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The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration

Excel course for researchers and PhD students

A guide for PhD students, research assistants and researchers who gather, clean and summarise their data in Excel prior to using statistical software. This page highlights the pieces of The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration relevant for research: structuring tidy tables, enforcing consistent codes, fixing text, checking for missing values, summarising groups with PivotTables, drawing charts for a thesis, combining site files with Power Query, and treating AI output with caution.

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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:

  • Format raw entries into a tidy Excel Table containing one row per case, freeze the header row in view, and restrict codes via drop-down lists.
  • Recode lab or survey values using Find and Replace alongside TRIM and SUBSTITUTE, isolate rogue entries with UNIQUE, and pull labels from a codebook via XLOOKUP.
  • Check for missing data using COUNTA and COUNT, group continuous variables through IFS, and identify cases fitting specific inclusion criteria with IF, OR and AND.
  • Summarise counts and averages for different conditions, sites or groups using PivotTables and their Value Field Settings.
  • Produce clear visualisations for a paper or thesis, displaying distributions through box and whisker charts and histograms.
  • Combine records from multiple waves or sites via Power Query, and turn wide repeated measures into a long format using Unpivot.

Projects

What you will build.

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

  • XLOOKUP formula in Excel (PeopleInsight): each employee row looks up its location from another sheet.

    Project 06

    PeopleInsight HR workbook

    Employee data joined across sheets with one formula.

    See a codebook applied to HR files: translate codes into clear labels using XLOOKUP, link two separate sheets by an identifier, and flag inconsistent typing with UNIQUE.

  • 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.

    Build clear figures for a paper using marketing metrics: ensure neat labels, select the correct visual for the problem, and map distributions using box and whisker charts and histograms.

  • Power Query sales report in Excel (SalesFusion): sales by category, sales by region and a monthly trend, with slicers for channel, year, category and region.

    Project 12

    SalesFusion

    A sales report that refreshes itself from a folder of files.

    Process files from multiple waves using sales documents: record cleaning steps to repeat on each file, stack a whole folder, link participant information, and unpivot wide columns into long rows.

  • 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.

    Draft an analysis structure with ChatGPT prior to building it, let Claude evaluate a table within the spreadsheet, and apply a checklist to verify every generated answer.

  • Project 02

    Dunder Michael Paper Company employee database

    Practise tidying a raw dataset using staff records: structure one row per case, eliminate duplicates, trim excess spaces, recode elements with Find and Replace, and split columns neatly.

Lessons

The lessons that matter, in course order.

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration has 186 lessons. This page picks out 79 of them, 6 h 44 min of video. Each lesson keeps its number in the course.

Where to start

Lesson 19 Excel tables

If you currently enter data in Excel, start at Lesson 19: a tidy format is required before creating summaries. The Managing data in Excel section is free by email alongside its practice files: request it on the course page. Complete beginners should start at Lesson 1. If you are already comfortable with formulas and tables, skip to Lesson 57 for group summaries or to Lesson 153 to combine files.

