3 things we’re covering today:

• Bad Excel habits to avoid
• Automatic formula suggestions
• A flashback to 1990's Excel…

❌ 7 Things You’re Doing Wrong in Excel​

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I was looking at my YouTube analytics for the first half of 2022, and my most-watched video was this one: 7 Things You’re Doing Wrong in Excel.

So I figured I’d give you a refresher!

Here are 3 of the important ones that resonated most with our viewers:

1. Merging Cells

There is a time and place to use merge cells - usually at the top of your report.

But never merge cells in the middle of your datasets!

It looks good, but makes selecting just the right-hand column a real hassle, because you end up selecting all of your cells.

Instead, use Format Cells → Alignment → Center Across Selection. This gives you the same visual effect, but you can select cells as normal.

2. Manually Adjusting Text in Cells

Have you ever encountered a situation where your text is getting too long for a single cell? Instead of manually cutting and pasting the content into multiple cells, there's a simpler way to handle this:

1. Identify the point where you want to split the text.
2. Highlight the cells starting from the beginning of the text cell until the point where you want the text to flow.
3. Navigate to the "Home" tab in the Excel ribbon.
4. On the right side of the ribbon, locate the "Fill" option and select "Justify."

That's it! By following these steps, Excel will automatically adjust the text within the cells, accommodating the desired split.

No manual cutting, pasting, and realigning required.

3. Not Using Excel Tables

Do you find yourself manually updating charts, formulas, and formatting when new data is added? Converting your data into an Excel table can save you time and effort while ensuring automatic updates.

The steps:

1. Select your entire data range.
2. Navigate to the "Home" tab in the Excel ribbon.
3. On the toolbar, find the "Format as Table" option, or you can use the shortcut key "Ctrl+T."
4. Choose the table format that suits your preference. Excel will prompt you if your table has headers. Select "OK" to proceed.

Voila! The formatting is automatically applied to your data.

To customize the table further, select "None" from the format options and apply your desired formatting manually (if you’ve watched my videos, you’re probably not surprised by this move 😊).

For the other four mistakes, watch my video!

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🤖 Numerous.ai - No More Busywork

I’m thrilled to introduce Numerous.ai - an AI plugin for Excel and Google Sheets that’s here to revolutionize your workflow!

It lets you use ChatGPT as a formula inside of Excel and Google Sheets to automate repetitive tasks.

Just type AI=() then describe what you want:

Use Numerous.ai to automate busywork like:

• writing copy in batch
• reformatting and transforming data
• extracting insights from the text in cells

Anything you can do for one thing with ChatGPT, you can now do for a thousand things at once by simply dragging down the =AI() formula!

And it’s hassle-free: no macros, rate limits, or API keys.

Get Numerous.ai for free right now, either for Excel (numerous.ai/excel) or for Sheets (numerous.ai/sheets).

Thank you to Numerous.ai for sponsoring this issue 🙏

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🤓 Geeky News

📊 Excel - Formula Suggestions (only Excel web for now)
Talking about AI, Formula Suggestions is now available to all Excel web users with English set as their primary language. It streamlines your formula creation process by offering relevant suggestions based on your data and context.

Just type "=" at the beginning of a cell, and Formula Suggestions will show you different formulas that you can apply, along with a specified range.

📊 Excel - Formula by Example (also available only in Excel for the web for now)

Formula by Example is the dynamic version of Flash Fill. It looks for patterns as you enter data in the worksheet, and offers a formula to fill the rest of the column if it recognizes a pattern.

This feature currently supports tables only but Microsoft plans to roll it out to non-table ranges as well.

📊 Excel - New Guided Reapply Feature

Let’s say you’re in an Excel file together with two of your colleagues… and your connection gets interrupted. You’re then prompted to either “Save as” or “Discard” your changes so you can get back to the file. But with the new Guided Reapply feature, you can review the changes and return to the file without worrying that some changes might have gotten lost!

👥 Teams - New Animated Backgrounds​

You can now have a dynamic animation behind you in Teams meetings, for a more immersive experience! Before a meeting starts, on the pre-join screen, select Effects and Avatars>Video effects and select your background.

Only pre-defined animated backgrounds from Microsoft are supported at the moment.

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💚 My Favorite Things

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A friend sent me this Excel ad from 1990. It’s unbelievable how things have changed. Although not everyone in the YouTube comments feels the same. 😆

🚀 Power Stories

Another person just completed my new Automate with Power Query course! Thank you for the kind feedback Peter 💚

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,

Leila

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