Advancing into Analytics: From Excel to Python and R

About the Course:

Learn how to move beyond Excel into Python and R for data analytics. This hands-on session bridges the gap between spreadsheets and code, helping Excel users confidently explore modern analytics tools and workflows. Excel remains the world’s most popular analytics tool… but the data landscape is evolving. Python and R now dominate analytics, data science, and automation. 

This session helps Excel professionals make that leap. We’ll cover the analytical thinking and workflows you already know from Excel, and show how they translate into Python and R. You’ll see real-world examples of data wrangling, visualization, and analysis across all three tools. The focus is practical: how to expand your analytics toolkit without abandoning the spreadsheet. 

You’ll walk away understanding when and why to use each tool, how to get started writing your first Python and R scripts, and how to connect them back to Excel for reporting and presentation.

Course Objectives:

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Compare Excel, Python, and R across the analytics workflow.
• Translate common Excel tasks into Python and R equivalents.
• Understand how to connect Python and R to Excel for analysis and automation.
• Identify when it’s best to move beyond Excel, and when to stay within it.
• Build confidence in working with open-source analytics environments.

Who is the Target Audience:

• Analysts, finance and accounting professionals, and Excel power users interested in expanding into data analytics and data science.
• Managers and educators are seeking to modernize analytics capabilities within Excel-heavy teams.
• Learners considering a transition into Python or R without a formal computer science background.

Basic Knowledge:

• Comfortable using Excel for formulas, charts, and PivotTables.
• No prior programming experience required. This session is designed as a bridge from Excel to coding-based analytics.