The Best Excel Courses to Take in 2026

2. Microsoft Excel — Excel from Beginner to Advanced — Udemy

Udemy's Excel from Beginner to Advanced by Kyle Pew is one of the most-enrolled Excel courses on any platform, with over 1.5 million students.

• Level: Beginner to Advanced
• Time: ~18 hours of video
• Cost: $15–85 on sale
• Best for: Learners who prefer video instruction with a single instructor across the full course

Pew's course covers the full Excel stack: the interface and core functions, formatting, charts, PivotTables, VLOOKUP()/INDEX()-MATCH(), macros, and an introduction to VBA. Hands-on exercise files are included throughout, and the course wraps with multiple end-to-end projects. Quality varies wildly across the broader Udemy Excel catalog — read reviews, check the publish date, and avoid courses that haven't been updated since the previous decade — but Pew's course is the consistent recommendation across independent reviews.

3. Excel Skills for Business: Essentials — Macquarie University

Macquarie University's Excel Skills for Business: Essentials is a natural pick for learners who want a recognized credential.

• Level: Beginner
• Time: ~26 hours
• Cost: Free to audit; ~$49 for certificate
• Best for: Business professionals who want a university-branded credential with a business-focused curriculum

The course covers the Excel fundamentals through a business lens: entering and manipulating data, formatting for professional output, formulas and basic functions, and printing and charting for stakeholder-ready reports. One note worth flagging: several reviewers report that a small number of shortcuts and assignment answers assume Windows Excel, so Mac users may have small problems.

4. Everyday Excel — University of Colorado Boulder

CU Boulder's Everyday Excel is a strong university alternative to Macquarie's course, built around practical use cases rather than a business curriculum.

• Level: Beginner
• Time: ~27 hours
• Cost: Free to audit; ~$49 for certificate
• Best for: Learners who want a practical, use-case-driven introduction with a university credential

Taught by Dr. Charlie Nuttelman. The course covers Excel essentials — navigation, formulas, functions, conditional formatting, data visualization, and an introduction to PivotTables — through projects drawn from everyday scenarios rather than formal business reporting. The instructor's pacing and clarity are selling points. 

5. Data Analysis and Visualization with Excel — IBM

IBM's Data Analysis and Visualization with Excel is the strongest single course for learners who want to use Excel specifically for data analysis rather than general business tasks.

• Level: Beginner to Intermediate
• Time: ~12 hours
• Cost: Free to audit; ~$99 for certificate
• Best for: Aspiring data analysts who want to learn Excel as an analytics tool

The course covers importing and cleaning data, working with PivotTables, applying advanced functions for analysis, and building charts and dashboards. Projects use realistic datasets framed around analyst workflows. The natural pairing for learners who plan to continue into IBM's broader Data Analyst Professional Certificate, but useful as a standalone for anyone whose primary reason to learn Excel is data analysis.

6. Excel for Everyone: Core Foundations — UBC

UBC's Excel for Everyone: Core Foundations is a rigorous beginner course that covers Excel through the lens of data analytics.

• Level: Beginner
• Time: ~15 hours
• Cost: Free to audit; certificate available
• Best for: Beginners who want a data analytics framing rather than business reporting

The first course in UBC's Excel for Everyone Professional Certificate series, this course focuses on organizing, cleaning, and analyzing data with Excel — entering data, working with tables, writing formulas and core functions, and creating charts to communicate findings. Less business-reporting-focused than the Macquarie course, more data-analysis-focused than the CU Boulder one.

7. Excel Essential Training (Microsoft 365) — LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning's Excel Essential Training is the most polished single-instructor beginner course for the current Microsoft 365 version of Excel.

• Level: Beginner
• Time: ~6 hours
• Cost: LinkedIn Learning subscription (~$40/month); free trial available
• Best for: Microsoft 365 users who want a concise, professional video course with a LinkedIn-displayable certificate

Taught by Dennis Taylor. The course covers the Excel interface, entering and editing data, formulas and common functions, formatting, charts, PivotTables, and workbook sharing. Taylor is a veteran Excel instructor, and the course reflects that: dense but approachable, with tight pacing and no filler. 

8. Introduction to Data Analysis using Microsoft Excel — Rice University

Rice University's Introduction to Data Analysis using Microsoft Excel is a short, focused course that covers Excel for statistical and business data analysis.

• Level: Beginner
• Time: ~9 hours
• Cost: Free to audit; ~$49 for certificate
• Best for: Learners who want a short, credentialed intro to data analysis in Excel

The course covers sorting and filtering, PivotTables, VLOOKUP() across sheets, and data visualization through charts and graphs. Shorter and more focused than the Macquarie or CU Boulder courses, and a good fit for learners who already have some spreadsheet experience and want to move quickly to analysis. The natural on-ramp to Rice's broader Business Statistics and Analysis Specialization.

9. Excel Basic and Advanced — GoSkills

GoSkills' Excel course is a microlearning-format course taught by Ken Puls, a widely recognized Excel and Power Query authority.

• Level: Beginner to Advanced
• Time: ~26 hours across basic and advanced modules
• Cost: GoSkills subscription (~$29/month) or course purchase
• Best for: Self-paced learners who prefer short, bite-sized lessons over long videos

The course is built around 3–6 minute video lessons, each paired with a practice exercise, a quiz, and a reference guide — a structure designed to fit learning into short windows. Ken Puls' expertise extends deep into Power Query and advanced Excel, which is reflected in the more advanced modules. 

10. Ultimate Excel VBA — Udemy

Ultimate Excel VBA by Daniel Strong is the most-enrolled standalone VBA course and the right next step for Excel users who want to automate their work.

• Level: Intermediate to Advanced
• Time: ~23 hours of video
• Cost: $15–85 on sale
• Best for: Experienced Excel users who want to learn VBA for automation and custom functionality

The course covers the VBA environment, recording and editing macros, variables and logic, loops, working with ranges and worksheets, building user forms, and writing custom functions. VBA is no longer the cutting edge of Excel automation — Power Query and Office Scripts have taken over much of the territory — but VBA remains the deepest automation layer in Excel and is still the right tool for a large set of real-world problems.

11. Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Microsoft Excel — Microsoft Learn

Microsoft Learn's Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Microsoft Excel is one of the strongest free, vendor-authored modules for learners who want to go deeper on Excel's data analysis features.

• Level: Intermediate
• Time: ~8 hours
• Cost: Free
• Best for: Learners who want Microsoft's own take on advanced Excel data analysis features

Delivered as a self-paced module on Microsoft Learn, the curriculum covers working with tables and data models, PivotTables and PivotCharts, Power Pivot for larger datasets, and dashboard-building techniques. As with all Microsoft Learn content, the module is free and kept current with the product. 

12. Excel for Financial Analysis and Modeling — CFI

CFI's Excel Fundamentals – Formulas for Finance is the strongest single course for finance-specific Excel, built for analysts and aspiring analysts rather than general learners.

• Level: Beginner to Intermediate
• Time: ~6 hours
• Cost: CFI subscription (varies); certificate included
• Best for: Finance professionals, students, and career-changers who need Excel specifically for financial modeling

The course covers the Excel skills that actually show up in financial analyst interviews and work: navigation shortcuts, formula construction, financial functions (NPV(), IRR(), PMT(), PV(), FV()), data tables, and the formula-building patterns that separate clean financial models from messy ones. Narrower than a general Excel course by design, and that's the point. The natural entry point into CFI's broader Financial Modeling & Valuation Analyst (FMVA) certification for learners on a finance career track.

Best Excel Courses Comparison Table