Excel 2016 - Advanced Functions & Modifying Spreadsheets

Course Overview

This concise, practical guide sharpens your Excel 2016 skills by focusing on advanced functions and workbook modifications that improve analysis, presentation, and sharing. It moves beyond basic formulas to show how conditional logic and financial functions support better decision-making, while layout and graphical tools help you present results clearly and professionally. Step‑by‑step examples emphasize real workplace scenarios—financial modeling, automated reporting, and web-ready sharing—so you can apply the techniques directly in your own spreadsheets.

Key Learning Outcomes

• Logical automation: Master IF and related logical functions to build decision rules, status flags, and error checks that reduce manual review.
• Financial modeling basics: Learn the PMT function and its inputs (rate, periods, present value) to create loan-payment calculators and compare financing scenarios.
• Print and document professionalism: Configure headers, footers, and print settings to produce consistent, branded printouts and PDF-ready reports.
• Sharing and linking: Export sheets for online viewing, add hyperlinks to resources, and understand trade-offs when saving workbooks as HTML for broader access.
• Visual communication: Use shapes, drawing tools, quick styles, and screenshots to emphasize insights and assemble clearer dashboards or visual callouts.

Skills & Practical Applications

The guide balances conceptual explanation with hands‑on examples. It walks through IF syntax and nesting strategies so you can implement grading rules, exception alerts, or conditional formatting triggers. The PMT section demystifies amortization components so you can model monthly payments, build simple amortization tables, and test different interest-rate scenarios. Layout guidance covers Page Layout view, header/footer elements, and print scaling to help you prepare professional deliverables for distribution. When sharing results, stepwise instructions for saving sheets as web pages explain how content is simplified during export and how to verify critical features after publishing. Graphical chapters show how to insert and format shapes, apply quick styles, and capture screenshots to document processes or draw attention to specific data points. Throughout, the emphasis is on practical choices: when to automate with formulas, when to refine presentation with graphics, and how to prepare files for different audiences and platforms.

Who Should Use This Guide

Designed for intermediate Excel users who already know basic formulas and want to level up their toolkit. Students working on finance exercises, administrative staff preparing recurring reports, analysts creating interactive summaries, and instructors building practice tasks will all find clear, applicable instructions. The material is hands‑on: following the examples in your own workbook will reinforce learning faster than passive reading.

How to Get the Most from the Guide

Adopt an iterative, project-based approach. Start with the IF examples to add conditional logic to a sample sheet, then combine PMT with lookup tables to construct a simple loan calculator. Apply header/footer and print settings when preparing documents for stakeholders, and test HTML export on a copy to check layout and linked content. Finish by creating one compact visual summary—a dashboard or annotated screenshot—that consolidates formatting, linking, and layout choices from the guide.

Common Questions

Q: Why use PMT instead of manual math?
A: PMT performs rate conversions and amortization calculations accurately and quickly, reducing error-prone manual work when modeling loans.

Q: Will saving as HTML keep every feature?
A: HTML export increases accessibility but may simplify advanced Excel features; always verify critical formulas, formatting, and links after export.

Takeaway

By combining conditional logic, financial functions, layout controls, and visual tools, this guide helps you create spreadsheets that are both analytically robust and presentation-ready. Work through the examples, adapt the templates to your data, and you’ll gain practical techniques that boost productivity and clarity in Excel 2016.