18 Free Online Excel Courses With Certificate

Since the creation of Microsoft Excel in 1985, Several free online Excel courses with certificate have been developed to help people have intensive knowledge of it at no cost.

In this blog post, you are going to find the best free online Excel courses with certificate, free online platforms where you can study these courses, uses of MS Excel, special Excel courses for beginners, and, the benefits of studying these courses online.

Before the creation of Microsoft Excel, Lotus 1-2-3 which ran MS-DOS (an operating system) dominated the mid-1980s spreadsheet market for personal computers. In 1985, Microsoft developed a spreadsheet that became a competitor to the Lotus 1-2-3.

It was the first version of Excel released for Apple Inc. and Macintosh computers. Lotus 1-2-3 was not available for the Macintosh, so this coupled with the powerful graphics and fast processing of data by MS Excel made Macintosh users quickly turn over to it.

Later in 1987, the next version of Excel was created, and it was the first version to run on Microsoft’s new Windows operating system. It had a graphics-heavy interface that was designed to run on the latest Windows computers. Excel was very popular and became the dominant spreadsheet application in the 1990s.

Since 1990,  Excel has undergone several different transformations to become the powerful spreadsheet software that we know and utilize today.

The latest version now is Microsoft Excel 2019 which has incorporated new charts, which give a new twist to data presentation. Map charts and funnel charts are just some of the new data presentation charts that make your data look okay and neat. You also have the opportunity to include 3D visuals in your workbooks.

Right now you might be asking, what exactly is MS Excel?
MS Excel is a powerful spreadsheet system, which organizes data in columns and rows that can be manipulated through formulas that allow the software to perform mathematical functions on the data.

Before we proceed with listing the free online Excel courses with certificate, Let’s take a quick glance at the difference between Excel and Lotus 1-2-3.

The significant difference between excel and Lotus -1-2-3 is that, In excel, the different cells are separated using a colon, while in Lotus 123 use two periods in a row are used to differentiate values.

What is MS Excel Used for?

There are many uses of Microsoft Excel, but we have selected and listed the most significant ones for you here

  1. Excel is useful in office administration for supporting day-to-day tasks such as invoicing, paying bills, and contacting suppliers and clients. It’s an all-purpose tool for keeping track of and managing office activities.
  2. It is used for storing information, analyzing, sorting, and reporting.
  3. MS Excel is spreadsheet software that is used widely for common information organization and tracking like a list of sales leads, project status reports, contact lists, and invoicing. Excel is a useful tool for scientific and statistical analysis with large data sets. Excel’s statistical formulas and graphing can help researchers perform variance analysis, chi-square testing, and chart complex data.
  4. It’s used to create grids of text, numbers, and formulas specifying calculations. It is precious for many businesses, which use it to record expenditures and income, plan budgets, chart data, and succinctly present fiscal results.
  5. When Excel is programmed, it can be used to pull in data from external sources such as stock market feeds, automatically running the data through formulas such as financial models to update such information in real-time.
  6. Some of the most common business uses of MS Excel are for business analysis, managing human resources, performance reporting, forecasting, and operations management.

Benefits of Free Online Excel Courses

There are many reasons why education is important, and these reasons have led educators to think and create better ways of learning to enhance education. One of these ways is the creation of online learning platforms.

All around the world, educational institutions regard digital learning platforms to continue with their process of educating students. Today, digital learning has emerged as a necessary resource for students and schools all over the world. This is an entirely new way of education for many educational institutes that they have had to adopt.

Online learning is currently not just for learning academics but it also extends to learning extracurricular activities for students as well. Research has shown that the demand for online learning has risen consequentially, and it will continue to do so in the future. Online learning is viewed today as a crucial concept of education around the universe.

Students get many benefits from free online Excel courses with certificate. Take a look at some of these benefits below.

