GIS and Mapping in Excel

Students in this course can develop essential spreadsheet skills, while learning to make maps inside an Excel worksheet, using the ArcGIS for Office software.  This course is designed for the newcomer to Excel to learn essential spreadsheet skills, which are important in many career paths.

This course builds a foundation for students interested in spreadsheeting, starting at the very beginning with a simple Excel orientation and moving to methods for computations and essential tabular functions.  Further lessons will teach how to use filters, pivot tables, vlookup functions, and how to create charts in Excel.

Students will learn how to obtain tabular data from the web and reformat that data for ingestion into the GIS (Geographic Information System). GIS datasets are based on tables that contain spatial and non-spatial content.  Increasingly, map makers rely on the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software to manage data tables and improve and ensure data quality. The ArcGIS for Office software (made by Esri, Inc) puts Excel tabular data into a GIS and then onto a map. There are then many options for managing the map’s appearance conducting spatial analysis.  

ArcGIS for Office lets users export their Excel maps into interactive Powerpoint slides, which useful for sharing maps with colleagues. In addition to sharing maps, other popular methods for formatting and communicating a spreadsheet’s content will be covered, such as dashboards, and other layout tools.  

There is no prerequisite GIS knowledge or Excel knowledge needed to take this course. 

This course will be offered in hybrid mode so students can choose to take the course in the TESC Computer Applications Lab. Students who have a home computer - with Windows operating system - and the ability to install the ArcGIS for Office software can take the course over Zoom simulcast.  Two monitors are recommended to take this course from a home computer.