How Do You Learn Excel?

I am going to be starting my BB summer internship next month, and no little to nothing about Excel... is it possible to learn excel in a month and if so how? Do I just play around on it doing random things or is there certain areas of Excel that I should focus on?

 

i'd play around with it. there are literally thousands of excel templates online for everything from excel based recipe's to stock analyzing. get the software, get familiar with the basics of how it works. u dont want to show up at your bank looking like a dumbass

 

Find a template for something that you would like to do. For example, there are instructions on how to build a model to pick your fantasy baseball team. Actually having a GOAL is the only way to learn excel, you cant just "play around" with it.

 

the fact is..for me its been tried and tested..if you learn excel without constantly using it everyday, your going to forget everything right away. I would advise, just wait till your training, its not like, you are going to be building models from the first day.

 

most finance papers i've taken require you to use excel for assignments. for instance if you have to use a binomial options pricing model to calculate values over different strikes/i-rates/t/n/stdev/div it makes life easy(ER).

you should know the basics though, e.g.formulas, editing/formatting, functions, graphs/charts

there's probably an excel for dummies book if you're that keen

 

Are you serious? I find it hard to believe that you've had no exposure to Excel or spreadsheets at all. If you are a complete novice, I would recommend starting with the Shelly Cashman guide to Excel, covers most basic functions and some other features. Then look at some more advanced functions in a basic excel modeling book to get a better feel for what functions are actually used.

 

I had absolutely no Excel experience before my internship, and by the end of the summer I was teaching other interns things. You have the internship, have fun for the next month. You will be trained on Excel once you get there, and it's not hard. Since you'll be using it everyday, you'll pick it up. Like I said in another forum, it's not about how much you know going in, but how much you've learned by the end.

 
Best Response

yes you can learn excel and become pretty competent in excel.. however imagine you are assigned to a team with 3 interns, the other 2 are real masters in Excel, they can do basically everything, you have to learn from a basic level all the excel skills, in this case you really have a disadvantage and probably won't get the offer!

When I have 3 interns to choose from I would rather give the menial work to the crap intern, the modeling and important jobs to the competent ones because it saves me time to check the model and to teach the intern.

In the end I probably want to have a competent analyst in my team and offer him/her instead of you although you might be a good intern assuming I and the whole team like each intern equally

it might sound unfair but this is the way it works..

 
student22:
yes you can learn excel and become pretty competent in excel.. however imagine you are assigned to a team with 3 interns, the other 2 are real masters in Excel, they can do basically everything, you have to learn from a basic level all the excel skills, in this case you really have a disadvantage and probably won't get the offer!

When I have 3 interns to choose from I would rather give the menial work to the crap intern, the modeling and important jobs to the competent ones because it saves me time to check the model and to teach the intern.

In the end I probably want to have a competent analyst in my team and offer him/her instead of you although you might be a good intern assuming I and the whole team like each intern equally

it might sound unfair but this is the way it works..

You're wrong, and judging by your name, you're still a student. Please leave giving professional advice to those with experience. Like I said, GS, you'll be fine. Take my advice along with everyone else who said you have nothing to worry about. Training is called training for a reason.

 

I agree with gq, I doubt not knowing any Excel is going to have much effect on your performance during the summer, but since an Excel spreadsheet is probably going to be the primary interaction you will have during the summer months, it wouldn't hurt to become proficient in it beforehand.

I assume training goes over more advanced or specific topics to the internship, so it would make your like easier if you got a basic handle on the functions, menus, shortcuts, etc going in. You need to be a genius at it, but just know how to use it.

It's like being on the basketball team, you don't need to know every play in the book before the season starts, but you should probably learn how to dribble, shoot, and pass though.

 

True, I'm not saying don't ever open the program until you get to your internship. It may be helpful to play with simple functions and to get used to it. But I wouldn't suggest buying any books or taking any courses.

 

you might take my advice or not, it's up to you remember excel skills can be learned however your fellow interns can't be chosen pray to god you get weak fellow interns assigned to your team who are not liked more by the team members which you can outperform..

 

Thanks and I agree that I should have a basic knowledge of Excel before the internship, which I think I can do. Student22 it sounds like you should maybe pray to god that you even get a job because it sounds like you do not really know much. Thanks everyone else

 

If you have absolutley no idea what excel is about, I would play with a little of it, especially learning how to write basic formulas and how to format a sheet.

If you've got that down, don't worry about it...training will get ya caught up.

Overall just learn some basics so that the first few times you do something, it doesn't take all freakin night.

 

web marketing was underlined - that is classic. I had a class that was purely financial modeling with Excel. It was unbelievable. Macros, VBA, Custom Formulas and the like are now part of my arsenal. Check out the text book and follow along with the lesson plan. There are obviously some sections of the book that won't apply too much to banking (leasing / portfolio management) but some that are the bread and butter of what you will be doing.

http://www.Amazon.com/Financial-Modeling-Using-Excel-Finance/dp/0471267686 Financial Modeling Using Excel and VBA (Wiley Finance) (Paperback)

ISBN-10: 0471267686

 

You honestly should not worry about "learning" excel for investment banking. You should have good excel knowledge like any finance student, but learning beyond that (i.e. trying to learn more shortcuts, trying to make yourself quick at the ones you know by "practicing") is a total waste of time. You will learn more in 1 week on the job than you could teach yourself leading up to that time. And even if you could teach yourself all those smaller details before you showed up, no one would care that you had slightly better excel knowledge starting out (b/c as stated previously, everyone will even out after a week or two).

