Welcome to Spreadsheet Mastery

The Report That Took All Weekend

A marketing manager spent every Friday afternoon and Saturday morning building a weekly report. She manually copied data from five sources, reformatted everything, calculated metrics by hand, and created charts one by one. Every single week. Ten hours of work that should have taken thirty minutes.

When she learned pivot tables, lookup formulas, and template automation, the same report built itself. She clicked “Refresh,” verified the numbers, and sent it. Friday afternoon reclaimed. Saturday morning reclaimed. Career changed.

What You’ll Learn

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:

Build formulas using functions like VLOOKUP, INDEX-MATCH, IF, and SUMIFS for real-world tasks
Organize raw data into structured tables with proper formatting and validation
Create pivot tables that summarize thousands of rows into insights in seconds
Design dashboards that visualize key metrics with charts and conditional formatting
Use AI to write complex formulas, debug errors, and automate repetitive tasks
Apply data cleaning techniques to transform messy imports into analysis-ready datasets

What to Expect

This course has 8 hands-on lessons. Each lesson teaches concepts and immediately applies them. The best way to learn spreadsheets is by doing—so open Excel or Google Sheets alongside this course.

Lesson	Topic	Duration
1	Welcome (you are here)	10 min
2	Formula Fundamentals: Beyond SUM and AVERAGE	15 min
3	Data Organization and Table Structure	15 min
4	Lookup Functions: VLOOKUP, INDEX-MATCH, XLOOKUP	15 min
5	Pivot Tables: Summarize Anything in Seconds	15 min
6	Data Visualization and Dashboard Design	15 min
7	Automation, Templates, and Workflow Design	15 min
8	Capstone: Build a Complete Dashboard	20 min

The Spreadsheet Skill Levels

Most people are stuck at Level 1 or 2. This course takes you to Level 4:

Level	Skills	What You Can Do
1: Beginner	SUM, AVERAGE, basic formatting	Simple calculations, basic lists
2: Functional	IF, COUNTIF, sorting, filtering	Conditional calculations, organized data
3: Proficient	VLOOKUP, pivot tables, charts	Data analysis, reports, presentations
4: Power user	INDEX-MATCH, dashboards, automation	Self-updating reports, executive dashboards
5: Expert	Macros, VBA, complex modeling	Custom tools, financial models

AI as Your Spreadsheet Partner

AI changes spreadsheet work fundamentally:

Task	Without AI	With AI
Writing a formula	Google the syntax, guess, debug	Describe what you want in English
Debugging an error	Stare at #REF! for 20 minutes	Paste the error, get an explanation
Choosing a chart	Try different types randomly	Describe your data, get the best option
Cleaning data	Manual find-and-replace	AI writes the cleaning formula
Building a report	Hours of manual formatting	AI generates the template structure

Your First Quick Win

Open your spreadsheet app and try this right now. Paste this into your AI assistant:

I have a column of sales data in cells A2:A100.
I need a formula that:
1. Sums only values greater than $500
2. Works in Excel and Google Sheets
3. Includes an explanation of how it works

Also tell me how to format the result as currency.

Copy the formula AI gives you into your spreadsheet. You just used AI-assisted formula writing—a technique you’ll use throughout this course.

Key Takeaways

Spreadsheet skills are among the most valuable business skills regardless of your role or industry
Most users only know Level 1-2 functions; this course takes you to Level 4 (power user)
AI transforms spreadsheet work by translating plain English into formulas and debugging errors
Understanding the concepts is still essential—AI writes the formula, but you need to verify it’s correct
Each lesson builds practically on the last; keep a spreadsheet open as you learn

Up Next

In Lesson 2: Formula Fundamentals, we’ll go beyond SUM and AVERAGE to master the formulas that handle conditional logic, counting, and text manipulation—the building blocks of everything that follows.