Get the free section by email

79 of 186 lessons · 6 h 44 min

03 Managing data in Excel: sort, filter and tables (Dunder Michael Paper employee database) 9 lessons · 1 h 1 min Maintain tidy data by using Excel Tables for single-case rows, sorting, filtering and fixing text with TRIM. Recode values through Find and Replace and Paste Special, split fields using Text to Columns or Flash Fill, strip out duplicates, freeze headers, and set up printing. The lessons use 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) 10 of 13 lessons · 59 min Write rules through formulas: set inclusion criteria with IF, combine conditions with OR and AND, and create bands such as age groups using IFS and nested IF. Catch missing values with COUNTA and COUNT, and calculate group counts using COUNTIFS and COUNTIF. The lessons use sales data.
  1. 28 Logical functions in Excel TRUE and FALSE comparisons for beginners 5 min
  2. 29 The IF function in Excel Pass or fail results with a single condition 3 min
  3. 30 IF function practice in Excel Categorise sales data with IF formulas 6 min
  4. 31 Nested IF and IFS in Excel Customer value tiers with nested IF 6 min
  5. 32 Nested IF and IFS in Excel Sales performance labels with the IFS function 5 min
  6. 33 AND and OR with IF in Excel Flag high-value deals with multiple conditions 8 min
  7. 34 SUM, COUNT and COUNTA in Excel SUM with FILTER and counting numbers with COUNT 7 min
  8. 35 SUM, COUNT and COUNTA in Excel COUNTA, unique counts and completeness checks 4 min
  9. 36 SUMIF and COUNTIF in Excel Conditional sum and count with one criterion 8 min
  10. 37 SUMIFS and COUNTIFS in Excel Sum and count with multiple criteria 7 min
05 Text functions and data validation (enhancing data quality) 7 lessons · 35 min Enforce clean text and uniform codes: manage spacing and capitals with PROPER, UPPER and TRIM, build identifiers with CONCAT, and remove stray symbols using SUBSTITUTE, SEARCH and FIND. Apply drop-down lists to prevent varied typing, use Text to Columns, and finish with a Ninja Challenge.
  1. 41 CONCAT, the & operator and TEXTJOIN in Excel Combine text from multiple cells 6 min
  2. 42 TRIM, UPPER, LOWER and PROPER in Excel Clean messy text and fix capitalisation 6 min
  3. 43 FIND, SEARCH and SUBSTITUTE in Excel Locate and replace text with formulas 5 min
  4. 44 Text to Columns wizard in Excel Split a column by a comma delimiter 4 min
  5. 45 Data validation in Excel Create drop-down lists for consistent data entry 4 min
  6. 46 Ninja Challenge: problem Clean messy data with text functions and validation 4 min
  7. 47 Ninja Challenge: solution PROPER, Text to Columns and drop-down lists 7 min
06 Data visualisation: charts and graphs 9 lessons · 45 min Draft figures for a paper or thesis: pick the correct visual, format labels and titles, and build line, pie, column and combo charts. Present distributions using box and whisker charts and histograms, and add sparklines. The lessons chart marketing data.
  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 Extract averages and counts by date, site, condition or group using PivotTables, slicers and PivotCharts, which you refresh when new cases are added. The lessons use sales orders.
  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 12 lessons · 54 min Link sheets by participant ID and apply a codebook using INDEX and MATCH, VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP. Catch missing matches with IFERROR, extract nested site codes with MID, RIGHT and LEFT, perform date calculations, and isolate subgroups or distinct codes using SORT, FILTER and UNIQUE. The lessons use an HR dataset.
  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
  6. 72 CONCAT and TEXTJOIN in Excel Combine employee names and text with a delimiter 3 min
  7. 73 LEFT, RIGHT and MID in Excel Extract parts of a text code like DAL-SAL-0001 7 min
  8. 74 TODAY, EOMONTH and NETWORKDAYS in Excel Date calculations for HR data 5 min
  9. 75 UNIQUE function in Excel Extract a distinct list with dynamic arrays 6 min
  10. 76 FILTER function in Excel Dynamic array filtering with AND and OR criteria 5 min
  11. 77 SORT and SORTBY in Excel Sort data dynamically with formulas 4 min
  12. 78 Excel Ninja Challenge XLOOKUP, totals and text concatenation lookup challenge 3 min
10 Boosting productivity with AI in Excel (Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude) 4 of 17 lessons · 23 min Understand the limits of AI tools: discover what Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot can or cannot solve, prepare tables properly for them, draft specific prompts, and generate a rapid dataset summary. The lessons use sales data.
  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
10 Boosting productivity with AI in Excel (Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude) 2 of 17 lessons · 5 min Deploy ChatGPT as an analysis planner to map out steps before writing a single formula, and run every AI output through a QA checklist.
  1. 99 Check AI output in Excel A quick QA checklist for Copilot results 2 min
  2. 100 ChatGPT as your analysis planner Plan an Excel analysis before you build it 3 min
10 Boosting productivity with AI in Excel (Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude) 1 of 17 lessons · 7 min Operate Claude within Excel to build a sheet and analyse a dataset, applying the same checks to its answers.
  1. 104 Claude in Excel Analyse data and build spreadsheets with Claude 7 min
15 SalesFusion: advanced data tools and a Power Query modelling system 14 of 21 lessons · 1 h 16 min Process data from multiple sources through Power Query: import a CSV, correct data types, clean text and columns, generate conditional and date fields, verify counts via Group By, and merge lookup tables. Append study waves, reuse steps, and combine a whole folder of files. The lessons use sales files.
  1. 153 SalesFusion Power Query project Excel ETL pipeline and data model overview 5 min
  2. 154 Introduction to Power Query in Excel The ETL workflow explained 5 min
  3. 155 Import a CSV with Power Query Get data from text and transform data 2 min
  4. 156 Clean columns in Power Query Remove and rename columns for modelling 5 min
  5. 157 Clean text in Power Query Trim, clean, replace values and fix text case 6 min
  6. 158 Data types in Power Query Fix date, whole number, decimal and text types 7 min
  7. 159 Date columns in Power Query Add year, month and year-month fields for reports 7 min
  8. 160 Business logic in Power Query Custom and conditional columns for profitability 6 min
  9. 161 Group By in Power Query Summarise sales by month and region to validate data 5 min
  10. 162 Close and Load in Power Query Connection only, table or Data Model 5 min
  11. 163 Merge queries in Power Query Look up product and region names with a left join 5 min
  12. 164 Reuse a Power Query pipeline Duplicate queries for a new year of sales data 5 min
  13. 165 Append queries in Power Query Combine 2024 and 2025 sales tables 3 min
  14. 166 From Folder in Power Query Combine every sales file in a folder automatically 9 min
15 SalesFusion: advanced data tools and a Power Query modelling system 1 of 21 lessons · 8 min Use Unpivot to transform wide columns of repeated measures into a long format with a single row for each time point and case, preparing it for PivotTable summaries. The lesson unpivots sales months.
  1. 173 Unpivot columns in Power Query Turn wide month columns into a long table 8 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.

