Productivity for the whole workforce
“From Excel to AI” course
Your spreadsheets, boosted with AI so you analyse more and type less.
Excel is still the most widely used analysis tool in companies, and also one of the biggest time sinks: formulas nobody understands, data that has to be cleaned by hand every month, reports that get copied and pasted. AI changes much of this work.
In this course you will learn to ask for formulas in natural language, make sense of inherited sheets, clean and join data with Power Query, analyse trends and generate the report text from the numbers. Always with one rule: check what the AI calculates.
We finish with a useful rule of thumb: when a spreadsheet is no longer enough and it is worth moving to Power BI, a database or Python.
What you will learn
- Write and understand complex formulas with AI help
- Clean, join and transform data without manual work
- Analyse data and spot trends with natural-language questions
- Prepare automatic reports and summaries
- Know when a spreadsheet falls short and what the alternatives are
Syllabus
7 modules, from the fundamentals to the final project.
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AI and spreadsheets
- Copilot in Excel, chat assistants and add-ins
- What it does well and where it gets numbers wrong
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Painless formulas
- Asking for formulas in natural language
- Understanding and debugging inherited formulas
- XLOOKUP, pivot tables and dynamic array functions
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Cleaning and transforming data
- Normalising text, dates and amounts
- Joining tables from different sources
- Introduction to Power Query with AI help
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Analysis
- Questions about the data and summary tables
- Recommended charts
- Spotting outliers
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Reports that write themselves
- From analysis to report text
- Commentary on budget variances
- Reusable templates
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Automate
- AI-generated macros and scripts, reviewed with judgement
- When to move to Power BI, a database or Python
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Reliability
- Checking the AI's calculations
- Confidential data and approved tools
Tools you will practise with
- Microsoft Excel
- Copilot in Excel
- Power Query
- ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for formulas and scripts
Hands-on project
You turn a real recurring report (for example, monthly sales or expenses tracking) into a sheet that updates with fewer manual steps and generates its own commented summary.
Requirements
- Basic Excel skills.
Other courses
-
AI literacy course for all staff
The common foundation the AI Act requires so the whole team uses AI with judgement.
- Duration: 3–4 hours
- Level: Beginner
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Google Workspace with Gemini course
Google's AI built into Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Meet and Drive, applied to your daily work.
- Duration: 6 hours
- Level: Beginner
-
Microsoft 365 Copilot for business course
Get the most from your Copilot licences in the apps your team already uses.
- Duration: 6–8 hours
- Level: Beginner
Where it is applied
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Natural language data queries with AI
Anyone on the team asks the company's data questions in their own words and gets the figure, table or chart back, with the query on show so it can be checked.
Want this course for your team?
We adapt the content, length and format to your company.