Excel remains the undisputed leader among business tools for data analysis, utilized by organizations around the world to inform decision-making processes. Its widespread adoption and versatile capabilities make it a fundamental element of the business intelligence toolkit. Despite its ubiquitous presence, many only scratch the surface of what Excel can achieve. The gap between how organizations use and view Excel and what they want and expect from the tool is only going to widen in the age of AI. It’s unrealistic to expect users to transition seamlessly from beginner skills to AI power users ..read more

Copilot in Excel offers a wealth of opportunities, particularly for new users, to streamline and automate their work. However, there’s a somewhat paradoxical requirement that this work must be conducted using Excel tables and structured references. Based on my experience as an Excel trainer, many people interested in using Copilot may not have even worked with tables before! Let’s address these concepts one at a time. In this post, I’ll guide you through the essentials of working with tables, ensuring you’re well-prepared to interpret and modify the output that Copilot provides in table format ..read more

Like many Excel trainers, I try not to emphasize Excel add-ins too much in my content. The versioning of Excel is already complicated enough, and adding add-ins can fuel the fire. However, I understand how critical add-ins are to business operations in many organizations. With the rise of Copilot and other generative AI tools, this is an excellent time to explore the past and potential future of Excel add-ins. Interestingly, I hadn’t realized it, but add-ins have been losing popularity over the last few years, at least according to Google Trends (please refresh the page if the below Google Tre ..read more

If you’ve ever struggled with a malfunctioning Excel formula or tried to adapt a VBA script from a tutorial to fit your needs, you know how challenging debugging can be. Copilot for Excel is designed to ease these frustrations by offering corrections, alternative approaches, and deeper insights into Excel’s logic. But while Copilot can assist in refining and troubleshooting existing code, sometimes starting from scratch is more effective. Whether you’re debugging or building anew, Copilot provides the guidance needed to enhance your Excel proficiency and ensure your projects are both robust an ..read more

Recently, I encountered a task in Excel where I needed to identify the top N values within each group. Generally, I’ve found that working with groups in Excel can be less than user-friendly for many tasks, and I was hopeful that some of the newer dynamic array functions might have improved this aspect. Unfortunately, I came up short. While there are certainly some solutions out there that aren’t too complex, in cases like this—where I need to combine two or three functions to achieve the desired result—I often find Python to be more readable and concise. Let’s tackle this using some basic empl ..read more

As an Excel trainer and consultant, I’ve often encountered skepticism about categorizing skills into beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. It’s understandable—Excel is a vast program, and users employ it in myriad ways. It’s rare to find two people with identical skill sets, and even rarer to find someone who fits neatly into a conventional skill level like “intermediate.” However, the complexity of defining skill levels in Excel shouldn’t deter us from trying, much like George Box’s observation that all models are wrong, but some are useful. In many fields—whether it’s martial arts, la ..read more

Modern Data Analytics in Excel is a technical book primarily focused on delivering dense technical information, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea. However, if you delve into a lot of technical writing, you’ll find that much of it can be humorous and irreverent. I’m fortunate to have worked with a publisher, O’Reilly, who encourages authors to embrace their unique, often eccentric, voices. To that end, I’d like to present some of my favorite quotes from Modern Data Analytics in Excel, along with a bit of context and relevant passages from the book. Tables are the portal to Modern Excel Th ..read more

I like to say that good data, much like money, doesn’t grow on trees. It takes work to obtain. Often, this work involves retrieving and combining data from multiple sources using techniques like lookup functions, Power Query joins, and so forth. Copilot is emerging as an incredible tool for helping Excel users avoid getting stuck on the technical side of Excel, allowing them to focus on understanding and acting on their data. However, as a tool based on a large language model, it has been somewhat slow to incorporate certain features. Initially, it was more or less limited to working with a si ..read more

Learning objectives are crucial in instructional design because they provide a clear roadmap for both the instructor and the learner, outlining what is expected to be achieved by the end of a course or lesson. They can help in designing a course or book, selecting appropriate instructional strategies, and assessing learner progress. By explicitly sharing these objectives with learners, instructors set clear expectations, which can increase student motivation and focus. Moreover, when learners are aware of the objectives, they can better monitor their own progress and understanding, leading to ..read more

I see people crafting all sorts of Excel pickup lines, but what about trash talk? After all, how many dates are Excel nerds getting anyway? (And let the trash talk begin.) Here are some Excel put-downs and trash talk phrases, in no particular order: “Your attempt at automation is like a self-driving car … from the Flintstones era.” “Your macro is like a soap opera. It runs forever and nothing ever happens.” “Your workbook is so brittle, it breaks faster than your New Year’s resolution.” “Oh, you’re still using HLOOKUP()? That’s cute.” “Your workbook freezes more than Siberia.” “1980’s video g ..read more