Is there an Excel course for researchers and PhD students?

Yes. The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration from Coding Liquids covers the data preparation required for a research project: it demonstrates how to structure tidy tables, enforce clean codes, recode text, catch missing values using COUNTA and COUNT, and draw histograms and box and whisker charts. It also explores grouping data with PivotTables, combining files from multiple waves via Power Query, and applying AI cautiously with a checklist. This page lists 79 lessons, covering 6 hours 44 minutes of the course's 16 hours.

Will researchers learn statistics or software like SPSS, R or Stata?

No. The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration focuses on Excel rather than statistics: it does not cover confidence intervals, regression, hypothesis tests or statistical software such as Stata, R or SPSS. Instead, it prepares the data for those specific tools by coding it consistently, cleaning it, and reshaping it to a single row per observation, alongside providing charts, counts and averages to describe a sample.

Can PhD students ensure coded data remains consistent during entry?

Yes. The data validation techniques in The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration use drop-down lists to restrict cells to permitted codes, preventing inconsistent typing. You can then deploy UNIQUE to display every distinct entry in a column, revealing any rogue codes that slipped through, while XLOOKUP translates these codes into clear labels using a separate codebook sheet.

Can research assistants use Power Query to combine data from multiple study waves or sites?

Yes. Using the methods The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration teaches, you can stack consecutive waves with Append, join participant details via an ID using Merge, and combine a folder of files with matching layouts with From Folder. Every cleaning step repeats upon refreshing, and Unpivot reshapes wide repeated measures into a long table. The lessons use sales files.

Is it possible for researchers to plan or check an analysis with AI?

Only with care. The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration demonstrates ChatGPT mapping out an analysis prior to building it, Claude examining a dataset directly in Excel, and a QA checklist to verify any AI response. Because research figures must withstand heavy checking, AI output is treated purely as a draft to verify against the data. Note that specific AI rules set by a journal or university are not taught.

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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