Best Excel Courses 2026
Best Excel Courses 2026
Microsoft Excel remains the most widely used data tool in business — more organizations run on Excel than any other analytics platform. Despite Power BI, Tableau, and Python gaining ground, Excel is the universal language of business analysis.
Here are the best Excel courses in 2026, from complete beginner through advanced automation.
Quick Picks
| Goal | Best Course |
|---|---|
| Best overall | Excel Skills for Business (Coursera, Macquarie) |
| Best for specific skills | Microsoft Excel — Excel from Beginner to Advanced (Udemy) |
| Best free option | Microsoft Excel training (support.microsoft.com) |
| Best for Power Query | Excel Power Tools (various Udemy) |
| Best for VBA | Excel VBA Programming (Udemy) |
Excel Skill Levels
Understanding where you are before selecting a course:
Beginner: Entering data, basic formulas (SUM, AVERAGE, IF), formatting, simple charts
Intermediate: VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, nested IFs, SUMIF/COUNTIF, PivotTables, basic charts
Advanced: Index/Match, array formulas, Power Query, Power Pivot, named ranges, data validation
Expert: VBA macros, complex dynamic arrays (LAMBDA, SEQUENCE, FILTER, UNIQUE), Power BI integration
Best Excel Courses
1. Excel Skills for Business Specialization — Macquarie University (Coursera)
Platform: Coursera Duration: ~6 months Level: Beginner to Advanced Cost: Included in Coursera Plus
The most comprehensive, academically structured Excel curriculum available. Four courses:
- Excel Essentials — Navigation, formulas, formatting, basic charts
- Excel Intermediate I — Advanced formulas, lookup functions, conditional formatting
- Excel Intermediate II — PivotTables, charts, data validation, what-if analysis
- Excel Advanced — Power Query, advanced charts, financial modeling
Best for: Professionals who want a thorough, credentialed Excel education. The Macquarie/Coursera credential is legitimate and the curriculum progression is well-designed.
2. Microsoft Excel — Excel from Beginner to Advanced (Udemy)
Rating: 4.6/5 from 500,000+ reviews Duration: ~14 hours Level: Beginner to Advanced Cost: ~$15
One of Udemy's most enrolled courses overall. The course covers:
- Excel navigation and data entry
- Core formulas: SUM, IF, VLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH
- PivotTables and PivotCharts
- Data analysis tools: What-If Analysis, Goal Seek, Solver
- Excel Tables and named ranges
- Basic charts
Best for: Learners who want to cover Excel broadly in a short timeframe. More surface-level than the Macquarie specialization but covers the essential skills efficiently.
3. Excel with Excel — Leila Gharani (YouTube + Courses)
Leila Gharani is one of the most respected Excel educators — her YouTube channel has 2M+ subscribers and covers advanced Excel topics clearly:
- Advanced formulas (LAMBDA, dynamic arrays)
- Power Query step-by-step
- Excel dashboards
- Financial modeling
Her paid courses and free YouTube content are complementary — many learners use her YouTube channel to learn specific topics and her paid courses for structured learning.
Free: Her YouTube channel covers most Excel needs Paid: XelPlus (her platform) for structured advanced training
Best for: Intermediate to advanced Excel users who want to go beyond what Udemy courses cover.
4. Microsoft's Free Excel Training
Website: support.microsoft.com/excel Cost: Free
Microsoft provides free video-based training for Excel through their support site:
- Excel quick start
- Core Excel functions
- PivotTables
- Charts and graphs
- What-If Analysis
Best for: Beginners who want a quick, free orientation before committing to a more comprehensive course.
Essential Excel Skills for Business Roles
Financial Analysts: Advanced formulas, financial modeling (DCF, sensitivity analysis), Power Query for data import
Data Analysts: XLOOKUP, PivotTables, Power Query, basic Power Pivot, charts for reporting
Business Analysts: PivotTables, conditional formatting, dashboards, data validation
HR/Operations: PivotTables, SUMIF/COUNTIF, basic macros for repetitive tasks
Marketing: PivotTables for campaign analysis, VLOOKUP for data merging, basic dashboard creation
PivotTables: The Essential Excel Skill
PivotTables are Excel's most important data summarization feature — they allow you to quickly aggregate, group, and analyze large datasets without writing formulas.
Core PivotTable skills:
- Creating a PivotTable from a data range or Table
- Rows, columns, values, and filters
- Calculated fields
- Grouping dates (by month, quarter, year)
- Value field settings (sum, count, average, %)
- Slicers for interactive filtering
- PivotCharts
If you learn nothing else in Excel beyond the basics, learn PivotTables. They're used in virtually every business analyst job.
Power Query: The Modern Excel Superpower
Power Query (called "Get & Transform Data" in Excel) transforms how you import and clean data. It replaces manual copy-paste and VLOOKUP-heavy data preparation:
- Import from multiple sources (CSV, SQL, SharePoint, web)
- Clean data: remove duplicates, fix formatting, split columns
- Merge and append tables
- Create refreshable data models that update when source data changes
Why Power Query matters: Data preparation typically takes 80% of analysis time. Power Query automates repetitive cleaning tasks, making analyses refreshable with one click rather than requiring manual work each time.
Leila Gharani's Power Query content on YouTube is the best free resource.
Excel vs. Python/R for Data Analysis
A common question: should I learn Excel or Python for data analysis?
Learn Excel if:
- Your colleagues use Excel and you need to collaborate on Excel files
- You work with business users who expect Excel outputs
- Your data fits in Excel (under 1M rows, no real-time streaming)
- You need a credential that business roles recognize
Learn Python/R if:
- Your datasets exceed 1M rows
- You need ML or statistical modeling
- You're pursuing a data science role
The realistic answer: Learn both. Excel for business communication and collaboration; Python/pandas for large datasets and automation.
Learning Path: Business Analyst Excel Skills
Weeks 1–2: Excel Beginner to Advanced Udemy course (14 hours) Weeks 3–4: Deep focus on PivotTables — practice on real business datasets Month 2: Power Query — build a refreshable data import process Month 3: Advanced formulas: XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, dynamic arrays Month 4+: Optional: VBA for repetitive task automation
Bottom Line
For comprehensive credentialed learning: Macquarie Excel Skills for Business (Coursera) is the best structured Excel curriculum.
For fast practical coverage: Udemy's Excel Beginner to Advanced covers essentials quickly at minimal cost.
For advanced topics: Leila Gharani's YouTube content + paid XelPlus courses are excellent for Power Query, dashboards, and financial modeling.
The single highest-ROI Excel skill: PivotTables. Learn them well before anything else.
See our best business analytics courses guide for the full analyst toolkit, or our best data science courses guide for when Python is more appropriate than Excel.