"Excel/VBA for Creative Problem Solving, Part 1" is aimed at learners who are seeking to augment, expand, optimize, and increase the efficiency of their Excel spreadsheet skills by tapping into the powerful programming, automation, and customization capabilities available with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). This course is the first part of a three-part series and Specialization that focuses on the application of computing techniques in Excel/VBA to solve problems. In this course (Part 1), you will: 1) create macros to automate procedures in Excel; 2) define your own user-defined functions; 3) create basic subroutines to interface with the user; 4) learn the basic programming structures in VBA; and 5) automate Excel’s Goal Seek and Solver tools and use numerical techniques to create “live solutions” to solve targeting and optimization problems. New to computer programming? The extremely intuitive and visual nature of VBA lends itself nicely to teaching and learning - what a fun way to learn to code! No prior knowledge in programming nor advanced math skills are necessary yet seasoned programmers will pick up new and creative spreadsheet problem solving strategies. After you have learned the basics of VBA, each module will introduce foundational and broad problems inspired by situations that you might encounter in the real world. To pass each module, you'll need to pass a mastery quiz and complete a problem solving assignment. This course is unique in that the weekly assignments are completed in-application (i.e., on your own computer in Excel), providing you with valuable hands-on training.
LS
Very nice introduction course for VBA excel learners. Charlie is a very watchful and kind teacher. It really helped me to start fulfilling my dream of making some original codes by myself.
IF
the course was very informative and helpful.However, it would be easier to concentrate on VBA if people who don't use mathematical formulas that much would not have to deal with maths that much.
OV
An excellent course that starts with the basics and ends with some really advanced topics and concepts. Superb for anyone who's in a hurry to learn VBA but also desires to learn in depth.
AM
The course is of great learning for those who wants to excel in excel deep and deep. It can help in simplify most of our daily work. Course is really easy for engineers and science students.
DL
Well done, thank you. I had a very limited understanding of loops in programming. After this class, I feel much more comfortable with understanding and designing effective loops and more.
RL
The screencasts are very clear and concise but the assignments were too easy. I would suggest adding some assignments related with finance (e.g., bond calculators and portfolio optimization problems).
LC
Excellent Course for Chemical Engineers who are interested in Equipment Design field. Learn Part 2 & 3 as well. Will make you the king of Excel!! I mean I feel so just after Part 1
NL
It's a great classes. Material is well organized and Charlie kept me engaged with clear instruction, good examples and assignments.I have learned a lot very efficiently from this class. Thank you !
RW
This course is awesome! goes from basic to expert step by step and it has great activities and tutorial videos and also provides great quizzes and assignments to mark our grades. I'll give 5/5!
MS
Great course! I like it goes straight to implementation and is practice-oriented. What could be improved maybe is sound quality of lectures. And maybe it would be great to have some VBA notes in pdf.
NN
i highly recommend this course as the content is new and the questions are designed to be challenging but not difficult. It is an excellent introduction course to VBA or programming in general
EM
I'm gonna start my career and I found this course as a nice and clever way to learn vba. I highly recommend to do week five that is as optional. This is an excellent work, see you in part 2.
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I'm not one to write reviews - this course is fantastic and a game changer. Prof Nuttelman is a very engaging speaker and makes what could seem a very dry topic come across as interesting, fascin
I really enjoyed this class! I found it extremely challenging but doable! I would recommend for the INSTRUCTOR - if you can post powerpoint lectures in addition to the video tutorials. Or some type of worksheet where you have the slides (I know this may be hard since your screencasts are more active), but it would have been helpful for me since I was actively taking notes through your screencasts and it took me a lot longer when I would have to screenshot certain parts and didn't always catch the full code or if there was a bug in your code and you went on to modify it later and I would have to adjust the screenshots. I'm not sure how helpful/necessary this would be for other students, but I would have really appreciated this. If you would like me to show you my notes or explain further you can email me at sueda001@cougars.csusm.edu
ALSO, I started to need more help in the last problem of week 3 and then all of week 4, I wish there was a TA or someone readily available to help me. Although when I emailed you, you responded quickly. I just felt bad bothering you.
For the STUDENTS - just make sure you are staying on top of your work load. I started to fall behind during week 4 because I found it extremely difficult. I would just recommend taking detailed notes as much as you can.
The course focuses too much on implementing math formulas instead of the power of VBA as a tool for automation and data manipulation. It's a shame as it's the only course on vba on Coursera. VBA has amazing uses but this course does not get straight into the VBA, instead the focus is on mathematical application which should be a completely different course
Not very clear, jumps straight into advance debugging before the format and layout has even been discussed. The course is suppose to be for someone learning the very basics, but yet we are learning advanced de bugging techniques in the first week. We have not even start writing simple VBA macros yet...
