Stop copy-pasting. Start automating.


✨ Found something new hiding in plain sight.

Opened Excel… and nearly missed it.

There’s a new Get Data interface rolling out in the Beta channel.

Cleaner design, searchable source list, and everything in one place.

A small UI change, but a great excuse to revisit one of Excel’s most powerful tools: Power Query.

If you're pulling tables from PDFs, scraping web data, combining files from a folder, or just cleaning up messy CSVs...

Power Query makes it repeatable, reliable, and refreshable.

It's a skill that saves time again and again.

No more rework. Yep. No more copy-paste.

Check your Data tab. If the new interface isn’t there yet, the old one still works just fine.

The real upgrade is learning how to use it. It's never too late.

Create interactive learning in minutes — right in PowerPoint

You’ve got Excel for data, Outlook for workflow, Teams for communication… and PowerPoint for building advanced learning content. Does that sound like a gimmick?

With iSpring Suite, PowerPoint becomes a surprisingly powerful training tool — equipped with everything you need to create professional, interactive courses:

✅ 14 assessment types with branching scenarios and cheat-proof scoring

✅ Video lectures and screencasts — ideal for software tutorials and explainer content

✅ Role-play simulations to build communication, sales, and soft skills

✅ Real-time collaboration, lifelike voiceovers, and unlimited AI

✅ 127,000+ high-quality assets, including course templates, characters, and backgrounds

See for yourself with a free 14-day trial — no credit card required:

👉 Try iSpring Suite for free


Many thanks to iSpring for sponsoring this newsletter.

🤓 Geeky News

💬 See chat while presenting in Teams

Ever shared your screen in Teams… and missed a question because the chat window was buried?

Now, Teams lets you view meeting chat while presenting, without switching windows.

Just hit the Chat button during a screen share to open a private panel that only you can see. It floats on top, so you can move or minimize it as needed. No more missing questions mid-presentation.

You can reply directly from the panel, making it easy to stay engaged while keeping your slides (and your cool) on track.

Available now in Public Preview or Microsoft 365 Targeted Release.

🎬 Bing now makes videos from your text

Got an idea? Bing can turn it into a video. No editing skills required.

The new Bing Video Creator lets you type a short description (the Microsoft marketing team went with “a small otter making pizza in Italy” 🤨) and generates a 5-second video using AI.

It’s powered by OpenAI’s Sora, but unlike Sora, it's free.

You can make up to three at a time, pick fast or standard generation speed, and get notified when your video’s ready.

The more detail you give - camera angles, setting, style - the better the result.

Sharing is easy, and your creations are saved for 90 days.

It’s live now on the Bing Mobile app, with desktop and Copilot integration coming soon.

If you’ve been curious about AI video but didn’t want to pay or wait in line, you can now give it a try.

📸 Google's Ask Photos will have to wait

Google rolled out, then promptly rolled back (or paused) a new AI feature in the Google Photos library.

The idea behind Ask Photos is to let you search your photo collections with natural questions like “What did we eat in Detroit?” or “Show me our trip to Yosemite".

Google says the AI-powered tool isn’t quite ready, citing latency, quality, and user experience as reasons. Translation: it was too slow, too inconsistent, and kinda clunky to use.

The rollout was limited, and Google promises a better version in about two weeks.

Until then, the dream of chatting with your photo library is on hold.

🐍 New course coming soon!

Final videos are almost done.

Early students have already completed the first lessons of Python in Excel for the Real World, and the feedback’s been 🔥.

If you’ve ever hit Excel’s limits and thought:

“There’s got to be a better way to do this...”

There is. And it’s finally inside Excel.

This course shows you how to solve real business problems using Python, without leaving the Excel grid.

🗓️ Launches June 25. Mark your calendar. I've been working hard on this one. It's going to change how you work with data.

👏 The foundation for clean, reliable reports

Andrew put it perfectly: There’s Excel... and then there’s Excel with Power Query.

What started with a nudge from a friend and a beginner course turned into a rock-solid reporting workflow - automated, repeatable, and refreshable.

Ready to follow Andrew’s path?

See you next week,

Leila

Want more?

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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.

Read more from Leila Gharani - XelPlus

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