IT Essentials · Beginner
Microsoft Office
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and shared files as professional tools: documents that update themselves, spreadsheets that stay correct, presentations that work in the room, and files nobody overwrites.
IT Essentials program
- Lessons
- 4
- Study time
- 45m
- Level
- Beginner
- Program
- IT Essentials
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4 lessons
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About this course
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and shared files are where most office work in Ghana actually happens, and most people use a fraction of them badly. This course teaches them as professional tools: documents that maintain themselves, spreadsheets that stay correct, presentations that work in the room, and files nobody overwrites.
In Word you will build a long document on styles, headings and an automatic table of contents. In Excel you will rebuild a spreadsheet that reconciles, with real formulas, validation and a pivot summary instead of hand-typed totals. In PowerPoint you will structure an argument and deliver it. The final lesson covers shared work: versions, comments, permissions and a folder structure a team can follow.
The project is a reusable template pack plus a rebuilt spreadsheet and a delivered presentation, so you leave with assets rather than notes.
Who this is for
- You use Office daily and suspect several things are being done the long way.
- You produce reports, budgets or presentations that other people depend on.
- You are preparing for administrative, finance, teaching or management work.
Before you start
- A computer with Word, Excel and PowerPoint — Microsoft 365 or Office 2016 and later; LibreOffice works if that is what you have
- Basic file handling: saving, opening and copying documents
- About four hours a week for two weeks
Where it leads
- Data Science & Analytics takes the spreadsheet skills into real analysis and SQL.
- Computer Basics covers the machine itself if any of the fundamentals still feel shaky.
- Office fluency is the most commonly listed requirement in Ghanaian job adverts, and the template pack you build here follows you into every role afterwards.
Tools you will use
What you will build
- 1A reusable Word template with styles and an automatic table of contents
- 2A rebuilt spreadsheet that reconciles, with validation and a pivot summary
- 3A presentation structured around one argument, rehearsed
- 4A shared folder system with naming rules and permissions
- 5A checklist for sending files that other people can open
Curriculum
2 modules · 4 lessons · 45m
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01 · Documents and data
Word documents that stay consistent, and Excel workbooks that stay correct.
1. Word: professional documents
A long document is a system, not a page of typing. This lesson covers the tools that make a report maintainable — styles for headings and body text, a table of contents that updates itself, sections and page numbering, tables, captions, cross-references — plus the professional habits that decide whether a document survives review: track changes, comments, spell check in the right language, and a final review pass. It ends with a complete formatting and proofing checklist.
2. Excel: spreadsheets that stay correct
Most spreadsheets are wrong, and most of them are wrong for the same few reasons: numbers stored as text, formulas copied pasted without understanding relative and absolute references, lookups that break silently, and data typed into a layout that cannot be analysed. This lesson covers the structure that makes a workbook reliable — one table of data, defined columns, no merged cells in data — plus the formulas that do the real work: `SUM`/`AVERAGE` with criteria, `IF`, `VLOOKUP` versus `XLOOKUP`/`INDEX MATCH`, pivot tables, conditional formatting and data validation.
02 · Presentations and collaboration
Slides that survive being presented, and files that survive being shared.
1. PowerPoint: presentations that work
A presentation is a performance with visual support, not a document projected on a wall. This lesson covers the structure that makes an argument — one idea per slide, a headline that says the point — as well as the technical craft: the slide master and layouts that make twenty slides consistent in minutes, type and contrast that read from the back of a room, charts instead of tables of numbers, images instead of bullets, and the delivery habits that decide whether the audience remembers anything at all.
2. Collaboration: files, email and shared work
Office work is shared work, and the failures are almost always the same: three versions of a document, files attached that nobody can find later, a spreadsheet overwritten by somebody working offline, and a password-protected file whose password has been forgotten. This lesson covers OneDrive and SharePoint sharing, real-time collaboration, version history, comments and notifications, email practice in an office context, and backup — the habit that prevents a lost month of work.
4 lessons, including the a reusable document template, a rebuilt spreadsheet that reconciles, a delivered presentation and a shared file system project. Sign in and buy the program to open them. Create an account to track progress and earn the certificate.
Taught by a working engineer
Selina Adjei — Engineering Lead. Every lesson is written to be used, not just watched.
A verifiable certificate
Complete every lesson and you get a certificate with a code and QR that an employer can check in seconds.
Practice in the Code Lab
Write and run code in the browser while you learn, with your work saved to your own account.
Still have a question?
Email hello@codemasterghana.com or send a message from the contact page — we answer within two working days, in English or Twi.