Excel for Business

http://www.dangode.com/excel/.

Logistics

The sessions have non-overlapping content. You can attend in person (KMC 3-65) or via Zoom.

• Day 1: Session 1: Sunday, September 21, 2025, 10 am - 1 pm
• Day 1, Session 2: Sunday, September 21, 2025, 2 pm - 5 pm
• Day 2, Session 3: Sunday, September 28, 2025, 9 am - 12:30 pm
• Day 2, Session 4: Sunday, September 28, 2025, 1:30 pm - 5 pm
• Day 3, Session 5: Sunday, October 5, 2025, 9 am - 12:30 pm
• Day 3, Session 6: Sunday, October 5, 2025, 1:30 pm - 5 pm

We do not record these sessions because recording leads to poor attendance and low interaction. You need to commit to Learning Excel. Almost no student watches the recordings after requesting a recording.

In person registration: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/portal-partners/academic-affairs-advising/policies-procedures/resources

Zoom registration: https://nyu.zoom.us/meeting/register/rfbdbTeHQYO4uhngJ1wvL

Zoom: Use nyu.edu email and register separately

Zoom is confusing. Please read the following instructions carefully:

• Same link for all days, but separate registration required.
  • You must register for each day separately (three registrations total).
  • Each registration for a given day covers both sessions that day.
• Use only your @nyu.edu email.
  • Do not use @stern.nyu.edu or any other email.
  • Before using Zoom, ensure you are logged in with your @nyu.edu browser profile.
• Ignore Zoom's confusing message
  • Zoom says: "Please choose only one meeting to attend." This is misleading.
  • What it should say: "Please register separately for each meeting by selecting the appropriate meeting from the dropdown."
  • Even though the same Zoom link will be used for all sessions, you must register for each of the three days separately by selecting the corresponding meeting from the dropdown.

Overview

Excel is an important tool for business analysis. Being productive in Excel requires understanding the underlying business concepts, laying out the problem in a spreadsheet, and optimizing it using various Excel functions and features. This seminar helps you apply advanced Excel techniques to become a productive Excel power user. By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Organize spreadsheets to optimize teamwork and analyze scenarios.
• Create concise and understandable spreadsheets that reduce the risk of errors.
• Utilize advanced Excel techniques to automate and condense schedules, build scenarios, and make spreadsheets responsive.

Excel Requirements

• You need the most recent version of Excel included in Office 365. Microsoft Office 365 USED to be free for students. Now they charge $3 monthly ( Microsoft Office 365 for Education). The web version is free, but it does not have many features of the desktop version (shortcuts do not work). NYU Stern has a license for Office 365, but I am not sure how that works now. Please contact Stern IT and ask them.
• Windows and MAC will work, although the Windows version is easier to use. Since Stern podiums have Windows, I will be using Windows in class.

Topic 1 [Introductory]: Time value of money, credit cards, car loans, and mortgages

Business skills taught

The focus here will not be on teaching finance per se, but on illustrating how to use Excel to solve finance problems.

• Setting up loan amortization tables for various types of loans
• Time value of money problems; annuities

Excel skills taught

Understanding the Excel interface and setting up files

• Accessing menus
• Excel options for data creation
• Undo and redo
• File manipulation: Open, Save, Save As, Close Workbook, and Switch Programs
• View: Maximize window, Remove all toolbars, Hide Ribbon, Title Bar, and Status Bar, Zoom options, Print gridlines, View gridlines, Print preview
• Custom views, Freeze Panes, and Split Window

Navigation and selection

• Navigate between sheets and screens: Next worksheet, Previous worksheet, Right one screen, Left one screen, Navigate to a specific worksheet
• Move around a sheet: Beginning of a row, the first cell on a worksheet, move to the edge of data regions, turn on End mode, End of a data region (last nonblank cell). Last used cell on a worksheet
• Extend selection, Select entire row, Select entire column, Select current data region, Select region/worksheet, Select only visible rows and columns, Select array formula range
• Find and replace, Find different cells
• Go to a cell with a specific address or attributes

Enter text

• Edit a cell and show its precedent cells
• Insert, Edit, and Delete comments
• Insert or Edit threaded comment
• Wrap text
• Merge cells [Use very sparingly]
• Center across selection [Preferred]
• Spell check and Thesaurus

Enter formulas and name cells

• Relative versus absolute addresses: A1-style versus R1C1-style, Toggle absolute references
• Autosum
• Name manager, create names from a selection
• Paste names if names are present
• Enter an array formula
• Insert function and Insert function arguments

Format numbers and characters [Excel styles are covered later]

• Show Format Cells dialog
• Access format number dialog
• Toggle Bold, Italic, Underline, Strike-through
• General number format, Decimals, Time, Date, Currency, Percentage, Scientific notation
• Fonts, Zip codes

