Working with Excel
Learn how to turn a blank grid of cells into an automated calculation engine. Master formulas, essential functions, and data-organizing tools to analyze numbers in minutes.
Like Duolingo, but for Working with Excel. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 11 levels across 2 sections, about 22 minutes end to end, roughly 4 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Making Sheets Do the Math and Finding Answers in the Grid. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in Working with Excel
- Excel needs an equals sign (=) at the start of a cell to recognize an instruction to calculate
- Without an equals sign, Excel treats math symbols and numbers as literal text and displays exactly what you typed
- Referencing cell coordinates like B1 and B2 makes a formula dynamically read whatever value currently sits in those cells
- Hardcoding specific numbers into a formula means the result stays fixed even when source cells change
- Formulas in Excel require a leading equals sign and standard calculation operators
- Excel defaults to aligning plain text to the left side of a cell and numbers to the right side
- A number that aligns to the left indicates Excel sees it as text (often caused by an accidental space or leading apostrophe)
- Math formulas in Excel may skip or fail to calculate numbers that are stored as text
- Excel follows standard mathematical order of operations, performing multiplication and division before addition and subtraction
- Parentheses force Excel to evaluate enclosed additions or subtractions first
- Excel uses the asterisk (*) for multiplication, not an 'x'
- Dragging a formula down shifts row numbers in relative references by the number of rows moved
- Dragging cell C2 to C3 moves down one row, so row 2 automatically updates to row 3
- The small square at the bottom-right corner of an active cell is the fill handle
- A dollar sign ($) placed before a column letter or row number locks that coordinate in Excel
- Writing `$G$1` ensures the formula always refers to cell G1 no matter where you copy or drag it
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Working with Excel the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
You type 50+50 into a cell without an equals sign. What will you see on screen?
Get it right to open this lesson and 10 more in the app.
Where Working with Excel takes you
- 1
Making Sheets Do the Math
- Entering Data and Writing Your First Formula
- Reusing Formulas Across Rows and Columns
- 2
Finding Answers in the Grid
- Summarizing Datasets with Core Functions
- Sorting, Filtering, and Highlighting Data
2 sections · 4 units · 11 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
Working with Excel is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start Working with Excel today.
Download Tomo, search Working with Excel, and play your first lesson in under a minute.