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.
Why your Power Query breaks on other computers
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You import a CSV in Power Query... Dates have errors. Numbers won't calculate. What just happened? Here's what's usually happening. Your computer is reading the file with your regional settings. So if your CSV uses commas as decimal separators (like 1,5) but your system expects dots (like 1.5), Power Query gets confused. Same with dates. Is 04/05/2025 April 5th or May 4th? Depends on where you are. The fix: Change Type Using Locale. But here's the part that trips people up - order matters. When you import data, Power Query often applies a "Changed Type" step automatically. If you try to fix the locale after that step, it won't help. The damage is already done. You need to either delete that automatic step first, or insert a new step before it. Click on the column type and choose Using Locale. Then pick the locale that matches your source data - not your computer. Once it's set, the file works the same way for everyone. Colleague in Germany, teammate in the US - doesn't matter. It just works. 🤓 Geeky News💻 Windows is getting some long-overdue upgradesRolling out to Windows Insiders throughout March and April, and there's a lot to like. Taskbar repositioning is finally happening - top, left, or right, your choice. File Explorer is getting a speed boost with smoother navigation and less flickering. System updates will be less pushy: skip them during setup, shut down without installing, pause them longer. And Copilot is being pulled back from apps where it didn't really belong, like Notepad, Snipping Tool, or Photos. Not a full public release yet, but Insiders can start testing these soon. 📋 Microsoft 365 can now auto-generate documents from formsBuild a Word template, attach a form to it, and every time someone fills out the form, a properly formatted document gets generated automatically. Think offer letters, contracts, invoices, compliance reports - anything your team creates repeatedly. AI detects the fields for you, no code needed. Documents live in SharePoint and stay consistent every time. You do need a Copilot license to build the templates, but not to generate documents from them. Rolling out now to early preview tenants. ✒️ You can draw your actual signature in Microsoft 365No more printing, signing, and scanning. eSignature for Microsoft 365 now lets you draw your signature directly on PDFs using a stylus, mouse, or touchscreen. Multiple signers can each choose to type or draw. Rolling out worldwide now, with up to five free requests per month through June 2026. For more ideas on how to attach electronic signatures for free, check out this video. ❤️ 3,000,000. Thank you.Ten years ago, my corporate friends laughed at me for starting a YouTube channel. Best decision they ever made fun of. Read what 10 years and 3 million subscribers taught me 🙌 From the other sideBeing on this side of the camera, I have no idea what's happening on the other side. So when a message like this comes in... ...it just makes my day. Truly. 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 👥 Train your whole team with our courses. Team pricing and progress tracking - reply for details. This newsletter contains affiliate links, which give us a small commission at no cost to you. 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.
Let's say you're waiting for colleagues to submit the latest data. You need to check if the files came in. And if the data is complete. So you start opening files one by one. It's tedious. And completely avoidable. When Microsoft released the new IMPORTCSV function, I wasn't ready to throw Power Query out the window. It still handles far more sources and does things this new function simply can't. But it got me thinking. What if you could peek at a CSV without fully loading it? Just enough to...
Excel's chart formatting menu is dangerous. Not because it's bad. Because it gives you too many options. And some of them have no place in a professional report. Take this social media trend: pasting images directly into your chart bars. Looks creative. Gets lots of views on YouTube. But would you put that in front of your manager? In just a few extra clicks, the same data can look like this: Same logos. Matching brand colors. Just used with intention. 👉 Watch: How to build this chart in just...
Excel remembers things you teach it. That's not AI. It's a Custom List. And it's been hiding in Excel Options the whole time. That's how you get to automatically fill down months or days of the week. And you can build your own: team names, department codes, project phases - anything you type over and over. Excel learns the order too. So "Mon, Tue, Wed..." or your custom categories fill in automatically. The list lives on your device, not in the file. Set it up once. Use it in every workbook,...