XelPlus is a leading online education company, providing training courses for Excel, Power BI, Finance, and Google Sheets. XelPlusβ bestselling courses are popular among financial analysts, CFOβs, and business owners. Technology is changing fast. We help our members turn confusion into confidence with every skill learnt.
Solve the cube every time
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I've been teasing an unconventional project for a while... Well, it's finally here! Dive with me into the world of Rubik's cubes. And let's solve one together. If solving a Rubikβs cube feels impossible, this technique makes it easy for beginners. Promise. Then read on to learn how you can register for my upcoming webinar (on Excel, not cubes π). π¨π¦π₯π©π§β¬ Solve Rubik's Cube in 7 StepsMy son got me hooked. You know I love a challenge and I love to learn new skills. But most tutorials out there were too technical and difficult to follow. Algorithm this, algorithm that... So I broke it down in a way that I was able to fully understand. This is the framework that worked for me. I tested it on my team when they were here in Vienna, and it worked on them too! So now it's your turn. Let's get cubing... Some cube facts:
I'm a long way from any record π but it's still satisfying to solve it. As with any skill - whether it's Excel, or Rubik's cube - mastery is all about practice. So get practicing! π To help you along, we also prepared a handy cheat sheet. Know someone with a cube collecting dust? Share this with them. Trust me, theyβll thank you. π¨π¦π₯π©π§β¬ Join me for a Live WebinarAre you ready to work smarter in 2025? Next Thursday, January 16th, I'll be hosting a webinar showcasing the tools that transform how you use Excel. If you missed the webinar in December, this is your chance to get caught up. See how you can use AI and non-AI tools in Excel to save time and get ahead.
I'm planning more webinars this year. I'm excited about a lot of topics that I'd like to share with you. π€ Geeky Newsπ¨ββοΈ Improve your Copilot prompts with images in Word and PowerPointYou can now add images to your Copilot prompts in Word and PowerPoint. Simply paste or upload the picture and provide the instruction. For example:
By including images, you're making your prompts clearer. This should get you exactly what you need faster. π Generate AI images from other images using Google WhiskIn Google's latest AI experiment, you don't even need words. Whisk from Google Labs lets you create new images using only pictures as prompts. You provide (or randomly generate) pictures to represent the subject, scene and desired style. Whisk will then combine them in a new AI-generated image. You can provide more detail using text prompts, but it's not required. You can also refine the image with additional instructions. Whisk uses the latest version of Google's Imagen 3 image generation model and it's currently available in the US. π₯ Microsoft Teams updates for 2025Teams is getting some updates in early 2025. Keep your eyes out for:
(We've started using it in our team meetings and I must admit - Copilot is really good at cutting out the fluff and leaving only the action items. The AI summaries are quite useful. As long as we remember to enable meeting transcript at the start π )
π Power StoriesCongrats to Sophie for completing Fast Track to Power BI! I'm glad you enjoyed the journey π Wishing you many exciting BI projects ahead! Got a success story about using your XelPlus skills? Iβd love to hear it! Hit reply to share the details, and inspire other students π See you next week, Leila Want more?βΆοΈ Subscribe on YouTube ποΈ Follow us on LinkedIn π₯ Join 400,000+ students in our courses π£ Want to sponsor Between the Sheets? Get in touch here. π¨ If you were forwarded this message, you can get the free weekly email 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. XelPlusβ bestselling courses are popular among financial analysts, CFOβs, and business owners. Technology is changing fast. We help our members turn confusion into confidence with every skill learnt.
The good thing about Excel is formulas update automatically. Change an input, the output adjusts. Ok. You know that. But what if you want the output to be a specific number. What should the input be? Let's say, your boss is standing right by your shoulder, staring at your spreadsheet. "We need to reach $2,500 in revenue this month. How many units do we need to sell?" You could keep tweaking the units cell until you get close. Guess, check, guess again. Pleasant enough if you're alone. Not so...
Most people open ChatGPT, drop in an Excel file, and type two words. Analyze this. What comes back looks good. The numbers, the insights, the tidy summary. But how do you actually know if it's right? Last week I put ChatGPT through a proper test. A messy, multi-sheet sales file with codes, lookups, and calculations it had to figure out on its own. Then I verified the results myself with a data model in Excel. There's a specific workflow that makes the difference between trusting AI blindly...
I always build my formulas the same way. I include extra rows below my data, just in case someone adds more next month. And every time, I get a column with zeros. A blank row that should be invisible suddenly shows up as zero in the spilled list. Annoying, but there are ways around it. My go-to was to wrap in a FILTER. Recently it got a lot simpler. One function. Or even better, one character. Add a dot before or after the colon in your range, like A2:.A100, and Excel quietly drops the blank...