Excel/office courses

janeseemore

Hi everyone,

Does anyone know where I can find a good excel course in London?
I have used MS Office including excel while at school, college and university. In addition to my current job. But I have only used it to basic standard. I am more advanced in using word.

Therefore I want to increase my skills and be able to do more then just the basic functions on excel and outlook. I understand that there are many online courses, but I can not do any type of distance learning as it's not motivational to me.

Do you people think it's worth doing the course? From what I have seen so far some are charging £180 for a 1 day a week evening class for a few weeks duration.

Any feedback and opinions are welcome.

Thanks

[Deleted User]

Sorry to only add to the shop around but have you also looked into the likes of Pitman Training? (they do Excel course, been around yonks so are recognised and have physical centres in London)

walwyn1978

If you're paying for it consider ECDL level two. It covers Excel but also other things in the Office suite. If it's only a little bit more to take full ECDL (there are exams) it looks better from a CV POV than 'just' an Excel course, albeit that again will help your skills/enhance your CV if that interests you.

Folander

I would reconsider an online course, the motivation being it will be far cheaper than a physical course. Having advanced knowledge is one thing, but being able to apply the knowledge in excel is key.

Are you able to shadow anyone at work and pick up some tricks from them? This would give you some real life excel situations and would provide real life examples for you to discuss at interviews to demonstrate your excel knowledge.

BPP provide excel courses, I recently went on a 2 day excel course. It cost £1,600 but that was a financial modelling course.

dlmcr

I am self thought in Excel to a very advanced level (think VBA, custom formulas, array formulas, dynamic named ranges etc etc) and can say that employers do not care about pieces of paper that say you can do something they look at actual ability and will generally test that as part of a job application process.
When I was younger I went on some of these courses paid for by employers and learned nothing useful at all, other than "press this button and press that button" which I could have learnt by reading a book or looking at youtube or pressing F1.
My advice is to look at youtube for videos and go to your local library, you don't need to spend a penny to learn Excel to whatever level you need / want but you need to put time, effort and a structured approach into knowing what you want and then sitting down and doing it.

bez2345

One option you can look at is evening classes at your local college,you might be limited to functional skills ICT levels 1 and 2 However it will be limited to just SUM, IF, AND, OR and the usual suspects for formulas, conditional formatting and creating charts and graphs. As others have suggested a more money saving way its self teach I know you are not a fan of distance learning however sites like How to Geek are a good source for the more advanced excel functions.

One thing to be aware of when looking at paying for a course is which version of office they are going to teach you, if its the latest version of excel when your employer uses an older version you may find some of the methods taught will not be compatible in your workplace.