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The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration

Excel course for MBA and business students

For MBA candidates, pre-MBA learners, and business and commerce students analysing cases and creating spreadsheets, this guide highlights relevant material from The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration. It focuses on cleaning messy group datasets, summarising case details with lookups and PivotTables, assembling a budget vs actual model, stress-testing assumptions, preparing slide graphics, and applying AI prompts with verification checks.

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Taught by Sagnik Bhattacharya and Virginia Thorn

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration: Sagnik Bhattacharya and Virginia Thorn

What you will be able to do

At work, you will be able to:

  • Summarise case studies across regions, products, or dates with SUMIFS, slicers, and PivotTables, and link datasets using XLOOKUP or INDEX and MATCH.
  • Assemble a budget against actuals model via dynamic arrays and SUMIFS, clarifying variances through combo charts and custom number formatting.
  • Keep model assumptions separate from calculation logic to test stricter projections, following the WealthFlow method for returns and inflation.
  • Select and format presentation-ready charts for business discussions, covering column, line, combo, waterfall, and Pareto layouts.
  • Clean messy data for team assignments using Excel Tables, TRIM, Remove Duplicates, and Text to Columns, pulling distinct entries with UNIQUE.
  • Plan and accelerate analysis using Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot, checking generated figures against a quality assurance checklist.

Projects

What you will build.

The course has 14 projects. These five matter most here.

  • Excel PivotTables and a PivotChart of sales data (SalesPlusPerformance): net sales by product category as a column chart, with State, Region and City filters.

    Project 05

    SalesPlusPerformance

    A sales question answered in seconds, straight from the order data.

    Filter and segment sales records by date, region, and product using slicers and date grouping, preparing clear exhibits for class discussion.

  • Budget vs actual dashboard in Excel (FinanceGuard): total budget, actuals and variance cards above a monthly line chart and a column chart by department.

    Project 09

    FinanceGuard

    The budget vs actual report finance teams send every month.

    Track performance against targets using dynamic arrays and SUMIFS, computing variances and percentage variances for an interactive reporting dashboard.

  • SIP and SWP retirement simulator in Excel (WealthFlow): withdrawal and investment plans beside four charts of corpus, withdrawals and portfolio growth over 30 years.

    Project 10

    WealthFlow

    A retirement plan that shows how long the money lasts.

    Separate core assumptions from calculation cells to rerun the model under adverse conditions, building the habit of testing inputs for case studies.

  • Nine Excel chart types from the Marketing Engagement Dashboard: combo, bar, funnel, Pareto, waterfall, histogram, box and whisker, sunburst and treemap.

    Project 04

    Marketing Engagement Dashboard

    Nine charts, each picked for the question it answers.

    Create slide-ready graphics using marketing metrics, including combo charts for paired measures and waterfall bridges for period changes.

  • Claude AI in Excel fixing a formula: the Claude panel explains the mistake in a unit cost column and edits the cells, beside the profit percentage column.

    Project 14

    Agentic AI in Excel

    AI finds and fixes the formula; you check it before it counts.

    Use Copilot, ChatGPT, and Claude to outline and execute workbook tasks, applying a QA checklist so unverified numbers never reach presentations.

Lessons

The lessons that matter, in course order.

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration has 186 lessons. This page picks out 76 of them, 6 h 26 min of video. Each lesson keeps its number in the course.

Where to start

Lesson 19 Excel tables

Start at Lesson 19 if you already know how to enter data and write basic formulas, since structured data must precede analysis. That section, Managing data in Excel, is free by email with its practice files when requested on the course page. Beginners can start at Lesson 1. If you already know PivotTables and lookups, proceed to Lesson 115 to build the budget model, or move to Lesson 88 for the AI lessons.

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76 of 186 lessons · 6 h 26 min