  1. Online education allows students to attend classes from any location of their choice. It also allows schools to reach out to a more extensive network of students, instead of being restricted by geographical boundaries. Additionally, online lectures can be recorded, archived, and shared for future reference. This allows students to access the learning material at a time of their comfort.
  2. Another advantage of online learning is reduced financial costs. Online education is far more affordable as compared to physical learning. This is because online learning eliminates the cost points of student transportation, student meals, and most importantly, paying rent, and buying books. All the course or study materials are available online.
  3. With free online Excel courses with certificate, students can able to combine learning with work and raising their families. Earning a degree while attending other responsibilities can show prospective employers ambitiousness and the desire for continued professional development
  4. Online learning saves time and increases productivity.
  5. It’s easy for students to get distracted during a lecture. University of California psychologist Jonathan Schooler found that students get distracted about 5 times in a 45-minute class session. In online programs, however, students can review words from professors instantly, either by rewinding the audio or video or by reading the transcript that accompanies the lecture.

Special Excel Courses for Beginners

Excel for Beginners course will provide you with the requisite understanding and skillsets to be able to make the most effective use of Microsoft Excel. Microsoft Excel is an industry-leading spreadsheet software and is a powerful analysis as well as a data visualization tool.

You will learn to use formulas to do complex calculations to analyze your data. You will also get an extensive understanding of borders, sorting and filtering with the data, if-else condition, date, and time with free online Excel courses.

The first nine free online Excel courses with certificates we listed below are available at mygreatlearning.com while other courses are at Udemy.com

  1. Introduction to Excel
  2. Cell Referencing
  3. Tables and Borders
  4. Basic Functions and Formula
  5. Sorting
  6. Filtering
  7. Date and Time
  8. If Else
  9. General Functions in Descriptive Analysis.
  10. Introduction to Excel
  11. Basics of Excel
  12. Entering Data
  13. Formatting
  14. Editing
  15. Saving
  16. Viewing
  17. Calculations
  18. Visualizing
  19. Analyzing
  20. Tables
  21. Sharing.

What Can I Do With MS Excel Certificate?

Earning a Microsoft Excel certification can set you apart in the job market and show employers and hiring managers that you have the necessary skills to do the job.

Nowadays, it’s much more important to be skilled in MS Office. Documentation, data handling, and presentation is the need for every existing business. Most companies require candidates with MS Office skills for their organization’s needs. If you have any Microsoft certification, you will get hired easily into corporate and IT companies.

Here is a list of Excel fields you can be offered a job in with your MS Excel Certificate.

  • Accounting and auditing
  • Financial analysts
  • Data analysts
  • Business intelligence analysts
  • Digital Marketers.
  • Market researchers and analyzers
  • Cost estimators

Being an Excel expert sets you apart in these career fields and can make your resume stand out from the majority.

Free Online Excel Courses With Certificate

Free Online Excel Courses With Certificate

From the many free online Excel courses with certificates, we have provided you with the top 18 of these courses. You can go through these courses singly and choose the one that best suits you. Take a glance at them below.

We also provided you with the online platforms where these free online courses with certificates that we listed are

  • Create a Project Management Tracker using Microsoft Excel
  • Preparing Data for Analysis with Microsoft Excel
  • Work Smarter with Microsoft Excel
  • ChatGPT for Beginners: Save time with Microsoft Excel
  • Introduction to Microsoft Excel
  • Data calculations in Microsoft Excel
  • Data Visualization using Microsoft Excel
  • Create a Financial Statement using Microsoft Excel
  • Introduction to Data Analysis using Microsoft Excel
  • Using Basic Formulas and Functions in Microsoft Excel
  • Visual Basic for Application -Beginners
  • Trump Excel
  • Data Processing and Analysis with Excel
  • Data Management
  • Data Visualization and Building Dashboards with Excel and Cognos
  • Introduction to Computers and Office Productivity Software
  • Fundamentals for Data Analysis
  • Vertical and Horizontal Lookup in Google Sheets.

1.       Create a Project Management Tracker using Microsoft Excel

As a small business owner, budgets are often tight for the “extras.” Oftentimes, this means that some of those high-value marketing tools cannot be offered. Small business owners should turn to free or low-cost alternatives. An easy-to-use and manageable alternative is a free online version of Microsoft Excel from Microsoft Office 365. In this project, you will learn how to create a simple project management tracking sheet.

At the end of this project, you will have the Excel project management tracking template for the next presentation of your development project. Create a new workbook in Microsoft Excel and share the document with others. Design and organize the project management tracker using formatting tools in Microsoft Excel. Add content to the project tracking spreadsheet with dropdown lists and conditional formatting. It takes 2 hours to complete the project.

