Guide
How long does it take to learn Excel on YouTube? 10 free courses, measured
Updated 2026-10-21 · 7 min read
Watching a free Excel beginner course on YouTube takes 2 to 6 hours. We measured ten Excel courses on 21 October 2026, counting every video to the last: Kevin Stratvert's Excel for Beginners is 2 hours 10 minutes, MyOnlineTrainingHub's 2 hours 30, Leila Gharani's basics 5 hours 56. excelisfun's job-ready basics course is 12 hours, and the longest, a full data-analysis class on Power Query, Power Pivot and Power BI, is 30. The middle of the ten is under 10 hours.
At 1.5× speed and half an hour a day, a beginner course is done in three to eight days, and the 12-hour basics course in two and a half weeks. Excel videos are short because each one teaches one feature, so a playlist of 60 videos can be two hours long. What takes the time is opening a workbook and doing it yourself.
Every course, measured
Ranked by total. "1.5×" is the total watched at one and a half times speed, and "Avg" the average video.
| Course | Videos | Total | 1.5× | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MSPTDA, excelisfun | 83 | 29h 45m | 19h 50m | 22m |
| Kevin: How to use Excel | 120 | 23h 07m | 15h 25m | 12m |
| Highline class | 50 | 17h 06m | 11h 24m | 21m |
| excelisfun: 2016 basics | 26 | 12h 16m | 8h 10m | 28m |
| TeachExcel functions | 51 | 10h 37m | 7h 05m | 12m |
| Leila: dynamic arrays | 50 | 8h 23m | 5h 36m | 10m |
| Leila: advanced | 46 | 7h 49m | 5h 13m | 10m |
| Leila: basics | 37 | 5h 56m | 3h 57m | 10m |
| Mynda: beginners | 21 | 2h 30m | 1h 40m | 7m |
| Kevin: beginners | 60 | 2h 10m | 1h 27m | 2m |
The ten add up to 119 hours 39 minutes over 544 videos. None has a private or deleted video. Each course name opens its live page, where the total is current and you can tick off what you have watched. The same ten are on our list of free Excel courses, with notes on who each suits.
Courses, and collections of videos
Half of the ten are courses, built to be watched in order; the longest of them, MSPTDA, is below. The other half are a channel's videos on a theme, gathered in one playlist.
The courses. Kevin Stratvert's Excel for Beginners is 60 numbered lessons in 15 sections, from getting Excel to printing, at 2 minutes a lesson; the longest, on pivot tables, is 13 minutes. Mynda Treacy's series on MyOnlineTrainingHub is 21 short lessons on the interface and the everyday tasks. excelisfun's two classes are the opposite: Mike Girvin teaches in long lessons, 28 minutes on average in the 2016 basics course, which goes from formatting through IF, VLOOKUP and PivotTables to Power Query in 25 numbered lessons. His Highline class is a college course recorded lecture by lecture, and three of its videos, the first lesson on basics (1 hour 43 minutes), conditional formatting and PivotTables, are 4 hours 33 minutes of its 17. The playlist runs from Video 01 to 51, with Video 50 missing.
The collections. Leila Gharani's three playlists are her standalone videos on each feature, mostly around 10 minutes, from INDEX and MATCH to the newest functions such as REGEX, GROUPBY and PIVOTBY. They can be watched in any order, which is their strength: pick the function you need tonight. TeachExcel's playlist is a reference on single functions, a series to search rather than to watch.
What is inside the two longest
MSPTDA, 29 hours 45 minutes. excelisfun's data-analysis class is 41 videos titled MSPTDA, which come to 18 hours 27 minutes. The other 42 are his Excel Magic Trick videos on the same problems, placed between the lessons, 11 hours 18 minutes more. Power Query is lessons 03 to 12, 13 videos and 6 hours 4 minutes, and the longest video of the ten playlists is lesson 15, an introduction to Power Pivot and DAX of 2 hours 4 minutes. Watch the lessons first; the Magic Tricks are worked examples to come back to.
Kevin Stratvert's How to use Excel, 23 hours 7 minutes. This is his Excel videos collected, not a course: the first video is on macros, the 12th is his 31-minute beginner tutorial, and the last is on Claude for Excel. Seven have VLOOKUP in the title, 13 are under a minute long, and 13 are about Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude and other AI tools, 2 hours 53 minutes together. Inside it are four full lessons worth finding: Excel Formulas and Functions, the full course (53 minutes), Macros & VBA for beginners (50), Power Pivot (31) and the beginner tutorial (31).
Days to finish, by route
Most people need more than one of these: a beginner course, then formulas, then perhaps Power Query. How many days four routes take at 1.5×, watching every day:
| Route | Total | 30 min a day | 1 h a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kevin's beginners | 2h 10m | 3 days | 2 days |
| excelisfun's 2016 basics | 12h 16m | 17 days | 9 days |
| Kevin's beginners, Leila's advanced and dynamic arrays | 18h 22m | 25 days | 13 days |
| Leila's three, then the MSPTDA lessons | 40h 35m | 55 days | 28 days |
The last route is beginner to Power BI in under two months at half an hour a day. These are days of video. Excel is learnt with a workbook open, so pause and do each step, and treat these days as the floor. excelisfun's Highline class comes with workbooks to download; use them. Speed costs little on explanations and a lot when you are copying a formula off the screen (what 1.5× and 2× cost →).
Check the total covers every video
Some playlist length tools add up only the first 100 videos and stop without saying so. One playlist here is longer than that: the first 100 videos of Kevin Stratvert's How to use Excel come to 19 hours of its 23. If a total looks short for a playlist with more than 100 videos, here is how to check it.
Plan the one you choose
Paste the course's link on the home page, or click its name in the table above, and set your daily minutes in the planner: it gives you a finish date and the videos for each day, and you can put the sessions in your calendar. Tick each video as you finish it and the time left updates; the course stays in your list on the home page, so you can pick it up where you stopped. The guide to finishing a long course has the method for keeping a plan going, and how long a free YouTube course is compares Excel with 23 other subjects.
Frequently asked
How many hours does it take to learn Excel on YouTube?
The basics take 2 to 6 hours of video: Kevin Stratvert's beginner course is 2 hours 10 minutes, Leila Gharani's 5 hours 56, measured on 21 October 2026. A fuller course to job-ready level, excelisfun's 2016 basics, is 12 hours 16 minutes. Add the time to practise each step in a workbook.
Can I learn Excel in a week from YouTube?
The basics, yes. Any of the three beginner courses fits in a week at half an hour a day at 1.5×, and excelisfun's 12-hour basics course fits at an hour a day in nine days. Leila Gharani's two formula playlists, XLOOKUP to dynamic arrays, take another 11 days at an hour a day, and Power Query and Power Pivot more.
How long is excelisfun's MSPTDA class?
29 hours 45 minutes over 83 videos, measured on 21 October 2026. The 41 videos titled MSPTDA, the class itself, are 18 hours 27 minutes; the other 42 are his Excel Magic Trick videos on the same topics. At 1.5× the lessons alone take about 12 hours.
Which free Excel course is the shortest?
Kevin Stratvert's Excel for Beginners: 60 videos in 2 hours 10 minutes, about 2 minutes each. MyOnlineTrainingHub's beginner series is 2 hours 30 minutes over 21 videos.
Why might a total differ from the playlist today?
These totals were measured on 21 October 2026. Creators add and remove videos, and videos go private. Each course's page here, and the Excel list, shows the total as it is now.