03 Managing data in Excel: sort, filter and tables (Dunder Michael Paper employee database) 9 lessons · 1 h 1 min Prepare group project data using Excel Tables, sorting, filtering, TRIM, Find and Replace, Remove Duplicates, Flash Fill, Text to Columns, freeze panes, and print layout controls, working on an employee database.
  1. 19 Start here Excel tables Create and format a table, structured references and total row 8 min
  2. 20 Sorting data in Excel Single and multi-level sort on an employee database 6 min
  3. 21 Filtering data in Excel AutoFilter, text and number filters on employee data 10 min
  4. 22 Cleaning data in Excel TRIM, Paste Special values and Find and Replace 13 min
  5. 23 Remove duplicates in Excel Find and delete duplicate rows in an employee list 6 min
  6. 24 Flash Fill in Excel Split first and last names automatically 3 min
  7. 25 Text to Columns in Excel Split data by delimiter into separate columns 6 min
  8. 26 Freeze panes in Excel Lock header rows and columns while scrolling 3 min
  9. 27 Printing in Excel Print area, page orientation, scaling and page layout 6 min
04 Essential formulas and functions (IF, SUMIF and more) 2 of 13 lessons · 15 min Answer conditional case questions quickly with SUMIF, COUNTIF, SUMIFS, and COUNTIFS, such as calculating regional revenue within a defined date range.
  1. 36 SUMIF and COUNTIF in Excel Conditional sum and count with one criterion 8 min
  2. 37 SUMIFS and COUNTIFS in Excel Sum and count with multiple criteria 7 min
06 Data visualisation: charts and graphs 9 lessons · 45 min Design and format visuals for presentations using marketing records, matching questions to column, line, pie, combo, sparkline, waterfall, Pareto, histogram, and treemap formats.
  1. 48 Choosing the right Excel chart Column, line, pie, combo and modern chart types 4 min
  2. 49 Column charts in Excel Insert, format and label a column chart 5 min
  3. 50 Line charts in Excel Show trends over time with a line chart 4 min
  4. 51 Pie charts in Excel Show proportions and parts of a whole 4 min
  5. 52 Combo charts in Excel Column and line chart with a secondary axis 4 min
  6. 53 Formatting charts in Excel Titles, data labels, colours and chart styles 7 min
  7. 54 Sparklines in Excel Line, column and win-loss mini charts in cells 5 min
  8. 55 Funnel, Pareto and waterfall charts in Excel Modern charts for business data 5 min
  9. 56 Histogram, box and whisker, treemap and sunburst Advanced Excel chart types 6 min
07 PivotTables and PivotCharts: data analysis made easy 10 lessons · 33 min Clean, build, and arrange PivotTables and PivotCharts with slicers, date grouping, and data refreshes, concluding with a challenge analysing sales by category, region, and month.
  1. 57 PivotTables 101 in Excel What a PivotTable does and the sales dataset 5 min
  2. 58 Preparing data for PivotTables Clean data with TRIM, PROPER, find and replace 5 min
  3. 59 Create your first PivotTable in Excel Insert a PivotTable from a sales table 1 min
  4. 60 PivotTable fields in Excel Rows, values, columns and Value Field Settings 2 min
  5. 61 PivotTable summaries in Excel Sales by product category and grouping by date 4 min
  6. 62 Slicers in Excel Filter PivotTables with clickable buttons 3 min
  7. 63 PivotCharts in Excel Create interactive charts from a PivotTable 5 min
  8. 64 PivotTable design Tab Report layouts, PivotTable styles and number formats 5 min
  9. 65 Refresh a PivotTable in Excel Update pivots when source data changes 2 min
  10. 66 Excel Ninja Challenge PivotTable sales by region, category and monthly trend 1 min
08 Advanced Excel functions: lookups, text and arrays 5 of 12 lessons · 21 min Merge separate case tables such as customer and order datasets using VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, IFERROR, and INDEX and MATCH, practised on HR records.
  1. 67 Lookup functions in Excel The PeopleInsight HR dataset and why lookups matter 2 min
  2. 68 VLOOKUP in Excel Find employee data across sheets with exact match 4 min
  3. 69 XLOOKUP in Excel Exact match, if not found and two-way lookup 6 min
  4. 70 IFERROR in Excel Handle lookup errors in VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP formulas 3 min
  5. 71 INDEX and MATCH in Excel A flexible alternative to VLOOKUP 6 min
08 Advanced Excel functions: lookups, text and arrays 3 of 12 lessons · 15 min Extract self-updating lists of distinct clients, filtered segments, and ranked items using modern dynamic array functions like UNIQUE, FILTER, SORT, and SORTBY.
  1. 75 UNIQUE function in Excel Extract a distinct list with dynamic arrays 6 min
  2. 76 FILTER function in Excel Dynamic array filtering with AND and OR criteria 5 min
  3. 77 SORT and SORTBY in Excel Sort data dynamically with formulas 4 min
10 Boosting productivity with AI in Excel (Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude) 17 lessons · 1 h 20 min Apply AI to sales analysis with Claude, Copilot, and ChatGPT, covering what these tools can and cannot do, prompts, data preparation, formulas, PivotTables and charts from AI that you verify, outlier detection, a mini dashboard, the COPILOT function, ChatGPT planning an analysis, Claude analysing data inside Excel, and a QA checklist.
  1. 88 AI in Excel What Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude can and cannot do 8 min
  2. 89 Prepare data for Copilot in Excel Tables, headers and clean structure 6 min
  3. 90 Copilot executive summary in Excel Summarise a dataset in seconds with AI 5 min
  4. 91 Copilot prompts for Excel Weak vs strong prompts and the PRO prompt pattern 5 min
  5. 92 PivotTables with Copilot Build an Excel PivotTable from a prompt 5 min
  6. 93 Charts with Copilot and ChatGPT Create and choose the right Excel chart 6 min
  7. 94 Conditional formatting with Copilot and ChatGPT Highlight problems in Excel 4 min
  8. 95 Excel formulas with AI Copilot and ChatGPT write formula columns you verify 6 min
  9. 96 Find outliers with Copilot in Excel Discounts, negative profit, suspect rows 7 min
  10. 97 Clean messy data with Copilot in Excel AI prompts plus Excel functions 4 min
  11. 98 Mini dashboard with Copilot in Excel KPIs, charts and slicers on one page 3 min
  12. 99 Check AI output in Excel A quick QA checklist for Copilot results 2 min
  13. 100 ChatGPT as your analysis planner Plan an Excel analysis before you build it 3 min
  14. 101 COPILOT function in Excel Use Copilot as a formula inside your cells 4 min
  15. 102 Copilot guided help in Excel Step-by-step AI help inside Excel 3 min
  16. 103 Microsoft Stride for Excel The Office Agent that builds workbooks for you 4 min
  17. 104 Claude in Excel Analyse data and build spreadsheets with Claude 7 min
12 Project: FinanceGuard budget variance analyser (budget vs actual Excel dashboard) 10 lessons · 52 min Construct the FinanceGuard budget vs actual dashboard using SUMIFS, UNIQUE, VSTACK, LET, and TEXTSPLIT, complete with custom number formats, variance calculations, PivotTables, slicers, KPI cards, and combo charts.
  1. 115 FinanceGuard budget vs actual dashboard Excel project overview 3 min
  2. 116 Excel tables for budget and actual data Organise the FinanceGuard datasets 4 min
  3. 117 Budget vs actual model in Excel SORT, UNIQUE, VSTACK, LET, TEXTSPLIT, SUMIFS 8 min
  4. 118 Budget variance in Excel Calculate variance and percent variance 4 min
  5. 119 Custom number formats in Excel Show budget variances with colours and signs 2 min
  6. 120 PivotTables for budget vs actual The FinanceGuard pivot workspace 8 min
  7. 121 KPI cards in Excel Summary cards for a budget variance dashboard 4 min
  8. 122 Budget vs actual charts in Excel Combo chart with secondary axis for variance 5 min
  9. 123 Slicers and PivotCharts in Excel Interactive FinanceGuard budget dashboard 4 min
  10. 124 Finish the FinanceGuard dashboard in Excel Final polish and variance insights 10 min
13 WealthFlow investment and retirement simulator 11 lessons · 1 h 5 min Build the WealthFlow retirement simulator with separate assumption inputs, real-value inflation adjustments, FV, XIRR, and withdrawal stress tests, establishing modelling habits suited for case analysis.
  1. 125 SIP and SWP calculators What is an SIP, lump sum and compounding 6 min
  2. 126 SIP and SWP calculators What is an SWP, inflation and FIRE 6 min
  3. 127 WealthFlow SIP model in Excel Input assumptions, XIRR and monthly rate 6 min
  4. 128 WealthFlow SIP model in Excel Step-up SIP table and FV formulas 6 min
  5. 129 WealthFlow SIP model in Excel Real portfolio value, inflation and charts 7 min
  6. 130 WealthFlow SWP model in Excel Real rate, corpus and yearly withdrawals 6 min
  7. 131 WealthFlow SWP model in Excel Real corpus, stress test and SWP chart 5 min
  8. 132 Retirement simulator in Excel WealthFlow inputs, year and age columns 5 min
  9. 133 Retirement simulator in Excel SIP, withdrawal and portfolio formulas with IF 7 min
  10. 134 Retirement simulator in Excel Reading the results and retirement scenarios 5 min
  11. 135 Retirement simulator in Excel Claude builds the WealthFlow dashboard 5 min

