Excel Training: the 6 best courses in 2026, by profile

This is the most complete structured Excel path we found. Macquarie University splits it into four courses: Essentials (about 26 hours), Intermediate I (28 hours), Intermediate II (28 hours) and Advanced (25 hours). That's roughly 107 hours in total, which Coursera frames as three months at ten hours a week. You start at beginner level and work up to the formulas, lookups, data tools and modelling that business users rely on every day. Each course comes with graded practice in real spreadsheets, not just videos.

The specialization is huge by any measure: 4.9 stars from over 64,000 reviews and more than 725,000 learners enrolled. You finish with a shareable certificate from Macquarie University via Coursera. It's a certificate of completion, not a proctored certification like the Microsoft Office Specialist exam, so treat it as proof of effort rather than proof of level. There's no standalone price on the page: it's included in Coursera Plus, which costs $59 a month or $399 a year with a 7-day free trial, and financial aid is available if you apply.

Noble Desktop packs Excel into 18 live hours, split into three six-hour units: Fundamentals, Intermediate and Advanced. The Advanced unit covers XLOOKUP, PivotTables, What-If analysis, macros and dynamic arrays (formulas that spill results into several cells at once). You can attend in person in New York City, live online on Zoom, or go self-paced. The bootcamp costs $599, down from $897.

Two details make it safer than most live classes. You get one free retake within a year, and the class recordings stay available for 30 days. You also receive a verified certificate of completion. The page shows 4.8 stars from 943 reviews, though some reviewers say a full day can move quickly. For companies, Noble runs onsite or live online training with your own datasets and branding, and sells vouchers so employees can join public classes on dates that suit them.

Learning Tree is an American training company that sells mostly to employers and government agencies. Its Microsoft Excel Training Course (Course 1361) is a three-day, instructor-led foundation class with labs, taught in person or online. The outline goes from navigating worksheets and workbooks to formulas and functions, IF functions, 3-D formulas, protected data-entry templates, conditional formatting, tables with slicers, charts and sparklines, and ends with PivotTables and a quick dashboard. There are no prerequisites.

Two things set it apart. First, the live class carries 17 NASBA CPE credits, the continuing education hours US accountants must log, so the three days count for the license too. Second, a Learning Tree end-of-course exam is included, plus one-on-one instructor coaching and a computing sandbox after the course. The exam is Learning Tree's own, not the Microsoft Office Specialist certification. The price is the catch: $2,785 per person on the course page, with some dates listed at $2,474, which is several times Noble Desktop's live bootcamp. Team training is quoted through an inquiry form.

Leila Gharani's XelPlus bundle is built for people who use Excel at work. It combines three courses: Excel Essentials for the Real World, Pivot Table Mastery and Business Charts. That's more than 30 hours of video, focused on the tasks you face in a real job, like building a report someone else can read or summarizing thousands of rows with a PivotTable (a table that groups and totals data in a few clicks).

The bundle costs $379, with lifetime access and a 14-day refund window. XelPlus sells skills, not a credential: the page lists no certificate, and there's no live support. If you buy for a team, XelPlus handles team purchases by email. Leila also teaches the LinkedIn Learning course Excel Essential Training (Microsoft 365), a shorter option if your company already pays for LinkedIn Learning.

New Horizons sells Excel the corporate way: one full day per level. Excel Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 cost $295 each. Around them, you'll find a two-day Data Analysis and Visualization course ($590), a one-day VBA class ($655) and half-day sessions on PivotTables or Power Pivot ($148). Many dates are marked Guaranteed to Run, which helps when you plan a team's schedule.

For groups, New Horizons runs private training on-site or virtually. You also get a free retake within six months if you need to repeat a class. Ask whether a given date runs online or in a classroom before you book.

Excel Essential Training (Microsoft 365) is LinkedIn Learning's main beginner course, taught by Leila Gharani. It runs 4 hours 32 minutes and is rated beginner, though the description says it also suits intermediate users. It covers navigation, data entry and formatting, formulas and functions including XLOOKUP and IF, working across sheets, sorting and filtering, PivotTables, charts, conditional formatting, sharing and protecting workbooks, and Copilot in Excel. You get one exercise file and 10 quizzes, and you can follow it on a phone or tablet.

The course page shows 4.8 out of 5 from 2,024 ratings. It ends with a shareable certificate of completion you can add to your LinkedIn profile or download as a PDF: proof you finished, not a certification. There's no standalone price, because the course comes with a LinkedIn Learning subscription, and the page offers a 1-month free trial. The real value is for teams whose company already has a license: the same catalog adds Power Query (3 h 43), PivotTables in Depth (3 h 53) and Advanced Formulas and Functions (5 h 17).