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2.       Preparing Data for Analysis with Microsoft Excel

This course forms part of the Microsoft Power BI Analyst Professional Certificate. This Professional Certificate consists of a series of courses that offer a good starting point for a career in data analysis using Microsoft Power BI. No prior skills are needed to be successful in this course. In this course, you will learn how to make use of Excel in business scenarios for data analysis. You will also learn how to utilize formulas and functions for data analysis. 

Specifically, this course will help you gain knowledge and skills for preparing data for analysis using Microsoft Excel and take you one step closer to becoming a Microsoft Power BI Analyst.  There are 4 modules in the course and it takes approximately 18 hours to complete the course.

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3.       Work Smarter with Microsoft Excel

This course is intended for learners with some experience using Microsoft Windows, who are seeking to build presentation skills with Microsoft Excel. To be successful in this course you should have an understanding of the basics of using a Windows-based computer. Experience with printing and using a web browser are an asset, but not required.

This course will introduce you to Microsoft’s powerful and easy-to-use spreadsheet program, which provides you with an extensive set of tools to organize, analyze, present, and store data.  If you are familiar with Excel’s basic features you can take your skills to the next level. If you are a beginner you will get the opportunity to develop basic Excel skills. There are 5 modules in the course and it takes approximately 20 hours to complete the course.

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4.       ChatGPT for Beginners: Save time with Microsoft Excel

In this course, through hands-on projects and real-world scenarios, you will gain practical experience in creating standardized datasets, writing formulas for data cleaning and classification, extracting text from URLs, conducting sentiment analysis, and generating dummy data for surveys. This course offers a unique opportunity to explore the potential of combining AI capabilities with common business challenges faced within Excel. Basic knowledge of Excel is recommended to make the most of this course. It takes approximately 2 hours to complete the project.

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5.       Introduction to Microsoft Excel

By the end of this project, you will learn how to create an Excel Spreadsheet by using a free version of Microsoft Office Excel. Excel is a spreadsheet that works like a database. It consists of individual cells that can be used to build functions, formulas, tables, and graphs that easily organize and analyze large amounts of information and data. Excel is organized into rows (represented by numbers) and columns (represented by letters) that contain your information.

This format allows you to present large amounts of information and data in a concise and easy-to-follow format. Microsoft Excel is the most widely used software within the business community. Whether it is bankers, accountants, business analysts, marketing professionals, scientists, or entrepreneurs, almost all professionals use Excel on a consistent basis. You will learn what an Excel Spreadsheet is, why we use it, and the most important keyboard shortcuts, functions, and basic formulas. You will be done with the course in less than 2 hours.

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6.       Data calculations in Microsoft Excel

By the end of this project, you will create a free account on Microsoft 365, will get access to Microsoft Excel, you will create a table with data that you will later be able to manipulate to calculate sums, average amounts, percentages, and also calculate with certain criteria. Your new skills will help you efficiently manipulate data and operate with formulas that can help make more efficient management decisions in the future. You will be done with the course in less than 2 hours.

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7.       Data Visualization using Microsoft Excel

Have you ever been asked to create a report based on a lot of data and you did not know where to begin? Or, do you simply need to demonstrate data from different sources all in one place with minimum effort? By the end of this project, you will learn how to operate data to generate a report and demonstrate information in a comprehensive visual way in Microsoft Excel.

In this project, you will create a free account on Microsoft 365, you will get access to Microsoft Excel, and use data to generate a report with informative charts that you can present to your audience. Your new skills will help you efficiently make decisions based on a visual data presentation. You will be done with the course in less than 2 hours.

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8.       Create a Financial Statement using Microsoft Excel

By the end of this project, you will be able to complete a financial statement with Microsoft Excel, composed of a transactions page, a profit and loss statement, and a balance sheet. You will learn how to enter your business transactions and interpret the data presented in the profit and loss statement. You will also learn about the components of a balance sheet and will have a better understanding of how a financial statement can be used to help track and present financial information for your company. You will be done with the course in less than 2 hours.

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9.       Introduction to Data Analysis using Microsoft Excel

In this project, you will learn the foundation of data analysis with Microsoft Excel using sales data from a sample company. You will learn how to use sorting and filtering tools to reorganize your data and access specific information about your data. You will also learn about the use of functions like IF and VLOOKUP functions to create new data and relate data from different tables. Finally, you will learn how to create PivotTables to summarize and look at comparisons within your data. These skills will help you efficiently perform data analysis on many different types of data and give you the foundation to expand your toolbox as you explore other strategies for data analysis. You will be done with the course in less than 2 hours.

