ABSTRACTAimed primarily for educational use, an effective platform for 2‐dimensional FE stress analysis was developed by making use of the Excel‐VBA program. With the undergraduate students as the target group, the educational emphasis was placed on the practical application of linear elasticity and the proper use of the FE method. As a part of the project, the students were requested to solve a stress concentration problem by conducting mesh convergence study using Excel‐VBA functionality. They generated the mesh manually by drawing the figures on the grid‐paper. This time consuming experience is usually sufficiently memorable to provide the student with the sense of the required mesh size for proper FE analysis. In addition, the use of tabular data in Excel allows the students to easily conduct the FE analysis. Further, the reports by students clearly manifest that the reliability of the FE method is highly dependent on the experience and the theoretical knowledge of the engineer. In sum, Excel‐VBA is a highly efficient tool for introducing the FE method and can motivate the students to study this subject further. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 25:311–319, 2017; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI 10.1002/cae.21799