Excel 365 for Beginners: Free Course

About this course

Start using Excel 365 with a clear, lesson-by-lesson foundation. This free Simon Sez IT course contains all 51 parts of the beginner training, including the opening orientation, practice exercises and final recap. It is a guided route through everyday workbook skills rather than a shortcut list.

Course at a glance

What you’ll learn

• Navigate workbooks, ribbons and worksheet controls, and organise files for everyday spreadsheet work.
• Enter and format text, numbers and dates while recognising how number formats affect the displayed result.
• Use introductory formulas, relative and absolute references, named ranges and structured tables.
• Sort, filter and summarise a list, then use the included exercises to check your understanding.

Skills you’ll gain

• Excel navigation
• Data entry
• Cell references
• Named ranges
• Excel tables
• Sorting and filtering

Course Overview

The numbered curriculum begins with getting started, accessing the environment and navigating workbooks. It then develops data entry, formulas, cell references, named ranges and formatting before moving to tables, worksheet structure, sorting, filtering and subtotals. Exercises appear throughout the sequence, giving you opportunities to practise the preceding topics. All 51 numbered parts remain in the course. Work through them in order and use the recap to review what you can now do independently. The recorded demonstrations use Excel 365 and include Windows 11 setup material.

How to study the course

• Use the early orientation and navigation lessons to establish a comfortable workspace. Keep setup topics available for reference even after you start using the workbook.
• Pause at each exercise and attempt it before replaying the explanation. Compare the result with the purpose of the task, not only its appearance.
• Follow the later list-management lessons and finish with Part 51. Keep a short checklist of operations you can repeat without assistance.

Use the searchable classroom lesson list to revisit a specific explanation. Pause after a useful demonstration, reproduce a small example and explain the result in your own words. Keep a short note of what worked, what changed and what you still need to understand before moving on.

Who is this for?

This course is for first-time Excel users, students and office professionals building a reliable foundation. It also helps users who have learned isolated tasks but want a clearer picture of the basic workflow.

Before you start

No advanced spreadsheet knowledge is required. A compatible Excel 365 environment is needed to reproduce the demonstrations. The video course is free to watch and does not supply a Microsoft license or installation entitlement.

Put the lessons into practice

Make a practice list of ten fictional project expenses with a date, description, category and amount. Format the values appropriately, calculate a total and create an Excel table. Add a new expense and check that the workbook behaves as expected. Sort by date, filter by category and compare the visible results with your original data. Try one named range and explain what it represents. Complete the related course exercises, then write a short guide that another beginner could use to repeat the task.

This optional activity is provided by WikiFree for independent practice. It is not a graded assignment from the instructor. Keep your working notes, check the result against the task you defined and return to the relevant lesson when an assumption or technique is unclear.

Certificate / Assessment

Watching the public videos and using WikiFree progress tracking does not award a certificate, exam voucher, academic credit or instructor assessment.

Use your practice output to review what you can now explain and repeat independently. Completion tracking records your study progress; it does not replace an assessed qualification or professional experience.

Frequently asked questions

Provider: Simon Sez IT. Videos play from the Simon Sez IT channel on YouTube.