XelPlus is a leading online education company, providing training courses for Excel, Power BI, Finance, and Google Sheets. XelPlus’ bestselling courses are popular among financial analysts, CFO’s, and business owners. Technology is changing fast. We help our members turn confusion into confidence with every skill learnt.
I tested the new COPILOT function - here's what you need to know
|
I finally got my hands on Excel’s brand-new COPILOT() function. It brings the power of generative AI to your formulas. It’s only just rolling out to Insiders, so most people won’t see it yet. (Others won't see it because they don't have the Copilot license... 👀) Still, it already has the community buzzing. Some are calling it the “function that replaces all others” (spoiler: it doesn’t). Others say it’s pointless. As usual, the truth sits somewhere in between. In the right scenarios, it can save you serious time. In the wrong ones, it’ll trip you up. In the video, I showcase 3 cases where it really makes a difference. I'm talking hours of work shaved off. Towards the end of the video I cover the Pros and Cons - just so you have the full picture. 🤓 Geeky News📱 Microsoft 365 app is getting demotedThe Microsoft 365 mobile app (later renamed Microsoft 365 Copilot) lets you make quick edits of your Office files on the go. Well... no more. Starting September 15th on iPhone (with iPad and likely Android to follow), it's all Copilot. You'll be able to view your file and ask questions about it. But if you want to tweak an Excel cell, change a line in a Word doc or add something to a PowerPoint slide, you'll be bounced to the standalone apps instead! 📄 Adobe reimagines Acrobat with AIAcrobat is no longer just a PDF editor. The new Acrobat Studio adds creative tools from Adobe Express and AI-powered workspaces called PDF Spaces. You can drop in up to 100 documents, then use AI assistants to summarize, highlight, or create study guides. And because Express is built in, you can turn that info into infographics, slides, or flyers without leaving the app. Early access available until the end of October. 💾 Improvements to Word's AutoSaveOffice files stored in OneDrive come with AutoSave but only after you save it first. With the latest update - now rolling out to Insiders - every new file in Word for Windows is born in the cloud. It's saved automatically to your preferred cloud folder (yes, no longer just OneDrive). You can still rename and move files whenever you want. Just hit Save to pick a name or a different spot. If you close a file without saving, Word will ask whether to Discard or Keep it. Empty files are discarded automatically, so your cloud storage doesn’t get cluttered with throwaways. And if you prefer the old way, you can turn this feature off in Word Options. Excel and PowerPoint are set to follow later this year. 🤔 Did You Know?AutoSave first showed up in Excel back in 2016. It ended the nightmare of losing hours of work just because you forgot to hit Ctrl+S. But it’s a double-edged sword. AutoSave can also lock in changes you didn’t mean to keep. That's why some people prefer to turn it off... Thankfully, with Version History, you can turn back time. This quick video shows how. So tell me… what’s your worst Excel nightmare? 👏 When the hidden doors open...Many of us already enjoy working in Excel. But there’s a point where it stops being “useful” and starts feeling powerful. That’s where Matt is now. Tasks that once felt routine - budgets, models, reports - suddenly became opportunities to build interactive solutions that scale with him. Because he dared to open a new door. The truth is: those doors are there for all of us. Sometimes we just need a guide to show us where to look. Essentials shows you the way in. Black Belt shows you how far you can go. Best, Leila |
Leila Gharani - XelPlus
XelPlus is a leading online education company, providing training courses for Excel, Power BI, Finance, and Google Sheets. XelPlus’ bestselling courses are popular among financial analysts, CFO’s, and business owners. Technology is changing fast. We help our members turn confusion into confidence with every skill learnt.
When I worked in finance, the reports I had to build almost always came from more than one sheet. A lot of copy-pasting. These days one formula can do that for you. It's called VSTACK. It stacks your sheets into one list. It stays live, works in Excel Online, and anyone who opens the file knows exactly what's happening. Most people who use VSTACK, use it to glue two ranges together, and think that's it. But that's barely scratching the surface. I put together my top 6 VSTACK tips in this new...
The most common way people mess up their own spreadsheets is a button sitting right there on the Home tab. Merge & Center. It's one of the first buttons anyone learns in Excel, and it does exactly what it says: centers a title, makes a header look tidy. The trouble starts the moment someone uses it inside the data instead of just the header row. Try to sort... yep, it doesn't work. Try to sum a column with a merged cell sitting in the middle of it. Column E, for example: Exactly. You'd have...
What do you do when your data goes wide? Picture a sales table with one row per rep, but then Sales_Jan, Units_Jan, Sales_Feb, Units_Feb, and so on, all the way to December. It just keeps growing wider with every month you add. Try to filter by month, or build a pivot table around it, and you're stuck. Month isn't a value in this table. It's baked into the column headers. You need a way to turn the wide into long so that it's ready for analysis. And there's a Python function that does exactly...