You know SUM. You can format a sheet. Now the report you own needs charts that aren’t ugly, formulas that survive a column insert, and one macro that handles Monday.
Who delivers this: I’ve delivered classroom, virtual, and onsite training across North America since 2004, twenty-two years. MA Candidate, Learning and Technology, Royal Roads.
Excel 201 is the day staff stop being users and start being the person the team asks. The course teaches the formula logic, linking discipline, chart craft, and starter automation that turn an everyday Excel user into someone a team relies on.
Who this is for
- Fit. Staff who completed 101 or are self-taught up to formulas, formatting, and basic ribbon navigation.
- Fit. Coordinators, finance assistants, sales-ops staff, and team leads who own a recurring report.
- Not fit. Anyone who already lives in PivotTables and writes SUMIFS without pausing. If your day is summarizing thousands of rows, that’s 301.
Prerequisites: 101-fluent. You can write a SUM, format a sheet, and copy a formula across rows without it breaking.
What you’ll be able to do after
- Build IF and IFS logic, single-condition and multi-condition decisions inside formulas.
- Link workbooks safely, repair broken links, and know which links to avoid.
- Build charts that communicate at a glance, including sparklines for tight reporting.
- Apply data validation, sheet protection, and templates to keep team workbooks clean.
- Record, edit, and run your first macros without writing code from scratch.
The day, block by block
- Write formula logic that doesn’t fall apart when the sheet changes. IF, IFS, nested decisions, named ranges, and structured references, plus why your formulas break when someone inserts a column and how to fix that for good.
- Connect workbooks without the links quietly rotting. Where links break, how to trace them, and when to break them on purpose. Source-of-truth discipline for files that depend on other files. The mistake I see most often here is one team keeping the same numbers in three workbooks and trusting that they all still agree. They never do, and nobody notices until a meeting.
- Build a chart someone reads in two seconds. Picking the right chart, formatting without overdoing it, annotating with notes and text boxes, and sparklines for compact reporting.
- Keep a shared workbook from collecting silent mistakes. Range names, data validation, worksheet security, outlining, and workbook templates, the boring topics that prevent loud problems.
- Record a macro that does the repetitive part for you. Plan, record, run, edit, save responsibly, and add a macro button to the Quick Access Toolbar so the team uses it without thinking about it. The moment I wait for in this block is the first time someone presses one button and watches Excel replay twenty minutes of formatting in under a second. The room goes quiet, then someone laughs, because they have just realised how much of their week was hand-work that Excel was willing to do for them all along.
Real examples we’ll work through
- A budget-vs-actual chart with sparklines that updates monthly.
- A regional summary linked from three branch workbooks, with a repair plan for when one path changes.
- A macro that formats a weekly export: same actions, one click.
Format, duration, and pricing
Most teams take 201 as a single full-day class: six hours, virtual or onsite. Mixed-skill groups take a quick pre-class skills check at no extra cost so the pacing works for everyone. Pricing is the same across the 101 through 302 levels. (401 is a separately scoped track and priced on its own page.)
| Format | From price (CAD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Full-day class (6 hr) | from $1,495 | Up to 3 participants; $175 each additional (maximum 10) |
| Two-day onsite workshop | from $2,990 | Up to 3 participants; $175 each additional (maximum 10) |
CAD. Travel within 50 km of Fort Erie included; beyond 50 km, travel and accommodation are billed at cost. Final scope and quote confirmed on the discovery call.
Where this fits in the Microsoft Excel ladder
Shaped for: Everyday Excel users ready for the intermediate surface: advanced formulas, linked workbooks, charts, and a first macro.
Most learners come here from: Microsoft Excel Training 101.
From here, the most common next steps:
- Microsoft Excel Training 301, if your work is data analysis: tables, PivotTables, slicers, dynamic arrays.
- Microsoft Excel Training 302, if your work is financial modelling: what-if scenarios, Goal Seek, Solver, formula auditing.
The full training catalogue shows how the Microsoft Office courses sit alongside the WordPress training track.