Utilizing Excel for Data Entry and Analysis: Formulas, Functions, Conditional Formatting, and Pivot Tables

• In this course, you will learn to:
• Understand and efficiently navigate the Microsoft Excel interface, ribbons, and shortcuts.
• Gain proficiency in data entry, formatting, validation, and cleaning techniques using Excel.
• Learn to work with tables, manage large datasets, and apply sorting and filtering operations effectively.
• Master Excel formulas and functions across categories like text, logical, mathematical, lookup, and date/time.
• Utilize conditional formatting and data visualization tools to enhance data representation and reporting.
• Develop skills in creating pivot tables and performing advanced data analysis using built-in Excel tools.
• Apply Excel for real-world tasks such as budgeting, reporting, decision-making, and automation through custom functions.

• At the end of this course, learners will be able to:
• Navigate and customize Excel workbooks, manage sheets, protect data, and use cell styling and alignment features.
• Enter, clean, and transform data using tools like Flash Fill, custom lists, and advanced editing techniques.
• Create and format tables, use slicers, apply filters, and remove duplicates for clean data structures.
• Apply a wide range of formulas and functions including SUMIF, VLOOKUP, IF, TEXTSPLIT, HSTACK, and advanced logic/lookup functions.
• Perform data validation using dropdowns, error alerts, and named ranges to control data input.
• Use conditional formatting to highlight trends and anomalies, and apply custom number/date/time formats.
• Generate pivot tables and pivot charts for dynamic data summarization and insights.
• Use Excel charts (bar, pie, area, sunburst, funnel, etc.) for effective data visualization.
• Perform unit and data type conversions (binary, decimal, hexadecimal, etc.) and utilize built-in functions for accurate calculations.
• Manage and share Excel workbooks securely, including collaboration features available in Office 365 and Excel 2019.

The academic approach of the course focuses on ‘work-centric’ education. With this hands-on approach, derive knowledge from and while working to make it more wholesome, delightful and useful. The ultimate objective is to empower learners to also engage in socially useful and productive work. It aims at bringing learners closer to their rewarding careers as well as to the development of the community.

• Step 1: Learners are given an overview of the course and its connection to life and work
• Step 2: Learners are exposed to the specific tool(s) used in the course through the various real-life applications of the tool(s).
• Step 3: Learners are acquainted with the careers and the hierarchy of roles they can perform at workplaces after attaining increasing levels of mastery over the tool(s).
• Step 4: Learners are acquainted with the architecture of the tool or tool map so as to appreciate various parts of the tool, their functions, utility and inter-relations.
• Step 5: Learners are exposed to simple application development methodology by using the tool at the beginner’s level.
• Step 6: Learners perform the differential skills related to the use of the tool to improve the given ready-made industry-standard outputs.
• Step 7: Learners are engaged in appreciation of real-life case studies developed by the experts.
• Step 8: Learners are encouraged to proceed from appreciation to imitation of the experts.
• Step 9: After the imitation experience, they are required to improve the expert’s outputs so that they proceed from mere imitation to emulation.
• Step 10: Emulation is taken a level further from working with differential skills towards the visualization and creation of a complete output according to the requirements provided. (Long Assignments)
• Step 11: Understanding the requirements, communicating one’s own thoughts and presenting are important skills required in facing an interview for securing a work order/job. For instilling these skills, learners are presented with various subject-specific technical as well as HR-oriented questions and encouraged to answer them.
• Step 12: Finally, they develop the integral skills involving optimal methods and best practices to produce useful outputs right from scratch, publish them in their ePortfolio and thereby proceed from emulation to self-expression, from self-expression to self-confidence and from self-confidence to self-reliance and self-esteem!