Data Automation Professions offers a number of pre-scripted, instructor led training courses covering all aspects of Excel and Excel automation from basic navigation and formulas to advanced VBA programming techniques and the Excel object model. Have a need for a more customized course? Give us a list of topics and we’ll pull from our libraries of courseware the applicable parts and build the rest.
Experienced Trainers
We’ve been working with Excel for over 30 years and we’ve gotten pretty good at it. We also love helping people get the most out of Excel so we’ve delivered many hours of training to individuals, small and large groups, and corporations over the years. By now we know what works. We also like to have fun with our students and use real examples and hands on work to create an environment more conducive to learning and exploring. The two partners—Zack and Kevin—have helped somewhere around 30,000 Excel users (we stopped counting years ago) with everything from basic Excel use and formulas to advanced VBA programming and using the Excel object model.
The Essentials
Whether you want the most basic high-level Excel essentials and maybe a function or two, or you want to automate Excel to scrape the latest race results from the daily derby’s website, we can help you with that and everything in between. Tips and tricks, functions and formulas for the technically challenged, Excel Tables (we wrote the book and created the Add-In), PivotTables (very popular!), complex formulas for those trying hard to avoid Visual Basic, convoluted array formulas for the mathematician who dreams in number sets, VBA, Excel and other Office application object models, operating system API calls, Power Query, Power anything else, or just good old (Excel) shenanigans, we can and will show you how to do it.
Some Sample Course Segments
| Segment Name | Description | Length | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Excel | This is our basic introduction course. We’ll touch on a number of basics such as managing workbooks and worksheets, navigating a worksheet, manipulating columns and rows, entering data, basic formula entry, fixing formula errors, cell and number formatting, adding cell validation rules, finding and replacing, formatting for printing including setting page breaks, margins, headers, and footers. We’ll also introduce you to charts, Excel Tables, and PivotTables. We’ll finish with a quick tour of automation with VBA using the macro recorder and some basic code editing to make a macro to do a repetitive task! If you have limited to no Excel experience then we recommend taking this segment before any of the others in this list. | 8 hours | None. |
| Excel Tips & Tricks | Our most popular. Covers all the tips and tricks we’ve learned over the years. We’ve been at this a while so we really do have a lot of these. And some of them are wicked cool! | 2 to 4 hours | Some experience using Excel (see Introduction to Excel above) so that you can appreciate these gems. |
| Excel Keyboard Shortcuts | Remember DOS? Excel has a number of keyboard shortcuts for those of us still wary of mice. We get bored with this stuff so we’ll keep it short and leave you with a cool cheat sheet. | 1 hour | Some experience using Excel (see Introduction to Excel above.) If you can use a keyboard then you're good to go. |
| Excel Charting | Everyone wants to know how to transform their data into a pretty chart or graph. Excel has some amazing chart types. Just don't ask us how to make a 3D pie chart—we have our boundaries. | 4 hours | Experience using lists or tables and some experience with formulas. Read this and promise you won't. |
| Advanced Excel Charting | Wonder how those Excel jocks handle gaps in their data? Make a trend line? Create charts that Microsoft doesn't support? Take 10 charts and make a dashboard? We’ll show you all this and much more! | 4 hours | Excel Charting |
| Excel Tables | We wrote the book on Excel Tables and created the Excel TableTools Add-In so we really know this one well. Learn about Excel Tables best practices, Table formatting, structured referencing, sorting, and filtering. | 4 hours | Basic Excel skills (see Introduction to Excel above) and a love of a nice looking list of data. |
| Excel PivotTables and Slicers | This is a very popular subject. PivotTables have been around a long time and allow for some powerful slicing and dicing of larger data sets. We’ll show you how to create a PivotTable, manipulate the PivotTable parts, filter, sort, and add some nifty slicers to make them dynamic. | 4 hours | Basic Excel skills (see Introduction to Excel above.) |
| Excel Power Query | Think PivotTables are cool? You’ll blow a gasket when you see what Power Query can do! | 4 hours | Basic Excel skills (see Introduction to Excel above) and a desire to tackle some humongous data transformations. |
| Introduction to Excel VBA | Excel is an awesome tool. Add some VBA and awesome is, well, awesomer! Excel automation is used by millions to automate mundane and repeatable processes while saving you a truckload of time (or, put in other terms, creating more time for play or impressing the boss). This introductory segment shows you how to use the macro recorder to create starter code and learn about the Excel object model, basic debugging techniques, tips and ticks for writing solid code, and general best practices such as consistent naming conventions and adding comments to your code. We’ll even cover some structured programming concepts and how to create a user defined function you can use in a worksheet formula. | 4 hours | Medium Excel skill level and a desire to get dirty. Some experience with software coding is a plus. |
| Advanced Excel VBA Part 1 | Now that you have the basics down, it's time to start working with the Excel object model. We’ll show you how to work with all of the basic Excel objects such as workbooks, worksheets, ranges, charts, lists (Tables), PivotTables, and anything else in which you are interested. When you know how to access the Excel object model, you can automate anything in Excel! | 8 hours | Introduction to Excel VBA |
| Advanced Excel VBA Part 2 | Go deeper into the Excel object model by exploring shapes, charts, Tables, and PivotTables. We’ll also cover some advanced VBA coding techniques and introduce you to classes, user forms, and Add-Ins. Did you know that you can create a user defined function (UDF) that returns an array of values into a range of cells? | 8 hours | Advanced Excel VBA Part 1 |
| Advanced Excel VBA Part 3 | This is where the going gets tough. We’re going to get down in the weeds and work with Windows services and operating system SDK calls to do things you had no idea you could do with Excel. Scrape web pages, manipulate windows, read and write to the Windows registry, etc. We’ll also look at automating other Office applications, starting other instances of Excel, and some more advanced user form techniques. | 8 hours | Advanced Excel VBA Part 2 |
Pricing
We’ll keep this simple. $2,000 each full or partial day, plus $50 per student with a minimum of 10 students.
Instructor-led virtual training is $250 per hour for up to 50 students with a minimum of four hours.
All instructor led training is offered both on-site and off-site. When bringing us on-site and you are more than 30 miles from our trainer, we kindly ask that you also cover our traveling and lodging expenses, including late night runs to In-N-Out or Five Guys.