You have a list of messy text. You need to filter it down to only rows that contain a 4-digit product code.

Me in 2004 would have done it manually. Me in 2014 would have used VBA. Me now?

Just 60 seconds with one formula.

The function is called REGEXTEST. It's relatively new in Excel, and once you see what it does, you'll wonder how you worked without it.

👉 Check out the short video here​

REGEXTEST tells you if a pattern exists. But there are two sister functions also worth knowing: REGEXEXTRACT pulls the matching text out, and REGEXREPLACE swaps it for something else. Together, they handle most of the messy text problems you'd normally solve with nested FIND, MID, and LEN formulas.

I wrote up 9 examples where you'll find these helpful.

This was actually one of the tips I shared at last year's Global Excel Summit.

The Summit is back. May 19-20 in London.

I'll be there along with 20+ other speakers. That's 20+ people who've each spent the past year going deep on something. A feature you've never heard of. A function you know but never thought to use that way. An approach that makes you rethink how you've been doing things.

You always walk away with at least one thing that changes how you work. Usually more.

Plus, it will be a ton of fun!

Can't make it to London? You can join online too.

20% off with code LEILA 👉 globalexcelsummit.com​

🤓 Geeky News

🌈 Google Sheets functions just got more reliable

​Google updated a batch of Sheets functions. The changes are mostly under the hood.

Some functions now surface errors more accurately. Others got additional parameter support. A few have updated calculation logic for more precise results.

The practical upside: less guessing when something looks off, and smoother imports from other spreadsheets.

Nothing to turn on. Already rolled out.

💻 Windows 11 is finally getting a design refresh

Microsoft's design lead announced a batch of visual fixes coming to Windows 11 in April.

Settings pages are getting decluttered. Account dialogs will finally respect your dark mode preference. And you can now rename files in File Explorer using your voice.

Small changes. But if you've ever opened Settings and felt like you were staring at a cluttered drawer, you'll probably notice.

🎨 PowerPoint now checks contrast on real backgrounds

If you put white text over a photo or gradient in PowerPoint, the Accessibility Checker mostly ignored it. It only flagged contrast issues on solid backgrounds.

That's now fixed. The checker looks at what's actually behind your text - images, gradients, layered elements - and flags it if it's hard to read.

Useful if you create presentations for clients or large audiences. Currently rolling out to Microsoft 365 subscribers on Windows and Mac.

🤔 Do you need to learn regex?

Regex patterns can look like someone fell asleep on the keyboard. \d{4} is one of the friendlier ones.

But you don't need to memorize the syntax. These days you can just describe what you want to an AI (e.g., "extract everything that looks like a date") and it'll write the pattern for you. Paste it straight into Excel.

If you do want to learn the basics, RegexOne is a great place to start. Less scary than it looks.

👏 Already using it for my day-to-day

You know Power Pivot is more powerful than regular pivot tables. You've known for a while. It's just never quite made it to the top of the list.

Anirban was in the same spot. Comfortable with pivot tables, curious about Power Pivot and DAX, just hadn't made the move yet.

After completing Excel Data Modeling with Power Pivot & DAX:

Anirban Guha Senior Consultant

My knowledge of Power Pivot had been limited. I used to work a lot on standard pivot tables and had intentions of expanding the horizons to Power Pivot and DAX. This course has opened up the horizon for me. I have already started using it for my day-to-day work. The tasks that took me hours can now be accomplished in minutes.

If Power Pivot's been on your list, this is a good time to move it to the top and save hours.

See you next week,

Leila

When you're ready, here are some ways we can help:

🎓 Join 400,000+ members in our courses​

📺 Get free tutorials on YouTube​

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