This is a question you see a lot (and one I had myself before I started, I tried to memorize shortcuts and stuff) but if you're asking it, you're a little bit missing the forest for the trees. The more important things (BY FAR) are communicating well with your team, being reliable to give mistake free work and asking questions when you have them instead of spinning your wheels for hours etc. Those are the things that really matter for being considered a good analyst. No one above VP will have any idea about how many short cuts you know or if you can do a model 5 minutes faster than someone else. And more importantly, they won't care, unless you are SO bad that people are talking about it like you're in the circus.

If you want something to do before you start, ask someone you know for a 3 statement model and just walk through it to make sure you understand conceptually how it works and what the key drivers are. Being able to build a model like that and take a step back and look at it at 5000 foot level to see if it makes sense and what it's telling you is the truly important stuff in banking. Taking that modeling and drilling down to 5 feet high level of what shortcut someone used to shave 10 seconds off formatting the income statement is what really doesn't matter (despite what you think in college and what people often focus on here). Not to say you shouldn't prepare yourself and you shouldn't learn everything you can when you hit he desk, but focusing on really small stuff before you start is not how you should do it.

 

I interned there last summer, the excel work is rather basic, I was actually teaching them how to do a majority of functions

Jack: They’re all former investment bankers who were laid off from that economic crisis that Nancy Pelosi caused. They have zero real world skills, but God they work hard. -30 Rock
 

Beninga - Financial Analysis. Only about 1/4 of the book applies to IB. Better would be to do the Dealmaven thing if you want. But if you you go to work for a BB it will all be redundant.

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The best way to learn is to open it up and play with it. Start trying to create things. If it helps to motivate you, try to model out your personal expenses or anything else that may prove useful or cool to you. Don't use the mouse!!! Make it look pretty and organized.

Also, try to use a variety of functions. Create if statements, be creative. Concatenate different cells. Append text to number cells.

There are so many things you can do and the best way to learn and remember them is to struggle and figure them out on your own. Just dig right in and you'll pick it up quickly.

CompBanker’s Career Guidance Services: https://www.rossettiadvisors.com/
 

more often than not formatting is what people look at...if that's off, then they won't even look at your numbers...try typing a word in a box and figuring out how to change it's color, it's background, it's border, it's font, it's style, etc.

 

Just go on YouTube and do some searches on there. I watched a bunch of videos about account and excel and DCF and all sorts of IB related things.

Regards

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
 

I second what Clarkey said... M&I is a great resource... I would recommend picking up the BIWS modeling program, it covers excel functionality and modeling. Though if you are looking just to learn how to operate in excel just google a shortcut list for the year of excel you are using and start to acclimate yourself... if you post that sheet near your comp/laptop you will reference it while using excel and it will begin to give you a base to work from based on the repetition you will gain from viewing the sheet and using excel simultaneously.

 

Check out "Practical Financial Modeling: A Guide to Current Practice." It's very good for learning to construct models without seeming like a noob. Google it and you can find a PDF version.

in it 2 win it
 

You ain't gonna sharpen your skills much by just reading a book. You'll probably forget what you read like two days later, especially if you have anything even closely resembling my pathetic noggin. You're gonna sharpen your skills by using excel a lot in sticky situations where you're literally required to know the ins and outs in order to be able to proceed. That will internalize the skills and allow you to build off of them. I suppose you could just invent these scenarios and force yourself to go through them. Going through the O'reilly book on vba would be a nice start though.

Full disclaimer: I'm kind of an excel jedi.

 
Going Concern:
You ain't gonna sharpen your skills much by just reading a book. You'll probably forget what you read like two days later, especially if you have anything even closely resembling my pathetic noggin. You're gonna sharpen your skills by using excel a lot in sticky situations where you're literally required to know the ins and outs in order to be able to proceed. That will internalize the skills and allow you to build off of them. I suppose you could just invent these scenarios and force yourself to go through them. Going through the O'reilly book on vba would be a nice start though.

Full disclaimer: I'm kind of an excel jedi.

But does an excel ninja beat an excel jedi?

 

Excel is like photoshop dude. You can learn a cool trick or two at a workshop, but the easiest way (in my opinion) to just learn excel is by fucking around with it.

I took a couple 2 hour classes to try and learn excel, but I didn't really retain anything.

You should look for one of those double sided laminated excel cheat sheets. I find those a lot more helpful than the courses.

 

excel courses? jeez... well, if you're getting a bus/econ degree, excel skills should be kinda assumed. i suggest you just do some independent learning. excel isn't something i would guess should affect your acceptance chances - it's a skill that someone who's accepted into consulting should be able to acquire within days or hours. most important equation i find is vlookup. learn to use it well, and the rest should be mostly aesthetic skills.

"... then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it."
 

Are you talking about taking these for credit? I definitely wouldn't do that - sounds pretty ridiculous to me.

That being said, go learn excel. Definitely be able to perform most general formulas as well as vlookups. It shouldn't take you too long to learn, but will be essential in your career. You'll start way behind the curve if you don't know excel going into a FT position.

twitter: @CorpFin_Guy
 

Books combining finance and excel

Financial Modeling....Simon Benninga Excel Modeling and Estimation series....Craig Holden (they are sort of companion books to widely used finance textbooks in corporate finance and investments classes) BIWS has a course/module. And like Bulge said, I thought it was interesting when I first heard (from BIWS) that you should unplug your mouse and figure out how to do everything using just the keyboard. Build Business Spreadsheets using Excel....AMT (Adkins Matchett & Toy) Wall Street Prep excel module

 

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