To give you a quick summary of the topics you’ll learn, here are the steps you should take to make a data-driven presentation:

Set up the Scenario

Before touching Excel at all, think about the purpose of this analysis or presentation. Are you trying to increase sales? Are you trying to figure out where to allocate headcount?

Cleaning Up the Raw Data

At this stage, your data may still be rough around the edges. You will need to “clean up” your data to make sure it’s ready to be sorted and filtered to your liking. You might consider taking Excel for the Real World I to brush up on your skills in Excel.

Filtering, Sortering, Pivot Tables

Here’s where the analysis begins. Keep in mind the purpose of your analysis as you slice and dice the data in Excel to find the key drivers for your analysis.

Creating Charts

One of the best ways to visualize patterns and trends is to create basic bar charts and line charts. These charts will also eventually be used in your final presentation, but at this phase, you just want to be able to analyze the data in a more visual way.

Detecting Trends

What is the data telling you? You created some fancy charts but what does it all mean? Sometimes the data might not say anything at all, but this is where you get to put on your detective hat and figure out the signal in the noise.

Revisit Your Original Hypothesis

At the very beginning, you had to make an educated guess about what the data would tell you. See if you can prove or disprove your hypothesis after you’ve done some digging into Excel.

Formatting

There are some basic data visualization tips that will help your audience understand your data better. The key is to avoid clutter and to highlight the key message in your analysis you want your audience to walk away with.

Presenting Findings

The takeaway from your slide should always have a course of action associated with it. Just like writing a paper, you need to have a thesis supported by arguments. Your presentation should also follow a similar format, with data supporting your analysis.

Hopefully the class will let you create the data-drive analysis you’ve always wanted to create. Put down the leftover turkey sandwich, and get cracking in Excel!

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New class launched in 2018 called Beyond Excel 1: Productivity Tools for For Lean Startups, Entrepreneurs, and Freelancers.

I released online Excel class on Skillshare, and the feedback has been pretty positive from students taking the course. The common thread we see through all the comments and reviews is that the pace of the course is perfect for learning Excel. Still unsure if you want to learn Excel online through our Skillshare class? Read actual reviews from students who have taken the courses!

Intro to Excel I: The Interface

The high school Excel learner:

I learned how to use Excel in high school but couldn’t exactly remember all of the basics. Al’s course was great in my opinion because it was taught in a way that would be extremely helpful to beginners in learning this application, while not alienating those (like myself) who wanted the course to act as a refresher. Because of this, I didn’t feel guilty for not remembering things and was excited and surprised to still be learning new skills. In all, I’d recommend this to those who have no prior knowledge to moderate knowledge (and wanting to brush up on a few things). – Brandon Touhey

Getting back into the Excel game:

This class is taught at a very manageable pace, even for those just starting with Excel. The workbook helps keep you engaged, so don’t skip it. While I’m comfortable using Excel, I figured this would be a good refresher and it was. It’s a well thought out, well taught class and I would highly recommend it for the Excel beginner or if you’ve been out of the Excel game for a long time. – Aubrey Houck

Learn Excel, young apprentices:

Well explained, clear and simple. This module of the course is for Excel first day apprentices. I hope next modules will deepen more on Excel tools. – Lucas Garcia

Your wish is our command, Lucas. Intro to Excel II and Intro to Excel III get you deeper into advanced Excel operations.

Intro to Excel II: Keyboard Shortcuts

Unplug that mouse and train yourself to use the keyboard:

I learned a lot in this class. Even though it is targeted for Mac users, the workbook provided gives the shortcut instructions for PC users – so I was able to follow along. It will definitely take some practice to use all the keyboard shortcuts – Maybe I’ll try unplugging my mouse for a day. Maybe. Nice clear, easy to follow well paced class. – Andrea Collins

Intro to Excel III: Analyzing Real Data

Good class, but needs to be much more advanced. Al Chen is a great teacher though, perfect pace. – Jacob Day

Your wish is our command, Jacob. Look out for more advanced classes from KeyCuts on Skillshare!

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How To Sign Up

It’s pretty easy, go to the Introduction to Excel I: The Interface page on Skillshare. You can get a free 7-day trial and after that it’s $9.95/month to access all of Skillshare’s awesome classes such as Context is Key by Gary Vaynerchuk and one class we’re definitely looking forward to: Art of the Start by former Chief Evangelist at Apple, Guy Kawasaki. Being a Skillshare member definitely has its benefits.

