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I, like most people, have some experience with Microsoft Excel — but not as much as I wish I did. For the most part, I’ve used it to brainstorm ideas, budget vacations, and make simple traffic and leads calculations.

But thanks to my limited Excel skills, I’m subjecting myself to the tedium of updating my spreadsheets manually. I’m well aware that it’s causing me to miss out on a whole world of reporting automation that could save me hours and hours of time.

But when I asked a handful of my most Excel-savvy colleagues where they picked up their Excel knowledge, they replied with things like, “I mostly learned from colleagues and friends” or “When I have a specific question, I ask someone or search on Google.”

Well, alright … but what am I going to do, ask my colleagues or their friends every time I have an Excel question?

Download our complete guide to using Excel here for more step-by-step Excel tutorials.

I can’t be the only one out there who hopes to master the world’s most popular solution for analyzing and visualizing data. (Or at least learn how to create charts and graphs that’ll impress my manager.)

In the spirit of becoming a more productive, data-driven marketer, I scoured the internet for the best online resources for learning Excel. Most of these are free, and the ones that aren’t might be worth the investment to some folks out there. So take a look, bookmark your favorites, and get that much closer to working more efficiently in Excel.

Where to Learn Excel: The 10 Best Online Resources

1) Microsoft’s Excel Training Center

Price: Free

When it comes to learning a new application, why not start at the source? After all, no one knows the Mircosoft Excel better than the people at Microsoft.

In fact, they’ve done a great job putting together the Office Training Center: a resource center for all of their Office applications and services. Their training center for Excel has a whole bunch of free tutorials, videos, and guides on Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone that cover both the latest version of Excel as well as the older ones.

Once you click into a platform, you’ll find resources divided by Excel ability: for beginners (like basic math and creating a chart), for intermediate users (like sorting and filtering data, conditional formatting, and VLOOKUPs), and for advanced users (like pivot tables, advanced IF functions, and how to password-protect worksheets and workbooks).

2) The Spreadsheet Page

Price: Free

Here’s an awesome, very well organized site that’s chock full of helpful Excel tips collected by an Excel expert named John Walkenbach.

Over the past thirty years, Walkenbach has written more than 60 Excel books for users of all levels and around 300 articles and reviews for magazines like InfoWorld, PC World, and PC/Computing. At one point, he wrote the monthly spreadsheet column for PC World. In other words, the man knows his stuff — and he knows how to present it to an audience, too.

The most helpful part of his website is probably the Excel Tips tab, which has a long list of useful (and mostly non-trivial) tips on formatting, formulas, charts and graphics, and printing. The tips in there include everything from working with fractions, to unlinking a pivot table from its source data, to a spreadsheet protection FAQ sheet.

Another super helpful part of his site is the Downloads tab, where he’s added free, ungated download links to files he created, including free Excel workbooks and add-ins. Some of the files demonstrate useful techniques that you can adapt to your own work, and others are simply “for fun.”

For example, there’s one Excel workbook in there that gives examples of custom number formats, which you can play with and tweak on your own time to get familiar with them without having to start from scratch.

Finally, there are links on his site to all the books he’s written about Excel over the years, which includes books for each version of Excel from 2016 all the way back to some of its earliest versions.

3) About.com’s Spreadsheets Page

Price: Free

Many of you are likely familiar with the content website About.com. But did you know it has its own spreadsheets subdomain, much of which is devoted to Excel? There are several thousand sets of instructions in there — mostly illustrated, how-to posts — and they add fresh content to it regularly.

Each of the pieces of content is categorized, and categories include everything from formulas and formatting to how-to videos and tools and templates. If you want to stay up-to-date on the latest spreadsheet news and tips, you can sign up for a free newsletter. There are a lot of advertisements on this site, but if you can stand them, the content is pretty darn great.

4) Chandoo.org 

Price: Free

The founder of the blog at Chandoo.org (who’s nicknamed “Chandoo”) says he has one goal: “to make you awesome at Excel and charting.” The blog started back in 2007, and today, there are over 450 articles and tutorials in there on using Excel and making better charts.

He’s built the blog as a community, citing values like humility, passion, fun, awesomeness, and simplicity. He also works to make this a great place for the folks for whom English is not their first language.

Most of his tips start from the forums, where people ask a question about Excel — anything about formulas, formatting, shortcuts, pivot tables, and so on — and anyone can answer them. Chandoo then takes some of the more helpful forum questions and creates articles and tutorials out of them.

Image Credit: Chandoo.org

There’s some fun stuff in there, too. For example, Chandoo created an easter egg hunt for a recent blog post, which includes a downloadable Excel workbook that has seven pandas hidden within it. Readers can locate the pandas using clues, Excel techniques, or even good ol’ “I-Spy” skills.

