My video on Copilot in Excel sparked a lively discussion in the comments.

The concerns that kept popping up were:

"is it going to make me redundant?" and

"is it still worth learning Excel?"

My take: No and yes (especially if you want the first answer to be no).

AI tools like Copilot lower the barrier to entry.

For Excel newbies, it's easier to describe what they want to happen than knowing where to click.

But Copilot doesn't just do stuff for you. It can also be a learning tool.

Ask it to explain what it just did. Or to break down the formula your colleague added to your workbook.

If you're the go-to Excel person, you might find yourself less in demand to fix that VLOOKUP #N/A problem (again!).

You'll have more time for your own projects.

There are tasks where the "old-school" method will be faster than typing out a prompt. You'll still have the edge.

For other tasks, you'll get ahead by putting Copilot to use.

AI is a huge timesaver in the hands of an expert. But it can also be a timewaster if used blindly.

Take writing code, for example. VBA, Python, M...

That's something that generative AI is quite good at.

But it doesn't always get it right.

Troubleshooting wonky code with ChatGPT can be frustrating unless you can tell it specifically what and how to fix.

Advanced Analysis with Copilot & Python in Excel works like magic. But I'm still learning Python to understand what's happening.

AI + Excel isn’t either/or. It’s both/and.

My view:

The people who master both are the ones that get noticed.

This is not the time to get lazy. It's time to get ahead.

In fact, the timing couldn't be better!

We're launching our Black Friday offer tomorrow (Monday, November 18th).

It's nothing like we've ever done. This year, we’ve come up with something truly special to bring you the best value we can offer.

Here's a little hint:

There's an extra surprise on top of our Black Friday deal, but you'll have to be quick to grab it.

Make sure to check your inbox tomorrow. You won’t want to miss this one!

🤓 Geeky News

🔤 Filter for any keyword with the new Text slicer in Power BI

The Power BI Core Visuals Team seems to be increasing the development pace. Some long-teased new visuals and enhancements arrive in the November update. 😊

​The new Text slicer allows you to enter free-text inputs to filter a visual.

It filters the visual by any word or text string in the specified field.

There was no corresponding setting in the "old" slicer. You only had the "contains" filter in the Filter pane, which is less intuitive.

The text slicer should be especially useful for filtering any long-form fields. Think customer reviews or employee surveys.

You can customize the text color and background, spacing, borders, transparency, and buttons.

It's currently in preview. Go to Options > Preview features > Text slicer visual to enable.

📊 More functionality in the new Card visual (break it up with small multiples)

The new card visual (still in preview) was a great improvement when it first came out. It's better for performance and more customizable than the old cards.

And now you can break down the KPIs into categories by adding a chosen field to Small multiples.

You can format the layout, background, and titles. You can even add images to represent the categories.

🤖 Automate tasks with AI Agents on Windows

Originally, the Copilot app for Windows was meant to control your computer settings. This idea was abandoned. The Copilot app offers basic AI chatbot functionality.

But now Microsoft is coming back to the idea. They're exploring a new AI feature for Windows 11 called AI Agents.

The aim is to automate tasks on your PC.

AI Agents interact with your device by understanding what’s on your screen and simulating user actions. They can perform actions like opening apps and changing settings.

It's still early days. The current success rate is just 19.5%.

The Windows Agent Arena project supports developers in building and testing these agents. It’s an open-source playground for researchers to experiment with AI on Windows 11.

The hope is that AI Agents could eventually learn user habits and automate tasks without prompts.

🌈 Google's AI Overviews expand to new countries and languages

AI-generated summaries in Google search results first launched in May for the US market.

This month, they've expanded to more than 100 countries. They're still not available in the EU, though.

Have you used them? Let us know if you find them useful.

👏 Power Stories

I feel that Pushkar's review of the Master Excel Power Query course resonates with my Copilot musings.

	The content was well-structured, and it was a pleasure to learn from Leila. Her enthusiasm and expertise made the course engaging and enjoyable. I learned and was able to train others on my team. Now, we are focusing more on analysis than on generating reports. There are so many takeaways, but the most important is the attitude to solve the problem.
	Pushkar Lahhotii, Power Query Course

Tools like Power Query, Power BI, Power Automate, and now Copilot, are meant to ease the manual workload and let you focus on what's important. That's analyzing the data and problem-solving.

Master the tools that get you to the valuable part faster.

Best,

Leila

P.S. I’ll be back tomorrow with our best Black Friday deal. If you're serious about upskilling, keep an eye on your inbox for something special (and time-sensitive)!