What You’ll Learn

Each part of the 3-part series focuses on a different aspect of Excel to help you master the tool and start analyzing data today for your business or organization. Here are descriptions of each part:

• Introduction to Excel I: The Interface – Al will focus on getting accustomed to the interface and how to do some basic operations in Excel.
• Introduction to Excel II: Keyboard Shortcuts – If you have taken our Speed Excel course before, some of the topics in this class will be familiar to you. You know how we love keyboard shortcuts, so this class is all about making you faster in Excel.
• Introduction to Excel III: Analyzing Real Data – This is some new content that we created specially for Skillshare. This class takes the skills you will learn in Excel I and Excel II and shows you how to analyze and present real data from a Google Adwords campaign.

Class Topics

Still not convinced this is the best online Excel training you will take to get better and faster in Excel? Here are the individual topics Al will go through in each class along with the class intro video:

Introduction to Excel I: The Interface

• Using the Ribbon. First you’ll learn how to use the Ribbon to your advantage by clicking on different buttons and customizing the ribbon to fit your needs.
• Structuring Your Workbook. Excel is all about cells, so we’ll cover cells in a worksheet and how worksheets fit into the bigger picture of a workbook.
• Formatting. Believe it or not, you can get a little artsy in Excel! Fill and font color are the two types of formatting that will help spice up your worksheet. We’ll also cover number formats.
• Selecting Data. Now that we have data in our cells, let’s see how we can select the data and smartly “autofill” data.
• Writing Formulas. How do you tie data from different sources together? We will walk through writing basic formulas and do a deep dive on the popular VLOOKUP formulas.
• Listing and Sorting. Organize your data so that it’s easier to analyze. We will expore the Sort and Filter menus in depth.
• Using Paste Special. Doing a regular copy-and-paste in Excel is boring, so we will see how the Paste Special menu lets you do things above and beyond copy-and-paste.

Introduction to Excel II: Keyboard Shortcuts

• Getting Started with Shortcuts. Learn how using the keboard makes you 10X faster than using the mouse in Excel. We will walk through how to set up your Excel settings to unleash the power of keyboard shortcuts.
• Moving Around. Before we learn shortcuts for formulas and formatting, we need to learn how to move around and navigate within Excel efficiently.
• Selecting Stuff. Now that we know how to move around the interface faster, we will talk about how to select cells and ranges using only the keyboard.
• Autofiltering & Making Lists. You have a basic data set, how do you drill down to the data you need? This is where adding on filters and sorting data efficiently come into play.
• Using Paste Special. Paste Special is one of the most powerful operations in Excel, and you need to learn how to utilize Paste Special in the fastest way possible.
• Using Formula Fills. Once you start building more formulas in Excel, you will need a quick way to use these new formulas throughout your Excel file. We’ll learn shortcuts for Fill Formula and Auto-Sum.
• Formatting. Even though you’ll be working with numbers in Excel, there’s still a lot of formatting to be done in your worksheet. We’ll go over quick number formatting, borders, and alignment shortcuts.
• Using Special Shortcuts. Here are the keyboard shortcuts that will make you truly stand out among your peers and make you a faster analyst. AutoFit, Re-Do format, and the Quick Access Toolbar are just some of the shortcuts we’ll learn in this unit.

Introduction to Excel III: Analyzing Real Data

• Setting Up the Scenario & Hypothesis. We will outline an analysis of a real-life scenario involving a fake company’s (ACME Inc.) online advertising campaign. This outline sets the stage for the data analysis.
• Cleaning Up Raw Data. Many times the data you receive is messy and requires some massaging. We’ll walk through some quick data clean-up tips!
• Filtering, Sorting, PivotTables. This is the meat of the data analysis, as we will be playing around with the data in Excel to discover the signal in the noise from Google Adwords campaign results.
• Creating Charts. Charts allow us to summarize data in a visual way, so here we will create some basic charts to show some trends in the data.
• Detecting Trends. After we’ve sorted the data and created some charts, we add more value to the anlaysis by discovering the trends and story behind the numbers.
• Revisiting Original Hypothesis. Is our original hypothesis supported or rejected? By looking at the original hypothesis again, we can shape how we present our findings to the CEO of ACME.
• Formatting. In terms of data visualization, there are a few tips to keep in mind when presenting charts to your final audience. Ensure that they walk away with the message you intend to get across.
• Presenting Findings. How do you succinctly present all your findings in one slide? We will figure out how to tell the story around the data to help drive actionable business decisions for the CEO of ACME.

Learn To Use Excel Like A Boss

We put a lot of hard work into this Skillshare series and hope you will take the next step and learn Excel whether you are a college student, new to the workforce, or simply want a refresher on how to use Excel to analyze data.

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