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Join our Excel Advanced course to boost your confidence and efficiency. This course covers a wide range of useful business tools, techniques and formulas that will enable you to protect, control, analyse and manipulate company data.
Stop spending hours writing complex formulas. Our Advanced Excel & AI Data Analysis course is the UK’s first to combine data manipulation (Pivot Tables, Power Query) with Generative AI tools like Copilot in Excel. Learn to use natural language prompts for instant formula generation, trend identification, and data cleaning. This course is designed for managers, executives, and data professionals who need to dramatically improve efficiency and secure a competitive edge in the new era of spreadsheet automation.
This intensive training is specifically designed for Experienced Data Professionals, Managers, Analysts, Supervisors, and Executives who have Level 2 (Intermediate) Excel proficiency and are ready to tackle complex challenges and adopt emerging technology.
The course is perfect for those who:
Require Automation: Spend excessive time on repetitive tasks, manual data cleaning, or debugging large, nested formulas.
Need data Authority: Must master advanced data ingestion techniques like Power Query to ensure data integrity and security before analysis.
Seek an edge: Want to immediately integrate Generative AI tools (Copilot) into their data workflows to generate instant analysis, complex formulas, and dynamic visualizations using natural language prompts.
Prerequisite: Comfortable with core functions, basic Pivot Tables, and logical functions. This course moves quickly to automation and strategic insight generation, focusing on hybrid workflows that combine advanced Excel preparation with AI execution.
Currently you could use the free version of Copilot for this course.
AI tools eliminate the need for manual work by allowing users to request complex actions using plain English. For example, you can ask Copilot to “create a Pivot Table showing Q3 sales by region,” or ask “write a custom formula to extract domains from an email list,” or “identify anomalies and trends” in large datasets. This process is known as prompt engineering and saves hours per week.
Copilot offers deeper, native integration within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, excelling at advanced automation like generating Python code or Power Query steps directly within the Excel interface. Gemini excels in the Google Workspace environment, offering powerful real-time research capabilities and a stronger focus on integrating Sheets data with Google’s broader ecosystem (like BigQuery and Looker). Our course teaches the practical application of Copilot.
Yes. While AI can generate formulas, a strong foundation in Advanced Excel (especially Power Query for clean data ingestion) is essential for auditing, debugging, and verifying the AI’s output. Our course focuses on a hybrid workflow where you use AI to create drafts and use your advanced skills to ensure data accuracy and integrity (a key Trustworthiness factor).
The three most impactful uses for Copilot in Excel are:
Formula Generation: Automatically generating complex formulas (e.g., nested XLOOKUP, SUMIFS) from a natural language prompt, eliminating the need for manual syntax writing.
Instant Trend identification: Asking Copilot to analyze the data and find outliers, patterns, or trends that a human might miss in large datasets.
Dynamic Visualisation: Creating and customizing rich charts, graphs, and PivotTables in seconds, simply by requesting the specific visual output via chat.
Copilot automates several high-effort tasks, significantly improving business efficiency. These include: conditional formatting (highlighting data based on complex criteria), text analysis (such as classifying survey responses or extracting keywords from feedback), and generating Python code within Excel for advanced analytics like time series forecasting, all achievable with simple text prompts.
Absolutely. Our course is designed to transition intermediate users out of the common rut of repetitive tasks. Intermediate users often spend the most time fixing errors or trying to write complex, nested formulas. This course moves beyond manual formulas by introducing Power Query for seamless data preparation and Copilot for AI-driven analysis. You will learn to use your existing knowledge to critically audit the AI’s suggestions, transforming you from a capable user into a data automation expert.
You must also consider two related apps that may benefit you: Microsoft PowerBI (Business Intelligence) and Microsoft Power Automate. The PowerBI desktop app is free to download and is perfect to manage your company data.
Virtual classroom using Microsoft Teams: £850+VAT for up to 8 delegates
On-site: £950+VAT for up to 8 delegates (rates may differ if outside Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire)
To improve your business efficiency using a range of Advanced Excel tools and techniques.
* Formula Auditing: Tracking Precedents, Dependents, and Evaluating Nested Formulas (Understanding the structure and accuracy of complex spreadsheets). * Validation Techniques: Controlling user input, setting up robust data rules, and managing validation options for compliance. * Protection Strategy: Securing workbook elements, applying password protection, and managing user-specific edit ranges to protect sensitive company data.
* Advanced Data Manipulation: Using functions like LEFT, RIGHT, MID, FIND, LEN, CONCATENATION to quickly extract, join, and update elements from large datasets. * Mastering Excel Power Query: Connecting, Importing, and Combining data from multiple sources. Transforming and Shaping raw data for AI readiness (The critical step before using Copilot). * Custom Data Types: Creating and managing advanced data types using Power Query for streamlined reporting.
* What If Analysis: Employing Goal Seek, Solver, and Scenario Manager to forecast outcomes and optimize business results. * Pivot Table Mastery: Creating, editing, and updating detailed Pivot Table reports, including the use of Calculated Fields for advanced metrics. * Interactive Visualisation: Implementing Slicers to create dynamic, user-friendly reports and dashboards for senior leadership.
* Introduction to Generative AI in Data: Understanding the role of Copilot in Excel and Gemini Agents in Sheets for spreadsheet work. * Prompt Engineering for Data: Best practices for writing effective natural language prompts to instantly generate complex formulas, perform data cleaning, and request specific analysis. * AI-Powered Trend Identification: Using Copilot to automatically find anomalies, summarize insights, and identify trends in large, prepared datasets. * Hybrid Workflow: Implementing a reliable system to check and audit AI-generated formulas and reports, ensuring data trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).
Excel Advanced training with IPSOFACTO
Excel Data validation examples with IPSOFACTO
