In my first Finance job, I had to prepare summary reports from one dataset and upload them to another system.

I created a pivot table from the data.

Pivot tables are perfect for quickly summarizing data. I knew that. 💪

My pivot table looked similar to this. 👇

It had the exact info I needed to upload.

But the system threw errors. It wouldn't accept my upload.

I had to separate out the headers and fill in the blanks.

Well...

I copied and pasted my pivot table on another sheet and manually started re-arranging.

Hours later, I was happily done (it was a lot of data and I was sloooow).

The next day, I was told I had to prepare this every month.

You can imagine my face expression. It wasn't pretty.

I started going nuts with formulas. I think I even wrote VBA code for some bits.

Had I known that with just 2 clicks in the menu, I could have achieved this:

And gotten exactly what I needed.

I discovered it a few months later. Better late than never, right?

All I had to do was go to the Design tab, change the Layout to Tabular and Repeat All Item Labels.

Often difficult problems have simple solutions.

And often, that solution is a pivot table. Or a feature of a pivot table.

That's why I'm so excited for our upcoming Pivot Table Essentials course.

In one of the modules that I recorded last week, we design an interactive dashboard from scratch.

I had an idea about what I wanted to create, but I decided to ask Copilot to see if it had a better idea.

🤖 Copilot designs a dashboard...

So, I asked Copilot to design an HR dashboard.

I provided the sample data and asked for a "minimalistic, practical and meaningful HR dashboard design."

This is what it came up with:

Can you name all the things that are wrong with this design?

Let me start:

• what's that girl doing there? I never asked for that!
• garish colors with not enough contrast.
• inconsistent use of colors - there's no clear pattern.
• visual clutter - too many data points crammed into one space.
• don't even get me started on the typos...

No worries. I didn't take Copilot's advice.

(In the new course, though, I will show you what Copilot in Excel is currently capable of.)

🤓 Geeky News

➰ Upload files to Loop

Microsoft's collaboration platform Loop now supports file upload.

You can collect files related to the project in the project's workspace.

Click on + Create New > Upload a file. Select the file or files and click Open to start uploading.

You can upload Word, PowerPoint, Excel and PDF files under 250 GB each.

It's currently rolling out to Loop Preview.

It's part of the new Loop interface, which makes it easier to create new Loop elements (workspaces, pages, links) and navigate between them.

🧰 PowerToys Workspaces to jumpstart your work

From one Workspace to another - the new utility in PowerToys.

PowerToys is a suite of productivity tools for Windows. Check out my video to see how to install it and what else it offers.

It continues to add new tools to the toolbox. The latest version (0.84) introduces Workspaces.

With Workspaces, you can launch multiple apps at the same time, in your preferred layout and configuration.

First, enable Workspaces in PowerToys settings. Then, launch the Workspaces editor.

Set up all the programs you use for a specific task or project just the way you like them.

Click Create Workspace.

PowerToys will scan your current desktop layout and map all open apps into one Workspace. Give it a name and create a desktop shortcut.

You can set up multiple Workspaces for different tasks.

I expect this will come in handy when I'm recording screencasts 🙂

🌈 Google teams up with Internet Archive

If your job involves any type of research, hopefully you know and use the great tool that is the Wayback Machine.

It's a time machine for the Internet. It lets you access historical versions of websites.

This helps you estimate when certain information was added or removed. You can access websites that are now defunct.

Good news! Internet Archive, the non-profit behind the Wayback Machine, has partnered with Google to include the archived web pages in search results.

Click on the three dots next to the link, go to "More about this page" and then "See previous versions on Internet Archive's Wayback Machine".

It' a really valuable resource. And now it's more accessible as well.

👏 Power Stories

Last week, I went through our course feedback and success stories from students.

These reviews made me proud of what our students achieved.

Our Pivot table Essentials - Basics to Mastery course is planned to go live on Tuesday. Keep an eye out for the announcement email.

Best,

Leila

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