Programming VBA for Excel requires three skills; knowledge of the application object model, knowledge of Excel, and knowledge of programming. Even skilled programmers familiar with Excel can be overwhelmed when tying all three skills together so creating an introduction class for the novice is a challenge. This course succeeds at not over whelming the student.
This course takes a balanced approached and gently guides the student into a dance with the subject matter using some very interesting techniques and examples from typical engineering problems. It covers the right amount of instruction for the VBA editor and the interaction of data and variables between the editor and Excel. It covers functions and subroutines, the scope and types of variables at a useful enough level, without getting too deep.
Because the instructor is an engineer he includes several simple but powerful numerical methods and the use of both Solver and GoalSeek into the course. Since I am an engineer and enjoy numerical methods I especially like this and would enjoy a course that might be described as “Numerical Recipes in VBA” .
I would recommend this course to novices seeking an introduction through to experienced users wanting a deeper understanding and foundation for future work in VBA for Excel.
The pattern of course is really nice.It first teaches all the basic information in video and the assignments are designed in a way that all the taught information are used to solve the assignment.
i have tried the to take this course several times and there is not enough information to pass the quizzes, this course is not for beginners
Very comprehensive course on VBA with lots of comments and available files to follow 'by doing' most of the examples. Engineer-oriented examples which are rumping up their complexity.
At the end of each Week, there is a quiz with detailed comments to understand each question and at the end of each Week there is also an Assignment which has to be well sorted out!
Only for engineers. Very disappointing experience. Save your money unless you are looking to compute square roots and exponentials of pi.
I am a business/finance person. I am getting very hung up on the VBA trig function names, which are different than Excel function names [sqr(), arctan], being used in the examples. I am not getting how something works because I am not understanding the trig functions. I may have to move on to a class that is more business oriented.
The few minutes in class has shown me that I can make some of my complex spreadsheets more user friendly by creating functions to replace some lengthy formulas. I am just going to have to learn syntax in a forum that is more oriented to what I do. My goal is that the end user will only have to input the function rather than a huge formula. Thank you for sharing this vision with me.
Would give zero stars if I could. Assignment #1 had technical problems. Reached out for help and got no response. Thanks for taking my money.
Products do not work on Mac and course creator does not respond to the forums when people have issues.
Very Bad explanation of things and quizzes to
The best course out there for learning MS Excel/VBA. Mr. Nuttelman is so passionate about teaching this subject, and you can tell this by doing the assignments. For example, after finishing the first assignment, I wanted a quick way to get the certificate. So I decided to look at the VBA script in his GRADER file, hoping to be able to change the content. Nope, he locked it with his password. So I had to look for a way to crack the it. Surprisingly, this was actually the best way to learn how to code in VBA because I had to understand the steps and every line of code. Finally, here's the password: nutsnutsColorado80309 (the last digits turns out to be the zip code of the university).
This is a very good introductory course to Excel VBA. I enjoyed the professor and the assignments. He also seems to enjoy the material. My only (minor) critique would be that I think that there were a number of places where what was emphasized in the reading and lectures was fairly different than what was asked on the quizzes. The quizzes cover much more of the minutiae than you might be led to believe by the screencasts. Once you've taken a few of the quizzes, though, you start to know the types of things to look for in the lectures. I would highly recommend this class and intend to take the others in the series.
The course needs to cater for the general public instead of engineers or professionals. Many learners are people looking for solutions to improve and make their daily tasks more efficient, not learn how to write lengthy formulas. I would highly recommend to extend the duration of the course and start from the real basics including VBA terminology, structure and requirements. There is not enough video content with examples to explain the reasons for writing code in a specific way. Harsh reality is that I would not recommend this course to anyone.
Lots and lots and lots of errors, in the slides, in the speech, and also in the quizzes (with the author writing ("I need to fix that"). Part 5 really interesting.
The course materials are very well prepared and idiot-proof, easy-to-follow. How scarce is such a tutor that who is really putting students' shoes on to provide such insightful screencasts. He even went on extra miles to share with us the reflection on the quiz/homework so as to ensure you really digest what he'd taught. In fact I found it rather useful that I got to clear the ambiguities that blur the boundary between understand and not-understand, not just to get a passing marks. True learning beyond getting certs, I would strongly recommend this course.
The course gave me everything that I was expecting and needed to get me on the road to VBA programming. I also learned some advanced Excel tricks that will be very useful, plus some mathematical iterative optimisation methods that I had long forgotten. The quality of the teaching material was good. I found the tutor very helpful, responsive and supportive.
Okay, it’s a good idea to carefully read the steps so you can successfully complete the assignment. I didn’t realize my mistake until I noticed it was my own human error, not the program. The class is great; it just requires patience and discipline. Overall, I’m satisfied with it.