Microsoft Excel is one of the most powerful tools available to businesses of any size — and one of the most underused. Most people learn enough to get by, but there’s a significant gap between knowing how to type numbers into a grid and knowing how to build formulas, analyse data and automate repetitive tasks. These guides are written for home users and small businesses who want practical, step-by-step instructions rather than technical jargon. Whether you’re just starting out or trying to level up a specific skill, you’ll find what you need here.
Looking Up Data
Lookup formulas are some of the most useful in Excel. They let you search a table for a value and return a result from another column — essential for matching product codes to prices, finding customer records or cross-referencing data from different sheets. VLOOKUP has been the standard for years, but XLOOKUP and INDEX/MATCH are more flexible and worth learning if you use lookup formulas regularly.
Summarising and Analysing Data
When you have a large dataset, you need tools that can summarise and make sense of it quickly. Pivot tables are the most powerful feature in Excel for this — they let you group, count and total data without writing a single formula. SUMIF and COUNTIF are simpler but equally useful for adding up or counting rows that meet specific conditions. If you need to present your findings, the chart guide covers the fastest way to create clear, professional charts.
- How to Create a Pivot Table in Excel
- How to Use SUMIF in Excel
- How to Use COUNTIF in Excel
- How to Create a Chart in Excel
Formatting and Organising
A spreadsheet that’s hard to read is a spreadsheet that causes mistakes. These guides cover the Excel features that keep your data clean and easy to work with — from highlighting cells based on their value to locking rows in place so you don’t lose your headers when scrolling through hundreds of rows of data.
- How to Use Conditional Formatting in Excel
- How to Create a Drop-Down List in Excel
- How to Freeze Rows and Columns in Excel
- How to Remove Duplicates in Excel
- How to Link Data Between Sheets in Excel
Formulas and Functions
Excel’s formula library is enormous, but most everyday tasks rely on a small core set of functions. The IF formula is the most important logical function in Excel — it lets you set up rules that return different results depending on whether a condition is met. Once you understand IF, you can build more complex formulas that combine it with other functions to handle almost any calculation.
Protecting and Recovering Files
Financial spreadsheets, pricing models and anything containing sensitive data should be protected before you share it. These guides cover password protecting a workbook and recovering a file you forgot to save — two situations that come up regularly in any business that uses Excel heavily.
Fixing Excel Problems
Excel problems tend to fall into two categories: formulas that produce errors or wrong results, and Excel itself freezing or crashing. Both are frustrating but usually straightforward to fix once you know where to look. These guides cover the most common causes and the fastest route to a solution.
Using AI with Excel
AI has become genuinely useful for Excel users at every skill level. If you don’t know how to write a formula, you can describe what you need in plain English and let AI write it for you. If you have a messy dataset, AI can clean it. Microsoft Copilot in Excel adds these capabilities directly to the ribbon for Microsoft 365 subscribers, and Python in Excel opens up more advanced data analysis without leaving the spreadsheet. These guides explain what each tool does, what it costs and when it’s worth using.
- How to Use Microsoft Copilot in Excel
- How to Use ChatGPT to Write Excel Formulas
- How to Use AI to Analyse Data in Excel
- How to Use Python in Excel
- How to Use AI to Clean Data in Excel
More Microsoft Guides
Excel is part of the Microsoft 365 suite. If you work with documents as well as spreadsheets, our Microsoft Word guides cover everything from mail merge to AI proofreading in the same practical format. We also cover Microsoft Teams for meetings and collaboration, and Outlook for email and calendar management — all written for home users and small businesses who want clear, step-by-step instructions.