Image Credit: Chandoo.org

While the articles, forums, and other parts of the site are free, you can pay a fee to join one of his training programs like Excel School or VBA Classes, or by getting a copy of one of his books: The VLOOKUP Book or Excel Formula Helper Ebook.

5) HubSpot’s Free Ebooks & Blog Posts

Price: Free

Excel is one of the most in-demand skills for data-driven marketers these days. And because we want marketers like you to succeed, we’ve created a whole bunch of educational content about Excel here at HubSpot — which include free ebooks, templates, blog posts, and video tutorials covering a wide range of topics.

Here are a few of our best:

• “How to Use Excel: The Essential Training Guide for Data-Driven Marketing” (free ebook)
• “9 Excel Templates to Make Marketing Easier” (free templates)
• “How to Use Excel: 14 Simple Excel Shortcuts, Tips & Tricks” (blog post)
• “40 Handy Excel Shortcuts You Can’t Live Without” (blog post)
• “10 Design Tips to Create Beautiful Excel Charts and Graphs” (blog post)
• “How to Create a Pivot Table in Excel: A Step-by-Step Tutorial” (video & blog post)

6) MrExcel.com 

Price: Free

Here’s a resource that puts normal humans like you and me in touch with Excel experts. MrExcel.com’s claim to fame is its interactive message board, which is constantly monitored by its community of Excel “gurus.”

When a user posts a question, a member of the Mr. Excel expert community will reply with an answer. The questions range from simplifying an Excel task to solving an “emergency.”

Not a native English speaker? You can even ask questions in your native language.

Aside from posting questions on the message board, you can also browse Mr. Excel’s “Hot Topics,” which includes things like finding the cumulative sum of even or odd rows, or removing leading zero with a text field.

They also have a library of helpful Excel books and ebooks on there. If you need help with problems that are more complex, you can even hire an Excel consultant directly from the website for a fee.

7) Annielytics Video Tutorials 

Price: Free

Web Analytics Data Expert Annie Cushing created a blog called Annielytics, which includes both a website and a YouTube channel. But don’t let the punny name fool you: Cushings’ YouTube channel is chock full of really good, specific, and in-depth web analytics tips.

While the content here isn’t all Excel-related — a lot of it is about Google Analytics, for example — she does have some really good video tutorials for Excel. One advantage to these videos? They were created with marketing and web analytics in mind, so they’re directly applicable to your marketing data reports.

To find her videos about Excel, click here or search her YouTube channel for “Excel”.

The Excel topics she covers vary widely: from how to create interactive pivot tables, to how to add a scrolling table to your dashboard using the INDEX function. The videos also range widely in length depending on topic complexity: There are two-and-a-half-minute videos, and there are videos that are over half an hour long.

To give you an idea of what her videos are like, here’s a good one, which covers a comprehensive overview of Excel charts:

8) Lynda.com’s Excel Training Tutorials

Price: Membership starts at $19.99/month (Free Trial Here)

If you’re willing to invest a little cash in your Excel training, Lynda.com is a worthwhile place to spend it. Paying members have access to thousands of Lynda.com courses on business, technology, creative skills, and software that’ll help you work toward your personal professional goals.

Included in these courses are over 100 Excel courses and over 4,000 video tutorials covering every version of Excel and any level of expertise. They cover broad topics like “Excel 2016 Essential Training” and “Communication Visually and Add Impact With Charts,” and more niche topics like “Excel 2016: Pivot Tables in Depth” and “Excel Workshop: Building a Dynamic Heat Map.” 

9) Coursera

Price: Individual courses start at $79/each

While Lynda.com asks for a monthly membership fee that then gives you access to all its courses, Coursera charges on a course-to-course basis. The folks at Coursera have partnered with top universities and organizations worldwide to offer online courses for anyone to take.

There are only a few related to Excel, but if you’re looking for a full, college- or grad school-level course, one of them could be perfect for you. Many of the Excel-related courses come from Duke University, such as “Mastering Data Analysis in Excel” and “Excel to MySQL: Analytic Techniques for Business.”

That being said, it doesn’t come cheap. These are real courses taught at top universities around the world. Each course includes video lectures, interactive quizzes, peer-graded assessments, and the opportunity to connect with fellow students and instructors. Once you finish a course, you’ll receive formal recognition, along with an optional course certificate.

10) EdX Excel Courses

Price: Free

If you’re looking for more of a “course” instead of a one-off tutorial, but you’re not ready to shell out any cash, check out edX’s courses.

EdX is a nonprofit that relies on verified certificates to help fund free education for people around the globe. If you take a course that’s marked as “Verified,” then you have the option to pay an amount of money (around $50) to receive an instructor-signed certificate with the institution’s logo to verify your achievement and increase your job prospects. If not, you can take it for free.

