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Not joking- truly learning what excel can do (things like lookup function, pivot table, power query, data importing) and key words to Google to accomplish tasks.
I live my life by accepting that any excel problem I’m facing, someone has had the same issue, has already solved it better than I would have, and has documented it on the internet.
Subject Expert
Just in case I'm not being clear, pivot tables ON EXCEL sucks (they suck less if you embed them in the data model but still). Since 2015, EXCEL started to developed some new formulas based on pivot table logic, but without its constrains =UNIQUE() and =FILTER() being the most useful.
In the current excel 365, you can pretty much create a set of formulas that can do exactly what a pivot table can, without its limitations and unreliability (a) need to update and b) manipulate the data source apart from changing the cells) is just so much better.
The latest # reference for spilled formulas just took down the last advantage of a pivot table apart from "it's quicker" - but really, there are very cases where you have 2 minutes but don't have 5 min to build using the formulas
YouTube & LinkedIn learn
Osmosis
Not sound like a millennial, but TikTok really can help once you know the basics.
Literally every day is a school day in excel.
Learning Excel in and out is really inefficient, someone mentioned it before but just leverage off that someone has had the same issue or very similar to you. Really there’s a handful of formula you’ll ever use (they take up 80%+ of your analysis or formulation) and they are If/Ifs, sumifs, and the lookups (suggestion would be xlookup or index match). Other than that, there’s one offs like countifs or offset and so forth. But those 3 formulas are a game changer if you know how to use them and different applications.
With no mouse and an associate breathing down your neck for the model
I would suggest YouTube and immediately start using the program. Don’t just follow along with the activities the videos have but think of things you want to achieve in excel, look up how to do it, then start building in excel until you start to become familiar with the program.
There is no "quick way" as DS points out, but you can absolutely structure your learning to make the most from it by making your practice purposeful. A few things:
1. Learn by doing as pointed out elsewhere, don't just watch videos.
2. Build something. The most important thing to learn is problem solving. Very hard to do this without your own problems to solve. Either work problems, or find some interesting thing online.
3. Practice. For specifics you want to learn, do kata-lile practice to get good/fast a day embed the mental pathways. This is for stuff you don't want to to look up all the time.
4. Get feedback.
Definitely LinkedIn learning and searches on google. Take it from a finance professional who got the job and didn’t know a lick of excel and relied on the above.
Udemy is really good but it’s not free. Having the learnings all there to browse what is possible helps the extreme beginner.
If you know exactly what function or task you want to learn then YouTube is free. Free is always better but an extreme beginner might not even know what excel is capable of in order to google “how to X”.
Here is “a way” to learn excel better, daily.
1. Look at spreadsheets different. Identify what you see, appreciate, and value in the spreadsheets you “like.”
2. Save those files into a folder, renames with what you like about the file.
3. All
There is no “quick way”. Just get a beginner guide.