FILTER with Multiple Criteria (finally decoded)

FILTER with multiple criteria? This used to break my brain.

I’d stack together these fragile formulas - like Excel Jenga - hit Enter…

…and brace for... #VALUE!

It felt like defusing a bomb.

Turns out, I just needed to understand how FILTER handles multiple conditions.

And now? It’s my favorite Excel function by far.

👉 Check out the blog post that walks you through the exact steps to:

✔️ Filter rows that match multiple criteria

✔️ Decode that cryptic * and + logic

✔️ Return only the columns you want

✔️ Sort cleanly - even with blank rows

📥 Practice workbook included.

We’ve seen a wave of searches and questions about this lately and I couldn't have you missing out on how cool FILTER is.

Once you learn it, you'll never go back to manual filters again.

Let’s end the FILTER confusion once and for all!

🚨 Warning: Fake Listings of Our Courses

We’ve recently seen unauthorized websites pretending to sell XelPlus courses.

These sites look convincing, but after you pay, you often get nothing.

Last week, we've been alerted by one of our learners, Oliverta, who wrote:

“I recently purchased your course from another website, thinking it was your official platform. However, I have not received the download yet…”

To be clear:

✅ The safest place to access our courses - with full support - is XelPlus.com.

💬 If you’re ever unsure whether a site is legit, just reach out to us directly.

We want you to stay safe and get the real experience, the way we intended.

Security handled. Now back to our regularly scheduled geekery...

🤓 Geeky News

➿ Loop workspaces now in Team

You can now create Loop workspaces directly from Teams. Just add Loop as a tab in any Teams channel.

This lets everyone in the channel collaborate in real time on shared pages - no separate invites needed.

✔ One workspace per channel

✔ Members get access automatically

✔ Workspace stays linked to the team, even if people join or leave

You can rename the workspace, move content as projects shift, and re-pin it if the tab gets removed.

What is Loop?

Loop is Microsoft's collaboration platform. Great for organizing ideas, documents, and plans in one place.

Fun fact: We use Loop to plan and write this very newsletter.

📂 AI coming to File Explorer

Microsoft is testing new right-click AI shortcuts in File Explorer.

They're starting with images, with more file types to follow.

These "AI Actions" let you do things like:

Blur or erase parts of a photo
Remove backgrounds
Use Bing visual search
(Soon) Summarize or extract info from Office files

That's in addition to the Ask Copilot option, which sends the right-clicked file to the Copilot app.

Currently rolling out to Windows Insiders; no timeline yet on general release.

🙂 So what was the shortcut for emojis again?

One of the Windows shortcuts I use most often is Win + dot.

It brings up the emoji picker.

But not many people know about it.

And until now, there wasn’t another way to find it.

Windows 11 taskbar will soon be getting a dedicated system tray icon for "emoji & more".

Cause it's not just emojis either. It's gifs, symbols, and another access point to clipboard history.

So next time you can't find the emoji shortcut in your memory, you'll find it in the system tray.

💚 Did You Know?

Multiple boxes to check? You can do it all in one go.

The Space key checks (and unchecks) the selected checkbox(es).

That's if you're using the new in-cell checkboxes.

👏 Growth Comes from Curiosity

There’s something powerful about choosing to grow - specially when you don’t have to.

That’s what Marzena did.

She’d been using Excel for years. She could’ve stayed in her comfort zone. Assumed she already knew enough.

Instead, she signed up for our Pivot Table Essentials course... just hoping to pick up a few new tricks.

And she walked away with a lot more than that:

🎉 Huge congrats to Marzena on completing the course!

It’s this kind of mindset - staying curious even when you already know a tool, that separates everyday users from real problem-solvers.

See you next week,

Leila

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Leila Gharani - XelPlus