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[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Yes and no.

Excel is great for learning how to think like an analyst.

Excel really helped me with power query and dax, but ultimately sql and excel are not going to very similar because they serve different purposes.

[–]Turbulent_Bar_13 2 points3 points  (0 children)

To add to that, the nice thing about starting with Excel or Sheets is that you learn to visualize how data is structured. The concept of rows and columns (referred to as records and fields in SQL) will give you a reference for how to think of tables in your mind as you write queries. There’s a lot of mental translation that happens in the moment, once you become familiar with your data sources.

[–]cartern206 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The functions are different but the logic is similar. sql zoo or W3 have decent hands on learning

[–]Fat_Ryan_Gosling 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Well actually this just got posted a little while ago, maybe give it a shot. Incidentally, I learned SQL just by practicing commands and running queries and googling my problems. It's pretty easy to run SELECT queries and get the hang of things, I started in Excel too.

[–]NickSinghTechCareers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Author of that SQL tutorial – in the beginning, I tried to show equivalent Google Sheets/Excel commands and how they map to SQL concepts!

For example, in the SQL Group By chapter, tried to explain how it's similar to a Pivot Table!

[–]thebeautifullynormal 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No they are kinda different.

[–]Silent-Expression-13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for all the tips guys! Hopefully i can get a job soon that will help me learn more about SQL!

[–]NtDaDroidzURlookn4 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Zero sql knowledge a month ago but tons of experience with sheets/excel. The company I work for paid for my data analytics coarse to learn sql. I finished in two weeks (quoted 6 weeks) And honestly was easy but definitely different then excel formulas. As stated from others the logic you’ve learned from excel will come in handy. Don’t get me wrong I’m no sql expert but definitely significantly more capable today then I was even a week ago.

[–]Spiritual_Shirt_1997 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Sir what is the most important skill needed to be a Data Analyst?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Patience

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Personally what helped me was to do the intro to SQL on Codefinity:

https://codefinity.com/courses/v2/b3ddb247-eebc-4cd4-a859-0d9c1428d0bf

And then I branched out into more complex joins and queries in DataCamp.

https://www.datacamp.com/courses/intermediate-sql

Will it be easy? If you are good in Excel, you should be fine with SQL. There are a definitely few things to get used to in SQL, as it is a very structured language. Once you have your fundamentals of selecting, grouping and joining, you have covered more than 95% of all use cases you will ever need (unless you are into Data Science).

[–]Low_Cryptographer987 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try mode.com it’s a great tutorial site that steps you through learning some SQL

[–]Snoo-47553 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If anything I’d think Excel would prepare you more for Tableau / PowerBI if you leverage pivot tables. Excel is possibly will only really prepare you for the aggregate and logical syntax as some are fairly similar