In-house course
Microsoft Excel Training — basic to advanced, in-house for your team
Two days at your office, taught on the spreadsheets your team already uses, from the first formula to a working dashboard.
- Duration
- 2 days
- 14 hours
- Delivered
- At your premises
- Including Sarawak and Sabah
- HRD Corp ceiling
- RM21,000
- For 2 days, whole group
What your team will be able to do
- Structure data as proper Excel Tables so formulas, filters and charts stop breaking when rows are added
- Write formulas with absolute and relative references correctly, and read someone else’s formula without guessing
- Replace VLOOKUP with XLOOKUP, and combine lookups with IF, IFS and error handling
- Summarise thousands of rows in seconds with PivotTables, slicers and calculated fields
- Clean an imported report with Flash Fill, text functions and the basics of Power Query
- Build a one-page dashboard with charts and conditional formatting that refreshes from the source data
- Protect a shared workbook so colleagues can enter data without breaking the formulas
- Cut a recurring monthly report from hours to minutes
Who it is for
- · Admin, finance, HR, sales-operations and procurement teams who report from spreadsheets every week
- · Mixed-ability groups, where some people are confident and some avoid Excel altogether
- · Teams who inherited workbooks nobody fully understands any more
- · Employers with an HRD Corp levy balance they want to put to productive use
When something else fits better
- · One or two people on their own — a public class is usually the better buy for that
- · Teams already fluent in PivotTables who need automation or modelling — see Advanced Excel or Power BI
- · Anyone who specifically needs the Microsoft Office Specialist credential — mention it when you ask and we will advise
About this course
Almost every office in Malaysia runs on Excel, and almost nobody in those offices was taught it. People learn the few functions their predecessor used, copy a formula they found online, and build reports by hand every month because nobody showed them a faster way. The result is not a skills gap anyone can see on an org chart. It is a finance executive spending two days a month on a report that could refresh in two minutes.
This course takes a mixed group — some who are comfortable, some who avoid spreadsheets entirely — and moves the whole room from clean data entry through formulas, lookups and PivotTables to a dashboard that updates itself. Because it runs in-house, the exercises use your own files: your sales export, your stock list, your claims register. Participants leave with those files rebuilt, not with a folder of sample workbooks they will never open again.
Two days is enough to cover basic to advanced properly for most teams. Where a group is already strong on the fundamentals, the first half-day is compressed and the time goes into automation and dashboards instead. That decision is made during scoping, from a short skills check we send before the course.
Cost and funding
Who pays for it
In-house training is priced per group, not per person, and HRD Corp reimburses it per group too — up to RM10,500 per full day where the provider and course are registered and your company applies before the training. Put in your numbers to see what your levy covers.
The levy ledger
What your company already contributes, what this costs, and what is at risk if nobody claims.
Your monthly levy
RM3,000
1% of monthly wages — compulsory
HRD Corp reimburses up to
RM21,000
About RM1,400 per person at 15 people
At risk of forfeiture
RM62,000
Two years of contributions above the RM10,000 floor, if no claim is made
At your contribution rate, the claimable ceiling for this course is roughly 7.0 months of levy — money already leaving the payroll every month whether it is used or not.
Send it to whoever signs
The numbers above, written as an email. Edit it, then forward it.
An estimate, not advice. Levy rates and the forfeiture rule are HRD Corp’s, read 10 September 2026; the reimbursement ceiling is from HRD Corp’s Allowable Cost Matrix (January 2026 version), read 25 September 2026. Your actual balance depends on your claim history. Confirm your position with HRD Corp.
Course outline
Indicative. The final agenda is built from your team’s own files and processes during scoping, and adjusted to the group’s level from a short skills check before the course.