To help you choose the courses that are right for you, each edX course includes a rating up to five stars, course reviews, and information on course length, amount of effort (measured in hours per week), level, and video transcripts.

What are your favorite online resources for learning Excel? Share with us in the comments.

This post originally appeared on HubSpot’s Sales Blog. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.

In the words of Grace Hopper: “You manage things. You lead people.” 

The difference between managing and leading might seem fuzzy to managers, but it’s crystal clear to their direct reports. Think about it: Would you rather be told what to do, or sold on a vision?

Would you prefer to work for someone who rules with an iron fist and attempts to control your every move, or someone who empowers you to make decisions and encourages experimentation? It’s a no-brainer.

Even if your title is “manager,” it behooves you to learn and apply the principles of leadership to your day-to-day. If you could use some clarification on the line between manager and leader, check out the following infographic from ResourcefulManager. Strive to adopt the traits on the right side of the graphic, and leave those on the left behind.

Once upon a time, I worked as a freelancer. It was enlightening, thrilling at times, but also extremely tough.

And it wasn’t until later on in my career that I realized just how much marketers depend on contractors. Freelance designers, web developers, copywriters, video editors, SEO specialists, PR consultants, or translators — all of these folks play a vital role on the extended team of many marketers.

Trouble is, coordinating effective communication between teams can be tough. I know this from experience. So to help you establish a more productive working relationship with your contractors, I put together a list of things I always wished my customers knew about freelancing. Check it out below.

9 Things Your Freelancers Want You to Know

1) “You’re paying for more than just the service in question.”

Freelancers are a one-person show, and as a result, they have to do much of the same work as a small business owner. When I was a freelancer, I was amazed at how much time I had to spend on invoicing and collections.

Many freelancers, especially those in creative fields, deplore such mind-numbing tasks as calculating invoice amounts and calling up customers to check on payment status. They might even find it demeaning.

Pro Tip: Process payments as quickly as you possibly can. Stay on top of accounts payable and make sure your company expedites payments to your freelancers right after the work has been delivered.

Paying freelancers on time is very different from paying larger vendors. Your on-time payment can mean your freelancer’s ability to pay his or her rent on time. This is often one of the simplest things you can do that makes the biggest difference for freelancers.

2) “I’d love a steady stream of work from you.”

Freelancers have the luxury of choosing their own hours and their own projects, but when it comes down to it, they would usually prefer to avoid the notorious “peaks and valleys” that come along with contract work.

Often, the best clients will work out longer-term, recurring arrangements with freelancers. This approach helps smooth out bumps in income, but also enables you to secure your contractors’ availability if you’re dependent on them. This can also help raise your status as a priority client.

Pro Tip: Consider offering your freelancers a fixed monthly retainer if you like their work and plan to keep sending projects their way. Include a set amount of work in the monthly retainer, and get their rates for any work that falls outside of it, so they can bill you the extra as needed. Many will allow you to carry hours or work over to another month if you don’t use it all in a given month.

3) “Err on the side of providing me with more information.”

As a freelancer, my favorite customers were always the ones who gave me plenty of background information and context about a given project. The more I understood about their goals, the better I could think creatively to deliver what they needed. In some cases, this actually helped them to accomplish their goals and stay on budget while enabling me to earn more and obtain repeat business.

For example, as a freelance translator, I once had a client with a unique need: They had customer emails that they needed translated and delivered back within an hour. As a translator, I was normally paid by the word, but I knew that in this case, they had given me the context of why they needed this service, and made it clear that what they valued was speed. So, I proposed that instead of paying me by the word along with a rush fee for fast turn-around, which is typical, that they pay me a consistent monthly retainer, for which I would agree to be “on call” to translate emails during certain business hours, so long as they didn’t exceed a certain volume. 

Pro Tip: Don’t just rely on written text. Schedule a video or voice call to convey more details. While it might seem like it takes too much time, doing this up front can actually improve clarity, prevent misunderstandings, and save time later on. This also helps you establish a closer connection. In fact, don’t limit interactions with freelancers to just your own. Connect them to more team members to help them learn about your projects and business.

4) “I choose to work with you, too.” 

The best freelancers are in very high demand. They can pick and choose their clients. In fact, freelancers might decide to stop working with you entirely if you don’t treat them well. I certainly stopped accepting projects from clients that didn’t communicate clearly about expectations up front, or worse yet, failed to pay on time.

Remember when you’re working with a freelancer that you’re not purchasing a one-off project: you’re building an important relationship that you will likely want to grow with time.

Pro Tip: Ask your freelancers what their best clients do differently. Tell them you want to be one of their best customers. The surprise? Most won’t ask for more money, but rather, will talk about other things their clients do well. Let them clue you in on how to get the most from the relationship with them. High-quality professionals take great pride in a job well done, and that includes customer service.