Alignment and indentation, Borders and Shading, Width and height

• Align: Left, right, center, top, bottom, and middle
• Indent and outdent
• Border dialog, Single and double borders, Shading,
• Row heights and column widths, show and hide
• Difference between merging cells and centering across selection
• Difference between wrapping text and starting a new line in a cell
• Group and ungroup

Insert, delete, and clear

• Insert and delete sheets, rows, columns, and cells
• Different types of Clear

Copy, paste, and fill

• Select cells using keyboard
• Copy Cut/Move
• Show Clipboard to copy multiple items
• Different types of paste, Paste Special Dialog
• Format painter
• Copy formula from the cell above, Copy value from the cell above
• Fill down, right, left, and up
• Fill selected region with data
• Fill Series
• Fill justify
• Flash Fill: Fill based on a pattern

Formula auditing and calculations

• Formula auditing and calculations
• Toggle display of values/formulas
• Trace Precedents, Trace All Precedents, Trace Dependents, Clear All Arrows
• Calculate all worksheets in all open workbooks
• Evaluate

Setting up spreadsheets and cell types

• Setting up an Excel worksheet to separate inputs from outputs

Charting

• Basic chart types
• Setting chart parameters

Excel financial functions

• NPV
• XNPV
• IRR
• XIRR
• FV
• NPER
• PMT
• PPMT
• RATE
• NOMINAL
• EFFECT

Topic 2: Introductory data analysis

Business skills

• Summarizing data
• Identifying trends
• Slicing data from multiple perspectives

Excel skills

Viewing sheets

• Freezing panes
• Grouping rows and columns
• Grid lines
• Print layouts

Custom formatting

• Formatting dates and times
• Giving character to numbers

Checks and errors

• Conditional formatting and check fields
• Reference errors
• Value errors
• Num errors
• Other errors

Logicals and conditionals

• IF statements
• AND, OR, and NOT statements
• CHOOSE statements
• AGGREGATE function

Data summarization and analysis

• COUNT, COUNTA, COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, COUNTBLANK
• AVERAGE, AVERAGEA, AVERAGEIF, AVERAGEIFS
• MEDIAN, MODE.SNGL, MODE.MULT, RANK.AVG, RANK.EQ
• MAX, MAXA, MIN, MINA, LARGE, SMALL
• FREQUENCY
• PERCENTILE.EXC, PERCENTILE.INC
• VAR.P, VAR.S, STDEV.P, STDEV.S
• COVARIANCE.P, COVARIANCE.S, DEVSQ, CORREL, PEARSON

Classifying data

• Data filtering
• Pivot tables

Topic 3 [Advanced]: Projecting financial statements

Developing and reviewing business plans is an integral part of what entrepreneurs and executives do. Understanding how different pieces of a business plan fit together financially is critical to being a successful manager. Business plans are also the basis of budgets used to monitor a business or division's progress.

Business skills taught

Linking financial statements

• Linking net income on the income statement and dividends on the cash flows to retained earnings
• Linking financing to debt and equity
• Linking cash flows to cash

Deriving cash flows from the income statement and balance sheet assumptions

• Deriving receipts using revenues, receivables, and deferred revenues
• Deriving payments using expenses, prepayments, and payables

Excel skills taught

Excel best practices

• Separating assumptions from formulas to highlight assumptions clearly
• Setting up formulas that can be dragged across

Excel styles

• Excel styles for consistent formatting
• Modifying styles for global changes

Excel templates

• Using templates for consistent formatting across workbooks

Excel add-ins

• Excel Add-ins for sharing styles and code across workbooks

Topic 4: Identifying key performance drivers and scenario analysis

Business skills taught

Key drivers

• Identifying key drivers and key performance indicators

Scenario analysis

• What-if analysis using data tables

Excel skills

Seeking user input

• Data validation
• Spinners
• List boxes

Data tables

• One-dimensional tables
• Two-dimensional tables and their interpretation

Scenarios

• MATCH; INDEX
• VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, XLOOKUP
• INDIRECT

Topic 5 [Advanced]: Multiperiod models, waterfalls, and cascades

Business skills

Waterfalls and cascades

The skills listed below can make you ten times faster and more accurate.

• Building waterfalls and cascades efficiently
• Building advanced scenarios

Excel skills

Excel functions needed for multi-period models

• SUMPRODUCT, ARRAYS
• OFFSET
• Reversing using lookup

Automating charts

• Dynamic charts
• Advanced flexible charting using Offset

Integrating what-if analysis with scenarios

Combining the following functions to produce highly efficient spreadsheets

• Data validation
• Sumproduct
• Offset
• Indirect
• Data Tables

Topic 6 [Advanced]: Optimizations and simulations

Business skills

• Optimizing advertising mix given a budget
• Breakeven sales
• Efficient portfolios
• Circular relationships

Excel skills

Iterations

• Why are they needed?
• How can they be avoided?
• Recovering from iterations

Optimization

• Goal seek
• Solver
• Automatic goal seek and solver via VBA

Simulations and regressions

• NORM.DIST, NORM.S.DIST
• SLOPE, LINEAR REGRESSIONS