Excel course for beginners: the 10 best in 2026

Best for beginners who want everything in one long course, including programming. Five parts cover Excel fundamentals, formulas and functions, data visualisation with charts, dashboards and maps, data analysis with PivotTables, Power Query, Power Pivot and predictive analysis, and VBA for automating tasks.

It has 4.7 stars from more than 800 reviews and more than 26,000 students. It runs about 78 hours, the longest course here, with 36 resources, and was updated in April 2026. We lowered it because its length is more than most beginners need.

Best for beginners who already know the basics and want to work smarter. It is a non-linear collection of tips on productivity, formatting, formulas, data visualisation, PivotTables and analytics, from flash fill and freeze panes to sparklines, slicers, forecasting and Monte Carlo simulation, with a workbook ranked by difficulty.

It has 4.6 stars from more than 8,800 reviews and more than 44,000 students. It runs about 10 and a half hours with six quizzes and was updated in June 2026. We lowered it because it recommends experience with formulas, charts and PivotTables.

Best for beginners who like concise, practical lessons. It moves from SUM, AVERAGE and data cleaning with TRIM and CLEAN to formatting, PivotTables with slicers, text functions such as TEXTSPLIT, XLOOKUP and FILTER, IF and SUMIFS, then LET, REGEX, Power Query, macros and Python in Excel.

It has 4.7 stars from more than 600 reviews and more than 2,700 students. It runs about eight and a half hours with hands-on exercises in every lecture, two quizzes and 51 resources, and was updated in October 2026.

Best for beginners who want a long course with a final assessment. It starts with the Excel interface, charts and fundamental functions, then moves on to advanced functions, with downloadable exercise files throughout.

It has 4.6 stars from 1,300 reviews and more than 12,000 students. It runs about 26 hours with a quiz, an assessment test at the end and 21 resources, and was updated in August 2026.

Best for complete beginners who want the essentials quickly. Made by someone who worked at Microsoft on Excel, it covers the interface, entering and formatting data, saving for real-time collaboration, SUM, MAX, MIN, COUNT, AVERAGE, VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP, charts, conditional formatting, sorting, filtering and PivotTables.

It has 4.6 stars from more than 38,000 reviews and more than 90,000 students. It runs about two hours, the shortest course here, and was last updated in January 2024.

Best for beginners who want to work towards the Microsoft MO-210 Excel certification. It covers creating and managing worksheets and workbooks, importing and formatting data, tables, sorting and filtering, formulas and functions for summarising data and conditional operations, and charts and sparklines.

It has 4.6 stars from more than 900 reviews and more than 4,600 students. It runs about eight hours with 16 quizzes, 15 practice activities and a practice test, and was updated in February 2026.

Best for visual learners who like animated explanations. It covers fundamentals, flash fill, data validation, text to columns, sorting and filtering, printing, PivotTables, conditional formatting, logical, text and date functions, VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP, charts and dashboards, through more than 300 business situations, plus using ChatGPT for complex Excel problems.

It has 4.5 stars from more than 10,000 reviews and more than 60,000 students. It runs about 19 hours with 40 resources and more than 30 practice sheets, and was updated in October 2026.

Best for beginners who want a long, structured path from novice to expert. Eight courses cover Excel 2021 for beginners, intermediate and advanced, Excel for business analysts, Power Pivot, Power Query and DAX, PivotTables for beginners, advanced PivotTables and interactive dashboards, including sales and HR dashboards built from scratch.

It has 4.6 stars from more than 3,800 reviews and more than 22,000 students. It runs about 67 hours with 93 quizzes, the most here, and was updated in December 2025. We lowered it slightly because its length is more than most beginners need.

Best for beginners who find Excel awkward and want everything explained slowly. Warrick Klimaytys breaks Excel's tools and features down in fine detail, revisits topics to reinforce them, provides a premade workbook for almost every tutorial and includes a section on using AI in Excel.

It has 4.6 stars from more than 28,000 reviews and more than 105,000 students. It runs about 13 hours with 34 quizzes and 28 resources, and was updated in October 2026.