01Day 1 morning — Data that behaves
- · Navigating large sheets quickly: freeze panes, Go To, keyboard movement and selection
- · Converting ranges to Excel Tables, and why structured references survive new rows
- · Data validation and drop-down lists so colleagues enter data one way
- · Sorting, custom lists and filtering, including filtering by colour and by criteria
- · Cleaning imported text: TRIM, PROPER, LEFT/RIGHT/MID, TEXTSPLIT and Flash Fill
02Day 1 afternoon — Formulas people can trust
- · Relative, absolute and mixed references, and the $ sign finally explained
- · SUMIFS, COUNTIFS and AVERAGEIFS for totals by region, month or product
- · IF, IFS, AND/OR, and IFERROR — logic without nesting twelve brackets deep
- · Date arithmetic: working days, month-end, ageing buckets for receivables
- · Tracing precedents and dependents to audit an inherited workbook
03Day 2 morning — Lookups and summaries
- · XLOOKUP for exact, approximate and two-way lookups; when INDEX/MATCH is still useful
- · Dynamic arrays: FILTER, SORT and UNIQUE for lists that update themselves
- · PivotTables from a clean table: grouping by month, showing values as % of total
- · Slicers and timelines that let a manager explore the numbers without editing them
- · Refreshing a Pivot when the source grows, and the mistakes that make totals go stale
04Day 2 afternoon — From report to dashboard
- · Choosing the right chart, and removing everything that does not help it read
- · Conditional formatting rules that flag exceptions instead of colouring everything
- · Assembling a one-page dashboard from PivotCharts and slicers
- · A first look at Power Query: import, clean and append a monthly export once, then refresh
- · Protecting sheets and ranges, and sharing a workbook in OneDrive or SharePoint
05Throughout — Your own files
- · Each module finishes on a workbook the team supplied during scoping
- · A rebuilt monthly report per team, ready to use the following week
- · A short reference sheet of the formulas and shortcuts covered
Format and delivery
| Detail | |
|---|---|
| Duration | 2 days |
| Contact hours | 14 hours |
| Group size | From 2; 15–20 works best, larger teams run as batches |
| Equipment | One laptop per participant with the software installed |
| Location | Your premises, anywhere in Malaysia including Sarawak and Sabah |
| Format | In person. Online delivery possible where a team is split |
| Pricing | Quoted per group per day, after scoping |
| Funding | HRD Corp claimable where provider and course are registered |
| Certificate | Certificate of attendance |
Questions
›Is Excel training HRD Corp claimable?
Yes, where the training provider and the specific course are registered with HRD Corp and your company applies for the grant before the training takes place. In-house training is capped per group, not per person, so a full room makes the claim go furthest.
We confirm the registration position for your dates during scoping, before you commit to anything. The HRD Corp funding page explains the order of operations.
›Which version of Excel do we need?
Microsoft 365 or Excel 2021 or later gives you everything in the outline, including XLOOKUP and the dynamic-array functions. On Excel 2016 or 2019 those few functions are replaced with their older equivalents, and everything else runs as described.
Tell us your version when you request a quote. It is one of the things the pre-course skills check asks, because it changes what we teach.
›Our team is mixed — some beginners, some confident users. Does that work?
It is the normal case. The skills check we send before the course tells the trainer where the group actually is, and the exercises come in two levels so confident users are stretched while newer users keep up.
If the gap is very wide, the better answer is sometimes two shorter groups on consecutive days rather than one long one. We will say so at scoping.
›Can the course use our own data?
Yes, and that is most of the point of running it in-house. During scoping you send a few representative files — anonymised if needed — and the exercises are built on them.
If your data is confidential, we can build look-alike files with the same structure and none of the real figures.
›Do participants need their own laptops?
Yes. Each participant works on a laptop with Excel installed, ideally the one they use at work. Shared screens do not work for a hands-on course.
If your team uses company laptops with locked-down installs, check before the course that Power Query is enabled. We send a one-page checklist for your IT team.
›Can it be delivered in Kuching or Kota Kinabalu?
Yes. In-house delivery means the trainer comes to your premises, and Sarawak and Sabah are routine. Where the trainer flies in from another town, HRD Corp’s cost matrix allows the airfare to be claimed as well as the course fee.
Get a scoped quote
Tell us the course, your team size, where you are and whether you pay the HRD Corp levy. Within one working day you get a suggested course shape, next steps on a quote, and how to claim it through HRD Corp.