What if we can make an excel workbook that can teach us excel? Wouldn’t that be cool..?
It was a question that motivated Sean Duffy, a former Google employee and his friends to design Excel Everest – an excel spreadsheet built to teach you, … wait for it … , Excel.
Sean wrote to me a few weeks back and invited me to test his beautiful product. I have played with Excel Everest and I found it to be quite an interesting tool to learn Excel, so much that I wanted to share with you about this.
What is Excel Everest?
Excel Everest is an excel workbook designed to teach you excel. It has 41 topics and has 155 exercises, 339 buttons, and 87 embedded videos. It is a text book, problem set, video library all rolled nicely in to one excel file. It teaches you various excel topics, one at a time and gives you some problems to work on. Once you finish the problems, Excel Everest even grades you automatically. Pretty cool, eh?
See this short demo to understand how Excel Everest’s automatic grading works:
and here is a superb youtube video explaining Excel Everest:
Who is this for and What can you learn from Excel Everest?
Excel Everest is designed to help beginners and not-so-regular users of excel learn various features without getting lost. It teaches the following topics very well:
- Excel basics: What is excel, how to format data, using paste special, sorting and filtering data, adding / removing / hiding rows or columns, working with shapes
- Formulas: Formula basics, text formulas, IF formula, VLOOKUP formula, basic math formulas, statistical formulas (average etc.)
- Charts & Pivot Tables: Understanding numbers and answering questions.
- Tips to make your life easy with Excel: Removing duplicates, using keyboard shortcuts, introductory macros, printing excel sheets
Each topic is explained in a separate worksheet with text, images, videos (youtube videos embedded in excel) and various examples.
See an example page – Learning Basic Mathematical Formulas using Excel Everest
How much is it?
Excel Everest is priced at $34.95.
But here is the good news. When I told Sean that I would love to write a review of his product, he was kind enough to give readers of Chandoo.org a discount of 20%. So, you will actually pay just $28 for this when you use the discount code “chandoo“.
What is my opinion about Excel Everest?
Excel Everest is a fantastic way to learn excel if you are starting out. It is beautifully designed with lots of clear, simple explanations for various everyday excel features. I especially liked,
- How the file is structured and how each topic is flagged as easy / medium or hard (see below).
- Exercises and automated grading. There are questions / short quizzes after each topic and as soon as you enter you will graded.
- You can keep track of your progress and see how well you have scored across various topics / difficulty areas
That said, this is not the product if you are already familiar with various excel features and use them decently. For the rest of you, this can be an extremely fun way to learn excel all the while using it.
I recommend getting a copy of Excel Everest if you are new to Excel or need a thorough introduction to various features in Excel. Make sure you use the discount code chandoo to get 20% off the final price.
Do you have any questions about Excel Everest?
I have been using Excel Everest for last few weeks, so I kind of know what it does best and how it works. If you have any questions about it, ask them thru comments. I can answer them.
Disclosure: I receive small commission whenever you buy a copy of Excel Everest with discount code “chandoo“. But I am sure you will derive more benefit out of this than Sean or I will make out of the sale.
27 Responses to “9 Box grid for talent mapping – HR for Excel – Template & Explanation”
Great stuff! I can understand how to add a slicer to the pivot table, but how do you implement the departmental selector on the 'Filter' formula scheme?
Just saw this on your Youtube channel, and it’s areat idea...!
An easy way to overcome the "ugliness" of pivot tables and get it to look nice (in the format of the Output sheet), would be to simply build a sheet with the nice map at the top, a pivot underneath it and a slicer next to formatted map and then reference each of the 9 cells in the formatted map to the “related” cell in the Pivot.
Keep up the good work!
/Claus
Thanks Claus. That is a great idea 🙂
Hi Chandoo,
This is great! Curious how to make additional columns operate the same as the Department column (ex. have a "manager column") that would allow you to sort a 9 box by manager, area, or team in addition to department?
Feel free to email me if needed! mfry01@minnetronixmedical.com
Happy New Year
Madison Fry
I am curious about the smae thing. I would like to populate the 9 box with other views as well by adding additional columns. IE., I would like to add location, region, etc. Thank you.
This is great, thank you!
How can i see the whole data set of all the teams in the output table. Need a formula that will pick up all the employees
Hello,
Love the template. Thank you. Question - the drop down to pick a department on the Output tab does not seem to work on the downloadable template. Am I doing something incorrectly?
Thank you!
Hi Heather... Thank you. I am using Excel 365 to make the calculations. If you are using an older version of Excel, then the drop-down filter won't work.
Hi
I was able to follow your 9 box grid and modified based my needs. However, you tutorial did not show how to you create the filter for the "Pick a department. Can you kindly share how to create that filter that updated the grid. Thank you.
I am working on this project but I am struggling with the data validation for the department. I copy the worksheets data entry and output as the managers want to see different tabs for each managers.
I updated the source reference for each tab but It does not update the grid based on the new source. The list was updated but it does not populate the grid based on the performance and potential listed.
In addition the hyperlink Update Data and View Talent Map no longer works. Can you please help me.
I keep getting this error message in the pivot table:
This formula is invalid or incomplete: 'The expression is not valid or appears to be incomplete. Please review and correct the expression.
The following syntax error occurred during parsing: Invalid token, Line 1, Offset 14, ‘.
Hi, I used your 9-box excel template with excel 365. First off, thank you so very much. It is incredibly helpful!! My only question is that the boxes aren't big enough for all of the employees (specifically the middle which we call 'Core Employee'). Is there a way to make the boxes larger? Even though it is in excel, I am not able to increase row height (like I normally do in a speadsheet). Any ideas? Thanks again, Jody
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for the great content. Re. 9 box grid, pls advise how do I increase the size of the box to accommodate more names?
Hi Chandoo,
I figured it out. Excel 365 has the format row height on the ribbon. Thank you
Merci Chandoo pour le modèle proposé,
j'ai une question et un souhait est il possible de développer davantage ce modèle en insérant la photo de chaque employé.
Hi Chandoo!
Great tutorial and tool, thank you! Your tutorial didn't include how to create additional filters on the "Output" tab. Could you please share how you did it?
Can this be done exactly in google sheets?
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for the video it was really helpful. Is there any way to multi select the dropdown to display multiple or all departments rather than just one at once?
Hello Prish
I have Microsoft 365 and I am struggling to make the boxes larger/unable to increase row height; any idea how you made this work? Specifically in the Output tab where the map is?
Many thanks
Hello Jody, I have Microsoft 365 and I am struggling to make the boxes larger/unable to increase row height; any idea how you made this work? Specifically in the Output tab where the map is? Many thanks
Is there a way to change the 9 box wording descriptions, i.e. Work Horses, to our own internal langauge?
You can edit the file. The descriptions are textboxes.
Hi Chandoo, this is awesome and has worked perfectly. Due to a big organisation the 9 box grid on the output file is too small. I tried adjusting using the row/width ribbon under the format ribbon however it doesn't seem to work. Is there an easier way to adjust this?
Thanks!
When I drag the formula, it doesn't work, and the order I use with the data changes. In the beginning, the order is it is " candidates," " potential," and " performance," but when it goes to another column, it is " Potential," Performance," and "Candidates."Can you help me? Thank you very much, sending love from vietnam
Hi- I am working on the 9 grid project and I am trying to expand the box since I have over 100 names on a few of the columns. How do I do that?
Hi, Thank you this is great stuff and really useful.
As well as department as demonstrated on your clip, how can I display all candidates on the grid at once?
Many thanks in advance