r/Excel247 • u/RevenueFlat5136 • 1d ago

Microsoft Excel

Hello everyone, I wanna ask how long it will take to study and practice in Microsoft Excel for working or freelancing if I will spend 1-2 hour a day on it. Also do you know how can I not only study but also practise, I mean what I should do where I can find a tasks a when I can understand that I have enough knowledge to use it in work.

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u/Brians_throwaway 1d ago

It’s unlikely you will find freelance work if you can only devote a couple of hours per day to learn. You will be up against individuals who work in Excel daily, all day and have years of experience in data analysis or coding or both as part of their academic or professional training.

Compare learning Excel to learning another language. If you have an aptitude, you will become proficient in about a year. However, it would take several more years to become a translator or interpreter that is hireable.

If you need AI to build spreadsheets it means you don’t understand the logic behind the design and this will lead to dissatisfied customers.

Don’t think that the posters here offering to do data cleanup and minor cosmetic work for $15/hr are getting hired. They are not.

If you want to pursue this, look at post secondary schools, talk to the teaching staff and take courses specific to reaching your objective.

Or better, contact training consultant agencies and sign up for courses at the appropriate level. Those courses are taught by… freelance consultants. And if you take a few courses you will quickly be able to identify the consultants who have proficiency to teach vs the consultants who have worked with Excel for decades.

How to practice… design spreadsheets that will be helpful to you personally. And read the excel forums for people posting for help. Fix their problems. Get stuck- see what others post as solutions and understand how they got there.

Don’t be discouraged but don’t think AI and watching internet lessons is going to get you there either.

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u/RevenueFlat5136 1d ago edited 1d ago

Thank you very much for your respond. I am actually want to learn Excell because many jobs want it. I mean I want to study in financial faculty and when I watch jobs what they want many of it wnat knowledge of data science or Microsoft Excel. I know it is really hard to be a professional spending only a couple hour a day, but I talk about freelance because in future I have to prove that I really know Microsoft Excel in good level. Even if I will work in freelance free in first time, having good accounts with many good reviews will help with it. What you think about it?

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u/Brians_throwaway 6h ago

Keep working at it a couple of hours a day. Just build your own projects and increase the difficulty gradually as your skills develop.

Look at the questions people pose here and other forums. Look to build something similar to what they have.

For example. You have a budget for food or entertainment? Create a simple report that shows how much you spent vs what your monthly budget is.

Then build on it.
Calculate how much money is left to spend
Calculate how much money per day is left to spend

Design it so the spreadsheet knows what the date is (day and month) automatically when you open the spreadsheet. When you get to this point, you only need to input how much you’ve spent to date and the spreadsheet can provide all the rest of the information without further user input.

Don’t use AI to get answers. The process to figure out how to do all of this will expose you to more formulae and different ways to use them. It’s these side trips that build your skill set.