XelPlus is a leading online education company, providing training courses for Excel, Power BI, Finance, and Google Sheets. XelPlusโ bestselling courses are popular among financial analysts, CFOโs, and business owners. Technology is changing fast. We help our members turn confusion into confidence with every skill learnt.
Work hard and you'll be noticed
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There's a person on almost every team that everyone respects technically. And nobody wants to work with. Maybe you've sat in a meeting with them and left feeling a little smaller than when you walked in. Early in my career, I think I was sometimes that person. You see, I went by the advice "work hard and you'll be noticed" for years. Turned out to be the worst advice I ever got. What I missed for a long time: doing my job well was expected. That's why I was hired. But it wasn't what was going to get me promoted. Everyone talks about the importance of skills and network. I was the same. But over the years I noticed there was a third thing that mattered just as much, and I'd been completely ignoring it. Recently I've been thinking about it and made a short on it. ๐ค Geeky Newsโฑ๏ธ Windows Clock is becoming a focus toolMicrosoft is redesigning the Clock app's Focus Sessions feature. Bigger task pane, background music, customizable timers, and a Reflection check-in after each session where you rate how focused you actually were. There are also references to AI features in the code: things like breaking tasks into steps and tracking productivity patterns. Mostly student-focused for now, and requires newer hardware. Still early. A lot of it shows "Coming soon" placeholders. But if you use Focus Sessions already, the upgrade looks promising. ๐ Gemini in Google Docs now remembers your preferencesGood news if you're using AI in Google Workspace. You can now give Gemini standing instructions in Google Docs. Things like "always use bullet points" or "keep it concise and professional." Set it once, and it applies every time. No need to repeat yourself every session. Rolling out now to most paid Workspace plans. ๐ Office LTSC 2021 end of support: six months to goIf your organization is still running the 2021 perpetual Office license, October 13, 2026 is the date to know. After that, no more security patches, bug fixes, or technical support. Microsoft's recommended path is Microsoft 365. If moving to the cloud isn't an option, Office LTSC 2024 is the supported on-premises alternative. Worth flagging to your IT team if you haven't already. ๐ Welcome back, ClippyMicrosoft quietly moved the Copilot button from the Excel ribbon into the grid. It now floats inside your spreadsheet. There's no way to hide it. You can dock it to make it less obtrusive... ...but it resets every time you open a new file. ๐ ๐ Finally finance fluentSome people stay quiet in finance meetings. Not because they don't have anything to say. Because they don't fully understand what's being discussed. The ratios, the statements, the terminology... it all flies past and you find yourself just nodding along. I've been there. So has Michel. After taking Fundamentals of Financial Analysis, here's what he said: If that nod-and-hope feeling is familiar, take a look at how the course can help you. See you next week, Leila P.S. I've been busy working on my keynote for the Global Excel Summit. It's not too late to register. When you're ready, here are some ways we can help: ๐ Join 400,000+ members in our coursesโ ๐บ Get free tutorials on YouTubeโ ๐ฅ 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. XelPlusโ bestselling courses are popular among financial analysts, CFOโs, and business owners. Technology is changing fast. We help our members turn confusion into confidence with every skill learnt.
When I worked in finance, the reports I had to build almost always came from more than one sheet. A lot of copy-pasting. These days one formula can do that for you. It's called VSTACK. It stacks your sheets into one list. It stays live, works in Excel Online, and anyone who opens the file knows exactly what's happening. Most people who use VSTACK, use it to glue two ranges together, and think that's it. But that's barely scratching the surface. I put together my top 6 VSTACK tips in this new...
The most common way people mess up their own spreadsheets is a button sitting right there on the Home tab. Merge & Center. It's one of the first buttons anyone learns in Excel, and it does exactly what it says: centers a title, makes a header look tidy. The trouble starts the moment someone uses it inside the data instead of just the header row. Try to sort... yep, it doesn't work. Try to sum a column with a merged cell sitting in the middle of it. Column E, for example: Exactly. You'd have...
What do you do when your data goes wide? Picture a sales table with one row per rep, but then Sales_Jan, Units_Jan, Sales_Feb, Units_Feb, and so on, all the way to December. It just keeps growing wider with every month you add. Try to filter by month, or build a pivot table around it, and you're stuck. Month isn't a value in this table. It's baked into the column headers. You need a way to turn the wide into long so that it's ready for analysis. And there's a Python function that does exactly...