What Is Most Important to Learn in Excel?

Last Updated on April 25, 2024

Professionals from any industry benefit from a deep understanding of Excel. If you are beginning a career or pursuing professional growth, Excel training and certification can help you take advantage of new opportunities or make money from Excel knowledge. 

Here are some fundamental concepts and skills you need to master in Excel:

Data Cleaning and Manipulation

Before data can be evaluated, it must be cleaned and manipulated to ensure accuracy and consistency. Data cleaning is discovering and fixing or deleting errors and inaccuracies in a dataset. 

This step is critical because datasets may contain mistakes that occurred during data entry, transfer, or storage. They may also have missing information, duplicates, or incorrectly formatted data. When a dataset contains duplicate data, findings will be distorted since the same data point is counted twice. Calculations and visualizations will also be reliable if the data is correctly prepared.

Excel includes various data cleaning tools such as: 

• Find and Replace to replace values in a dataset
• Text to Columns to split data into separate columns
• Remove Duplicates to remove duplicate data from a dataset
• Concatenate to combine data from different columns into a single column 

For example, you can use the Text to Columns tool to separate a customer’s full name into the first and last name columns.

Pivot Tables 

Pivot Tables are interactive tables used to summarize and analyze data. They enable you to rapidly and efficiently translate large datasets by aggregating data into a more manageable format. This can help you identify trends and patterns in the data that may not be obvious when viewing the raw information. 

Pivot Tables are dynamic and can be quickly modified when new data becomes available. This allows you to update your analysis and observations as necessary easily.

Pivot Tables may be helpful for tasks such as summarizing sales data by product or area, assessing customer satisfaction survey data by demographic group, and tracking website traffic by date and source. 

Automation Tools

Automation increases data accuracy by reducing the possibility of mistakes made during manual data entry. Automation tools can assist you in maintaining data consistency by ensuring the data structure is correct across spreadsheets, workbooks, or databases. Automation can help you scale your analysis as your dataset expands. 

You can swiftly respond to changes in your data and do research on more extensive datasets by automating data entry, computations, and formatting. Excel’s automation tools, such as macros and VBA scripts, can automate repetitive operations such as data preparation, chart creation, and report generation.

Data Visualization 

Data visualizations are helpful because they show information in an easily digestible format. They can also aid in the discovery of hidden patterns and trends in the data that would otherwise go unnoticed. In addition, sharing data insights with others may be made more effective through visualizations–they help people better understand and apply the information presented.

A few visualization examples include bar charts, which display data in horizontal bars representing a category or series. For example, the sales industry frequently employs bar charts to compare sales of various items, regions, or time periods. This allows businesses to see what products are doing well so they may better allocate marketing resources. 

Scatter charts display data as a series of points, each representing a value for two variables. For example, scatter charts are commonly used in the financial industry to illustrate the correlation between stock prices and interest rates. This allows brokers to see trends and patterns in the data and make better investment choices. 

Pie charts are diagrams in which a whole circle is cut into sections, each representing a different category or numerical value. Companies often illustrate the breakdown of expenses such as salary, rent, marketing, and supply costs using pie charts. This aids managers in pinpointing potential areas for cost savings and revenue gains.

Accounting Tools

An article in Accounting Today says that 90% of businesses use Excel to make budgets, plans, and predictions. One reason for its popularity is Excel’s number of accounting formulas and calculations. VLOOKUP, Nesting IF Functions, and Conditional IF Formulas are three of the most common formulas businesses use for account management and tracking.

Hone Your Excel Skills

Excel is a powerful program that can help professionals manage and analyze data, automate tedious tasks, and make reports and presentations that look professional. By mastering Excel, you can increase your team’s efficiency, assisting management in making better-informed decisions. ONLC’s self-paced online training courses are the easiest way to learn Excel!