Instructors

Who teaches it.

Virginia Thorn smiling at the camera, dark hair tied back, wearing a navy top.

Instructor, Excel with AI

Virginia Thorn

Emmy Award winner. Teaches Excel with AI at Coding Liquids.

Questions

Asked before starting.

What Excel course should MBA students, pre-MBA learners, and business students take?

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration from Coding Liquids delivers the spreadsheet training business programmes rely on: PivotTables, SUMIFS, and lookups for case data, a budget vs actual model, a model rerun under tougher assumptions, presentation charts, and Copilot, ChatGPT, and Claude paired with a QA checklist. The 76 lessons featured here require 6 hours 26 minutes of the course's 16 hours, with entry lessons available for those starting from scratch.

Does the course teach corporate finance or valuation to MBA and business students?

No. The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration concentrates on Excel functionality rather than financial theory: corporate finance, valuation techniques like discounted cash flow, PowerPoint, and statistics are not taught. It provides the spreadsheet foundation those subjects demand: data cleaning, lookup formulas, PivotTables, budget against actual modelling, and structures that separate assumptions from calculations.

Can MBA and business students test scenarios and assumptions in Excel with this course?

Yes, using the modelling approach taught through WealthFlow in The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration: assumptions sit in dedicated cells that feed formulas, so adjusting an input like inflation or returns reruns the model under tougher scenarios. While taught using a personal investment plan, the method translates directly to testing cost and revenue assumptions in business cases.

Will AI tools help MBA and business students with case analysis?

AI tools can speed up your work when properly checked. The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration demonstrates using ChatGPT to plan an analysis, Copilot to create formula columns, PivotTables, and charts from prompts, and Claude to examine data within Excel, alongside a QA checklist to verify figures before presenting them. Coursework policies regarding AI use at your business school are not covered.

Excel with AI

See the whole course.

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration: 16 hours of video in 186 lessons, built around 14 projects, with lifetime access, a Certificate of Completion and a 14-day money-back guarantee.

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