Everything you need to go from zero to confident in Excel — no prior experience needed.
Excel is a spreadsheet — a grid of cells where you store numbers, text, and dates, then write formulas to calculate things automatically. It's used for budgets, sales reports, HR records, financial models, data analysis, and almost any task that involves organised information and numbers.
The key insight that makes Excel powerful: when your data changes, every formula that uses that data updates instantly. You don't recalculate anything manually.
Every cell has an address made from its column letter and row number. The cell in column B, row 3 is called B3. Click any cell and its address appears in the Name Box on the left of the formula bar.
Every formula in Excel starts with an equals sign. Without the =, Excel treats what you type as plain text.
=10+25 (returns 35)
=A1+A2 (adds whatever is in A1 and A2)
=B3*1.2 (multiplies B3 by 1.2)Use + to add, - to subtract, * to multiply, / to divide, and brackets to control order: =(A1+A2)/2 adds first, then divides.
Functions are built-in formulas that do specific calculations. The most important ones to learn first:
=SUM(A1:A10) adds all values in A1 to A10
=AVERAGE(A1:A10) average of the range
=MAX(A1:A10) largest value
=MIN(A1:A10) smallest value
=COUNT(A1:A10) how many cells contain numbers
=IF(A1>100,"Yes","No") if A1 is over 100 return Yes, else NoClick the cell below a column of numbers and press Alt + =. Excel automatically writes a SUM formula for the entire column above. Press Enter to confirm.
Formatting makes spreadsheets readable. The most useful shortcuts:
Once you're comfortable with SUM, AVERAGE, and basic IF, the next most valuable things to learn are VLOOKUP (or XLOOKUP), SUMIF, and pivot tables. These three skills cover the vast majority of real-world Excel tasks in most jobs.
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