5) “Don’t reduce our relationship to price alone.”

Have you ever asked a freelancer to lower their rates because you got better rates from someone else? That’s somewhat like asking a restaurant to match the price of the same meal you ate in another restaurant, with a completely different chef, in a very different part of town. If you try to ask freelancers to match the rates of others, you might be equating the work of a Cordon Bleu-trained master chef to the work of a short order cook. While you’re probably just trying to be financially responsible for your company, be sensitive to the fact that many freelancers find a price-centered focus demeaning, as it devalues and unfairly commoditizes their work. 

Pro Tip: Ask freelancers for a clear explanation of their rates. If your budget won’t stretch, explain that you’re not making a decision based on price alone, but ask them if they ever have any flexibility on price, and if so, for which circumstances. Sometimes, sending them more guaranteed work on a recurring basis, pre-paying for work, or expanding their services, may prove to be a win-win situation.

6) “Ask me for my advice more often.”

When it comes to the types of projects they do each day with other companies like yours, freelancers have likely seen it all. Yet, you might not think to ask them for their advice on how to best structure a project, or how to improve the output. Often, a quick conversation with your contractor can yield great suggestions that will help the entire project go more smoothly. Don’t forget, they are professionals who are specialized, and this expertise is what you are paying for, not just the service itself.

Pro Tip: Get on a call with your freelancer and ask:

• How can I set you up to do the best possible job on this project?
• What else do you need from me?
• What could we do differently?
• Where do projects like these typically go wrong? 

7) “I’d love to dive even deeper into your company.”

Many freelancers are very excited to get to work with a new customer, and will often look up information about your brand, and even you as their main point of contact, to educate themselves on their new client. However, that time represents hours they would otherwise be billing to other clients, and they can’t spend countless unpaid hours immersing themselves in your business. 

Pro Tip: Pay your freelancers for time to learn about your business. This might seem radical, but if quality improvement is your goal, this will go a long way. If you already have a training program, send your contractors through it. Or, at the very least, send them the materials and allow them to take any corresponding tests.

At HubSpot, we recently began paying our freelance translators a set incentive amount to take the Inbound Certification, so they could become more familiar with inbound marketing in general. This guarantees that they can allocate the time to learning your business instead of another’s.

8) “My performance depends directly on yours.”

Often, clients are quick to point the blame at a freelancer when a project goes awry. I’ve seen many marketers throw up their hands in frustration, saying, “Why is it so hard to find a good freelancer?”

In reality, the problems are often due to a lack of communication and willingness to put in enough prep time on your side. Freelancers are usually very motivated to complete a job on time, and to your satisfaction. Instead of just shifting the blame in one direction, ask yourself what you can do better next time around.

Pro Tip: Would you fire an employee if they didn’t perform well in their very first week, or would you ask yourself if you set them up for success? Give your freelancer a chance to ramp up and learn your preferences and needs. If you routinely switch freelancers after trying them out on just one project, you’re not giving them the opportunity to ramp up properly. After your first project, schedule a call to do a detailed review with your contractor. Discuss the expectations, where things might have fallen short, and where both of you can do better next time.

9) “I take vacations, too.”

Don’t expect your contractors to be at your beck and call. They have lives, just like anyone else, so quick turnaround projects should be the exception, not the rule. Plan ahead with them. When planning your projects, give freelancers at least as much advance notice as you would give when, say, making an appointment with your hairdresser. You owe them that professional courtesy. And, make sure that if you become highly dependent on a freelancer, that you work their vacation plans into your schedule, just like you would for any full-time member of your team.

Pro Tip: Ask your freelancer if they have any times of the year that they are typically unavailable. Block these dates in your calendar and set reminders for yourself two months before to book any projects around their availability and work with them to make any back-up plans if needed. Often, freelancers will even sub-contract to other people they trust. Feel free to ask them if they have that type of arrangement for when they are out or need to reduce their workload. 

Start Contractor Relationships With Growth in Mind 

Lastly, remember that your freelancers are not “just” contractors, but important parts of your extended marketing team. This is especially true if your marketing team is small, or your company is in growth mode. When recruiting contractors, set the expectation up front that if the work is of high quality, your hope is to expand the relationship and send more work over time. 

You never know where these relationships will lead. Several years and jobs ago, I worked with a talented freelance writer and SEO specialist, and found myself sending her more and more work over time. Eventually, she ended up accepting a full-time remote position on my team, and today, even though we no longer work in the same company, we still remain close friends and colleagues.

As you work with freelancers, seek to truly get to know them as individuals in order to get the highest quality of service. Implement some of these tips and share them with others on your team in order to start building what may ultimately become mission-critical business relationships for you, your team, and your company.

What are your best tips for working with freelancers? Share them in the comments section below.