
• Entering data
• Rows and Columns and resizing them
• General Formatting - Font Style, Font Colour, Font Size, Bold, Italic, Left, Centre and Right Align
• Formatting to ensure data is clearly understood, particularly Fill Colour
• Entering and editing text in cells
• Formatting numbers as Currency, Accounting Format, or Comma Style
• Entering currency correctly, e.g. £0.50, instead of 50p
• Simple formulas - multiply, divide, add, subtract
• AutoSum
• Fill Down to copy formulas
• Fill Series to automatically enter a series of Days, Months, Years, Dates, Numbers etc.
• Totalling a column, or range of cells, using AutoSum. Checking that the correct range is selected, or manually selecting it.
• Highlighting a whole column or row
• Using the Formula Bar to check formulas
• A method to test a formula
• Conditional Formatting
• Using multiple Sheets and editing the Sheet name and colour of tab
• Creating a Chart - typically a Pie or Column Chart
• Editing and formatting different parts of a chart
• Relative Reference vs Absolute Reference
• Brackets and the importance of understanding BODMAS (order of operations)
• Database basics - Sort, Filter, Date filters, Number filters, value filters
• Printing a spreadsheet. This is more complicated than printing a Word document.
• Print Preview to check and prepare a spreadsheet for printing
• Zoom in to see data clearly

 

Typical Intermediate Subjects

When learners are comfortable with the above, the following additional subjects are covered. Which subjects are taught, depends on the learners’ skills and length of course.

• Mixed References
• Introduction to Functions and how they differ from Formulas
• IF Function
• OR Function
• SUMIF Function
• COUNT, COUNTIF Functions
• VLOOKUP Function (XLOOKUP is a recent function, but many learners don’t have it, as they are using older versions of Excel, typically Excel 2007, Excel 2010)
• Formulas across multiple sheets
• Nested Functions - IF, OR,
• Transpose
• Data Validation
• Pivot Table basics
• Tables vs Range

Real World Exercises

Supporting Learning with Homework Tasks

Soon after the lesson, a class email is sent to learners with details of a task to complete before the next lesson. This task will be based on the subjects covered in that lesson and learners are expected to email their work to me before the next lesson. The following lesson will begin with looking at the learners homework. This is an opportunity to praise learners for successfully completing the task, thus increasing their confidence. It is also an opportunity to identify problem areas and provide a recap, or additional help, as required.

After the course

Use it or lose it!

With regular practice, learners will retain and improve their skills. But just like our muscles, if we stop using a skill for a prolongued period, it will deteriorate and this is especially true for beginners, whose skills are not yet strong from regular use.

Learners are encouraged to find useful ways to use their computing skills on a regular basis, in their everyday life. Especially after a course ends. If you work with Excel, this will happen naturally, but if you don't work with Excel, you could start your own projects;

• keep a record of your accounts
• keep a record of miles walked, calculating daily, weekly and monthly totals and averages
• keep a record of shopping receipts, detailing items
• during lockdown I suggested keeping a record of Covid-19 statistics
• a database of their music collection
• a database of any collection
• a database of family & friends, birthdays, address, phone numbers