As a reader of this website, you well know that I’m a fan of Microsoft Excel. Everyone has Excel and most basically know how to use it. I also spend a lot of my time improving how I use Excel—both efficiencies in how I analyze and process data and creating better data visualizations—and then teach others some of those methods. While I end up combining different techniques to create a new graph or new analytic approach, I didn’t come up with many of the basics on my own. I learned a lot from different people in the Excel world, people who can do some incredible work with data using Excel.

I decided to pull together a list of 10 favorite Excel websites. I hope you will visit these sites and explore what they have to offer, both the free and paid resources and tutorials. I’ve included links to the website, Twitter feeds, and various books, videos, and tutorials. There are definitely more than 10 sites and if you feel strongly about some that you use, please include them in the comments section below or send me a note on Twitter.

Before the list, I’ll give a quick plug for PolicyViz here: I maintain a large and growing list of data visualization-related tutorials on the site and recently published two ebooks on creating Advanced Data Visualizations in Excel. In both books–one for Excel 2010/2011 and one for Excel 2016/Office 365–I show you how to make more than 15 advanced graphs in Excel. You can take a look in the PolicyViz Shop.

Okay, enough of the plug. Onto the list.

Peltier Tech, Jon Peltier

Website | Twitter | Twitter (Jon Peltier)

Run by Jon Peltier, Peltier Tech is one of my favorite sites for (mostly free!) data visualization blog posts and tutorials. Jon is also a VBA whiz, and he has provided me with lots of help on coding and debugging my VBA work. He also has a great Excel add-in—the Peltier Tech Charts for Excel 3.0—that will help you expand the graphic capabilities of Excel.

ExcelJet, Dave Bruns

Website | Twitter | On The PolicyViz Podcast

Another of another of my favorite sites and run by husband and wife team Dave and Lisa Bruns, Exceljet provides clear and simple Excel resources, including a side-by-side list of Windows and Mac shortcuts, a function guide, a giant collection of formula examples, and nicely produced how-to videos. Most content on Exceljet is free, but they also offer video training. Recently, they’ve added some Excel charting info, and plan to add more examples in the future.

Excel Campus, Jon Acampora

Website | Twitter | On The PolicyViz Podcast

Perhaps my first introduction into using Excel videos to learn more VBA code, I really like Jon’s site to learn VBA code and improve my Excel efficiency. He offers a lot of great, free material and hosts live webinars fairly often (you can sign up for his newsletter here). You can check out more of his videos here.

Excel Charts, Jorge Camoes

Website | Twitter | On The PolicyViz Podcast

Author of the great data visualization book, Data at Work: Best practices for creating effective charts and information graphics in Microsoft Excel, Jorge’s site boasts a variety of great blog posts about Excel and data visualization more broadly. He also teaches data visualization dashboarding through the Courses tab and sells different Excel chart templates in his Shop.

Ann K. Emery

Website | Twitter

Ann and I have known each other for years, and her website boasts a lot of great material about data visualization generally, but also tutorials specific to Excel. She has a really cool part of her site with short videos that show you how to create different chart types in Excel.

Chandoo

Website | Twitter

One of the Excel sites I used a lot early on in my career, you can learn a lot about Excel formulas and interactivity from Chandoo. I found the data visualization portion of the site tailed off at some point, but if you’re interested in making dashboards in Excel, this is a great place for resources and tutorials.

My Online Training Hub, Mynda Treacy

Website | Twitter

Mynda’s site includes a library of video tutorials and has been running since 2010. There are a number of Excel courses, including Excel Dashboards, Power BI, Power Pivot, and Pivot Tables.

MrExcel, Bill Jelen

Website | Twitter 

One of those websites that encourages an active Excel community, MrExcel is great to learn more about VBA, Excel efficiencies and productivity. From what I can tell, owner Bill Jelen is a legend in the area of teaching Excel and getting it to do what you want. He’s also written more than 50 books on Excel including Power Excel, 2017 Edition, Excel 2016 In Depth, and Excel 2016 VBA and Macros.

PowerPivot Pro, Rob Collie 

Website | Twitter

Run by Rob Collie—who wrote this great book on PowerPivot and PowerBI—PowerPivotPro includes everything you’ll need to know about PowerPivot and the DAX programming language. A lot of their business is focused on customized solutions, but the blog has a number of nuggets about how to use these tools.

Ozgrid, Dave and Raina Hawley

Website

I don’t know husband and wife team Dave and Raina Hawley personally, but I often end up going to Ozgrid for VBA questions, especially because they curate really useful VBA forums. I’m sure there’s more to take advantage of on this site, I just haven’t gotten there yet.