Digital Skills

Short, practical lessons for the digital skills people use at work every day. Use them together with the free tools on this site.

Microsoft Excel essentials

• Start with structure. One header row, one record per row, no blank rows or merged cells inside the data. Convert the range to a Table (Ctrl+T) so formulas and filters expand automatically.
• Learn five formulas first: SUM, AVERAGE, IF, COUNTIF and a lookup (XLOOKUP in current versions, VLOOKUP in older ones).
• Summarise with a PivotTable. Insert, PivotTable, then drag a field into Rows and another into Values to total by category in seconds.
• Check your work. Use Ctrl+` to show formulas and compare totals with a quick manual calculation.
• Need a formula written for you? Try the Excel formula generator.

Microsoft Word essentials

• Use Styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, Normal) instead of making text big and bold by hand. A table of contents then builds itself (References, Table of Contents).
• Set page margins and fonts once in the Normal style, not paragraph by paragraph.
• Use Track Changes when others edit, and Mail Merge to personalise letters from a spreadsheet.
• Save a PDF for sharing. Our Word to PDF tool does this in your browser.

Microsoft PowerPoint essentials

• One message per slide, with a headline that states the point.
• Use the Slide Master for fonts, colours and logo so every slide matches.
• Prefer a simple chart or one image to a slide of bullets. Keep text above 24 pt.
• Rehearse with Slide Show, Rehearse Timings and keep to the time you are given.

AI tutorials: using AI assistants well

• Give context. Say who you are writing for, the goal, the length and the tone. A clear request gets a useful answer.
• Iterate. Ask for a first draft, then ask for specific changes: shorter, simpler, more formal.
• Always verify. AI can state wrong facts with confidence. Check names, numbers, dates and quotations against a trusted source.
• Protect privacy. Do not paste passwords, personal data, confidential contracts or customer records into an online AI service.
• Stay honest. Follow your school or employer’s rules about AI help, and put your own judgement in the final version.

Time management and personal productivity

• Plan the day. Write three priorities each morning and do the most important one first.
• Time-block. Put focus work in the calendar as appointments. The Pomodoro timer helps you work in 25-minute blocks.
• Sort tasks into urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither. Do the second group on purpose.
• Batch small tasks such as email into set times, and switch off notifications while you focus.

CV improvement

Lead with results, keep to one or two pages, and match your wording to the job advert honestly. Build one with the resume builder, then check it with the ATS resume checker.

These lessons are original summaries written for GM. Menus and features vary between versions of Microsoft Office, so check your own version.