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10.   Using Basic Formulas and Functions in Microsoft Excel

Have you started using spreadsheets like Excel and want to learn how to write formulas and functions to perform simple data analysis? In this project, you will learn about the general format for writing formulas and functions in Excel to perform analysis on the sales data from a sample company. In this analysis, you will calculate total sums of profits, you will learn how to use functions to analyze the popularity of the items sold and you will also learn how to calculate averages and percentages of monthly profits. Throughout the project, you will work through some examples that will show you how to apply the formulas and functions you have learned. You will be done with the course in less than 2 hours.

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11. Visual Basic for Application

VBA (Visual Basic for Application) is the scripting language used in Microsoft Excel and a tool for automating repetitive tasks. While most of the courses on this list touch on VBA toward the end, this is designed to teach beginners the necessary skills needed to create macros.

You will learn how to use the VBA editor, syntax, and comments and then move on to creating macros and subroutines. Finally, you will conclude with logical constructs and looping.

The short course online course in Excel can be taken for free on the Alison platform, which will earn you a shareable certificate upon successful completion. Although this course teaches VBA for beginners, you should have prior knowledge of Excel before taking it.

This course is offered at Alison.com, Enroll now

12. Trump Excel Training

The program is thorough and well-recognized as one of the best free Excel courses online. It covers everything from the most fundamental topics to the most advanced programming concepts and is designed in a sequence so you can learn step-by-step.

You will learn pivot tables, data analysis, formulas, charts, and everything in between. Each module goes over every topic in detail, and the training works for all Excel versions currently on the market.

This course is offered at trumpexcel.com, Enroll now

13. Data Processing and Analysis with Excel

In this course, you will learn how to organize your data within the Microsoft Office Excel software tool. Once organized, we will discuss data cleaning. You will learn how to identify outliers and anomalies in the data, and how to identify and change data types.

Together we will develop a data analysis plan, after which we will apply analysis methods and tools, including exploratory analysis, evaluation of results, and comparison with other findings.

In this robust Excel course, you will gain a solid foundation in using advanced Excel functions such as pivot tables and vlookup to organize and analyze data sets. You will be able to create an Excel chart in a variety of chart types including scatter plots, pie charts, and more.

We’ll discuss various techniques such as descriptive statistics, and review the variety of Excel add-ins available to use this powerful tool to organize, analyze, and transform your data into actionable insights.

This course is offered at edx.org, Enroll now

Data Management

This intermediate Excel course builds on the teachings of the introductory Core Foundations course, teaching you to leverage the power of data calculations and reports to make informed personal or organizational decisions.

The course is designed for learners who already have foundational knowledge and skills in Excel but wish to take advantage of some of the higher-level functionality to effectively analyze and present data.

This course is covered at edx.org, Enroll now

Data Visualization and Building Dashboards with Excel and Cognos

This course is among the best free online Excel courses with certificate that will help you build the fundamental knowledge necessary to use Excel and IBM Cognos Analytics to create data visualizations and to create dashboards containing those visualizations to help tell a lucid story about data.

This course is offered at edx.org, Enroll now

Introduction to Computers and Office Productivity Software

Can I Get Excel Certification Online?

You can get Excel Certification online after you have completed an Excel course and passed a certification exam you were given.

Can I Get Excel Certified for Free?

Yes, you can. Getting Excel certified is free when you enroll in one of these free online Excel courses with certificate we listed in this article. The schools/sites that are responsible for offering these free courses made the acquisition of the certificates free

Is Excel Certification Worth It?

Possessing a Microsoft Excel certification shows employers and hiring managers that you have the necessary skills to do the job, thereby making you stand out among others.
Having something to say you have reached a standard is better than just saying it yourself.

Conclusion

This blog post contains very crucial and relevant information you may need about free online Excel courses with certificate. We made this article to be as short as possible so as to help you read through it within a short time. It is important to note that, enrolling for these free online Excel courses with certificate has no age barrier. It is open to graduates,  undergraduates, and Postgraduates.

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