Duration 2 days – 14 hrs
Overview
This practical training course is designed to equip participants with the essential skills to leverage Microsoft Excel for data preparation, analysis, and visualization. Through hands-on exercises, learners will explore how to clean and structure data, use analytical functions, create pivot tables, and build dynamic charts. The course is ideal for professionals looking to enhance their data-driven decision-making skills using Excel.
Objectives
- Import, clean, and organize raw datasets in Excel
- Apply key Excel functions for data transformation and analysis
- Use PivotTables and PivotCharts for summarizing and visualizing data
- Create interactive dashboards using Excel tools
- Perform basic statistical analysis to support business insights
Audience
- Business professionals handling data regularly
- Analysts and administrative staff
- Marketing, finance, HR, and operations teams
- Anyone seeking to improve their Excel skills for data analysis
Pre- requisites
- Basic knowledge of Microsoft Excel (e.g., formulas, cell formatting)
- No prior experience in data analysis is required
Course Content
Day 1: Foundations of Data Analysis in Excel
Getting Started with Excel for Data Analysis
- Overview of Excel’s capabilities for data work
- Setting up data-friendly spreadsheets
Data Cleaning and Preparation
- Removing duplicates
- Data validation
- Text to Columns, Flash Fill, Find & Replace
- Sorting and filtering data
Essential Excel Functions for Analysis
- Logical: IF, AND, OR
- Lookup: VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, XLOOKUP
- Text: LEFT, RIGHT, MID, LEN, TRIM
- Date and Time: TODAY, NOW, DATEDIF
- Math and Statistics: SUMIF(S), COUNTIF(S), AVERAGEIF(S)
Hands-On Exercise:
- Cleaning and analyzing a sample dataset
Day 2: Data Summarization, Visualization, and Reporting
Using Tables and Named Ranges
- Converting data to tables
- Structured references
PivotTables and PivotCharts
- Creating and customizing PivotTables
- Adding slicers and timelines
- Building PivotCharts for summaries
Data Visualization Techniques
- Column, bar, line, pie, and combo charts
- Conditional formatting and sparklines
- Creating summary dashboards
Basic Data Analysis Techniques
- Descriptive statistics using Excel
- Trend identification and forecasting basics
Capstone Activity:
- Build a mini-dashboard from a raw dataset
- Present insights using visualizations
