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Today we're covering:

• Actuals vs budget Excel dashboard made easy
• Quick pivot tables in Power BI
• Easy background removal and video editing in Windows

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🎬 Build a dynamic variance dashboard - Actuals vs. PY & Budget​

Making your budget, actuals, and previous year figures tell their story just got easier!

You see, it can be tough to show budget, actual, and prior year's data neatly in just one view.

How do we best display all these critical numbers and their variances without creating a cluttered and overwhelming report?

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In my latest video, I guide you through each step of setting up an interactive Excel dashboard.

The biggest hurdle is usually the start.

How do we properly bring data over from other sheets and link them to our drop-down selection?

In real-world scenarios data structures typically involve multiple lookup values. Not just one. So what's the solution when a simple VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP doesn't work? At the start of the video, I'll show you how to smoothly navigate this challenge.

Here's what we'll cover:

1. Setting the Stage: We'll kick off by setting up key dynamic elements, like selecting the year and month, to tailor the dashboard to your specific time frame.
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2. Getting the Data: Keeping it dynamic, we'll use formulas to bring over the data. I'll demonstrate the power of XLOOKUP to handle multiple lookup values effortlessly.
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3. Variance Analysis: I'll show you a straightforward formula to calculate variance percentage.
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4. Chart Techniques: Finally, we'll insert and fine-tune charts that compare current year's performance against the previous year, along with budget variances. We'll ensure the design is clear, informative, and clutter-free.

You'll see that creating professional-looking charts in Excel is possible but can be a bit fiddly. It takes some manual adjustments to clean and line everything up.

​Professional & polished visuals in seconds with Zebra BI

An easier way to create impressive dashboards is by using Zebra BI for Office.

This user-friendly add-in swiftly generates fully dynamic and responsive charts (variance calculations included!), simplifying advanced data analysis for you. Moreover, it's IBCS*-certified, ensuring your reports are consistent and professional across various platforms (also available for Power BI).

*International Business Communication Standards are globally recognized guidelines for the effective presentation and visualization of business information. Its key principles state that business visualizations should be clear, concise, consistent. This is what you should always aim for in your dashboards. You can now outsource it to Zebra BI 🦓 😉.

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🤓 Geeky News

📊 Explore - new Power BI feature to create quick pivot tables from published reports

The Explore feature (currently in public preview) offers Power BI users a lightweight, focused experience for ad-hoc data exploration.

If an existing report doesn't answer your questions, you can now quickly create matrix/visual pairs from the underlying data.

Simply add the relevant fields in the Explore window, like you would when creating a pivot table in Excel. Power BI will generate a matrix and suggest a visual that best fits the selected data. You can then save and share your exploration.

This should be particularly useful for business users who need quick insights or specific data points for presentations without the complexity of full report creation.

🔍 Excel vs. Power BI: What's the difference?

By the way, if you're wondering how Excel and Power BI stack up against one another, we just created a cheat sheet for you.

It compares the two apps by cost, target group, sharing potential, flexibility, visualizations etc.

​Download Cheat Sheet

Feel free to share it with your colleagues. We have so many different apps and options to work with these days. A simple comparison like this can be super helpful.

📷 New features in Windows Photos - background removal and more

The Windows Photos app is getting some welcome improvements (currently available to Windows Insiders).

You will soon be able to remove photo backgrounds with a single click. You can leave it transparent or replace with a solid color.

The app now supports sharing individual photos saved on OneDrive, enabling users to copy photo links or send them via email directly from the app.

The whole experience has been redesigned based on user feedback, including easier printing and timeline scrollbar.

📽️ Simple video editing with Clipchamp

A while ago, Microsoft introduced Clipchamp, an online video editing app that simplifies creating professional-looking videos.

​It is now generally available to commercial customers (with Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Business licenses).

Clipchamp is integrated with other Microsoft 365 productivity apps, which makes sharing the produced videos easy. You can share via Stream, Teams, Outlook, depending on your needs.

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👏 Power Stories

We're genuinely grateful for the opportunity to be part of your professional journey.

A special shout-out to Shawn for his diligent work in completing the Fundamentals of Financial Analysis course and for his generous feedback.

Got a success story about using your XelPlus skills? I’d love to hear it! Hit reply to share the details, and inspire other students 😇

See you next week,

Leila️

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