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.
No more errors in your VLOOKUPs
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Thinking VLOOKUP is dead now that we have XLOOKUP? Think again. It's still used across thousands of spreadsheets. It has some limitations, but if you're aware of them and use it correctly, you'll get the job done quickly. Also, this edition of Between the Sheets includes:
If you were forwarded this message, you can get the free weekly email here. 🎬 Master VLOOKUP for effortless reportingIn my latest YouTube video, we're going back to basics. Like I've said in the introduction, reports of VLOOKUP's death are greatly exaggerated. It's the universal lookup function. It works in ANY version of Excel. Thousands of reports still rely on VLOOKUP. You're sure to come across it some time in your career. In the video, I break down the VLOOKUP requirements and take you through multiple examples. You'll learn how to:
Some errors are obvious but still frustrating. Others are more hidden and tricky - easy to miss if you work with hundreds of rows of data. With this primer, you'll be fully aware what to watch out for. If your colleagues struggle with VLOOKUP, share this video with them. And if you think you're a VLOOKUP expert, then jump to minute 9:12 of the video and check if you can figure out how to correct the formulas. If everyone at work has Office 365 then you have XLOOKUP - the newer and superior lookup function. XLOOKUP solves a lot of the limitations of VLOOKUP. But sometimes you have to share your workbooks with stakeholders who don't have Office 365 and no XLOOKUP. You have to make sure that your formulas work for them as well. So don't let your VLOOKUP skills get rusty. 📊 Excel Waterfall Chart Templates Now AvailableMany people asked for it. So, we're now selling our exclusive Excel Waterfall Chart Template package by itself. We’ve got 15 versions pre-made for you in our downloadable Excel file. Ready to plugin your numbers and apply in your reports. All charts are inspired by our customers who needed these in their corporate reports. In the business world Waterfall Charts are a must. But they are VERY tricky to customize in Excel. Last month, this download was a special bonus to celebrate the launch of our Excel Business Charts course. Many asked to purchase this individually so we've decided to make this download available on its own. Thank you for your enthusiasm and suggestions. Your support is what motivates us to offer valuable tools like these. 🤓 Geeky News🤖 Partnership between OpenAI and Stack OverflowInteresting developments in the AI chatbot 'verse. Stack Overflow is a developer community with a popular forum offering coding help. It's less useful for Excel formulas, but has been a helpful resource for VBA, Python or Power Query's M code. Not to mention other coding languages. When ChatGPT first exploded, back in late 2022, Stack Overflow banned AI-generated answers from the forum. Now, they signed a cooperation agreement with OpenAI, ChatGPT's owner. The developer community will provide feedback that could improve the AI models. And ChatGPT users will get answers from Stack Overflow's knowledge archive. This should improve the chatbot's responses to any technical and coding questions. ChatGPT is already useful in that area. But it's also been known to confuse inexperienced developers. Sometimes even hallucinate non-existent solutions. This extra layer of quality assurance sounds like good news. Not all contributors are happy about the deal. Proper attribution is key. 📝 Merge Formatting when pasting to WordMicrosoft listened to user feedback. 🤯 They're changing the default paste option in Word. The current default is "Keep Source Formatting". If you copy/paste a lot from the web (ChatGPT, perhaps?), you have to change the paste option to "Merge Formatting" each time. It can be pretty frustrating. But it's finally changing. "Merge Formatting" will be the new default. This means whatever you paste will match the formatting used in your document. The change is currently rolling out to Office Insiders. 💡 By the way, if you want to paste text with no formatting, use a different shortcut. Instead of Ctrl+V, use Ctrl+Shift+V to Keep Text Only. 🧑💻 New efficiency feature in Edge for tab hoardersDoes your browser look like this? And does your computer sound like a jet engine during takeoff? Modern browsers offer features that lower the strain on the system in the face of tab hoarding. Edge puts tabs to sleep when they're not in use which lowers memory usage. Now it's adding discarding tabs. If a tab is in sleep mode for more than 1.5 days, it will be discarded. A discarded tab releases all system resources. The webpage fully reloads when you finally get back to the tab. Your laptop will likely be grateful. 👏 Power StoriesThis week, I'm excited to share a remarkable story. It's from Christian who used his data skills to make a significant impact. He sent us this message: I've been involved in the United Way (Centraide) campaign of my employer (iA Financial Group) for the past few years. In our small committee, I'm in charge of the data management for over 12k employees across Canada.
To help me manage that, after seeing a few of your videos on YouTube, I decided to enroll in your courses to help me solidify my knowledge and make sure I was rock solid with data management. I took several courses but the ones on Power Query and Power BI were a game changer for me.
Thank you so much in helping me share my expertise on a campaign that donated over $2.6M to United Way across Canada.
Congratulations on this fantastic achievement! 🎗️ I'm very happy to have played a part in his journey. But the credit for this success goes to Christian. It's his dedication and continuous learning that made it possible. Christian wrangled lots of data with the help of tools like Power Automate, Power Query, and Power BI. His skills made a huge difference and created positive change. It makes my day to see initiatives like this come to life. 💚 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 Want more?▶️ Subscribe on YouTube 🖇️ Follow us on LinkedIn 🥇 Join 400,000+ students in our courses 📣 Want to sponsor Between the Sheets? Get in touch here. This newsletter contains affiliate links, which give us a small commission on any purchase made at no cost to you. This helps us run Between the Sheets and bring you updates like this. Thank you for your support! |
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.
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