Excel Foundations for Financial Analysis

This unit introduces core Excel functionality and practical skills used in financial analysis, including navigating the interface, entering and formatting data, constructing basic formulas, and organizing and visualizing information. Students will build foundational competence with tables, lookups, charts, and worksheet protection that prepares them for more advanced automation and analytical techniques in subsequent units.

Learning Objectives

• Demonstrate efficient navigation and file/worksheet management by using Excel’s user interface, navigation task panes, freezing panes, undo/redo, and workbook structure protection to organize workbooks for financial tasks
• Apply data entry and editing best practices and formatting techniques—including Format Cells dialog, basic formatting commands, Quick Analysis, conditional formatting, and deletion of temporary files—to prepare clean datasets for analysis
• Analyze and construct basic formulas and functions using correct operators and order of operations, trace precedent and dependent cells, evaluate formulas and handle error values, and manage spilled ranges to ensure accurate calculations
• Create and modify Excel tables and charts and use lookup and text tools (VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, Flash Fill, text splitting), sorting and dynamic filtering, and chart customization to organize, extract, and visually present data