Learn Excel for Financial Models

This video series introduces Microsoft Excel in the context of financial models. Excel is so capable that some authors devote their careers to explaining its functionality. This series will introduce only what is required to build financial models in an effort to get someone new to this software up to speed as quickly as possible.
 
The content starts by quickly walking through all of the necessary vocabulary and formatting standards. Formatting is especially important because it helps communicate what is driving the model. For example, in the image below, the values in blue text with a pale yellow background are inputs. The formulas, indicated by black text with no background color, will change in response to changes to your input values.
Once this has been introduced the instruction will walk through the formulas required to build a basic financial model. To demonstrate that this can be done with less than a handful of functions, the video lists the four functions required to build a simple three statement model (see image that follows):
The instruction will spend a substantial amount of time emphasizing that most of the work can be done without a mouse. Ultimately you will want to work primarily with your keyboard because it will save you a substantial amount of time. All relevant shortcuts are detailed in the videos and then listed in the notes by category (paste special keyboard shortcuts provided below as an example). If you do not pick these up immediately it really isn’t much of a concern because all of these shortcuts will be repeated in all of the financial modeling videos that follow.

The instruction will also focus on habits to avoid. Certain bad habits can make a financial model very difficult to work with. Learning how to avoid these common mistakes will save you and your work colleagues a substantial amount of time as you share workbooks on projects.

Finally, because no Excel cousre would be complete without some interesting tricks and / or hacks; the videos that comprise the series have these tricks littered throughout. Please see the video that follows as an example:

Once you are done with this course you should have the knowledge required to tackle all of the content that follows.