The way to work with Excel

Excel is easy to use for simple tasks, but it becomes significantly more powerful once you understand how its features work together.

The way a workbook is structured — how data, formulas and outputs are organized — has a large impact on usability, maintainability and reliability. Small design decisions can make the difference between a workbook that works for years and one that quickly becomes difficult to maintain.

This course focuses on building Excel workbooks that are clear, structured and easy to work with.

A structured approach to Excel

When working with Excel it is easy to create solutions quickly, but without structure they often become difficult to maintain.

Common problems include:

• Cross references: Formulas that jump between sheets make workbooks harder to understand and maintain.
• Hidden errors: Errors that are not immediately visible can lead to incorrect results and poor business decisions.
• Inconsistent design: When formatting and structure vary across sheets, collaboration becomes more difficult.

A structured approach helps reduce these problems and makes workbooks easier to understand, test and extend.

When to use Excel

Excel is a powerful tool, but it is not always the right tool.

It works best for flexible, exploratory and non-recurring tasks where speed of development and adaptability are important.

Typical use cases include:

• Business analysis: Exploring data and identifying opportunities through quick analysis.
• Projects: Supporting fast-moving projects where requirements change frequently.
• Problem solving: Investigating issues by restructuring and analysing data in different ways.

For highly standardized or recurring processes, dedicated software solutions may often be more suitable.

Excel functionality

Excel contains a wide range of functionality. In this course we divide it into four layers:

• Core: Basic functionality available from the Excel menus
• Formulas: Functions and formulas used in spreadsheet cells
• Analysis: Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts used for analysing larger datasets
• VBA: The built-in programming language used for automation

The course focuses primarily on the Core and Formulas layers, which form the foundation for most structured Excel solutions.