Excel Tips

Excel 2024: Eliminate VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP with the Data Model »

June 6, 2024

Say that you have a data set with product, date, customer, and sales information. The IT department forgot to put sector in there. Here is a lookup table that maps customer to sector.

Excel 2024: Ask OpenAI Questions from Excel Using Excel Labs »

June 5, 2024

A team of Microsoft researchers in Cambridge England have developed a free add-in for Excel called Excel Labs. At press time, there are three tools in the add-in: The Advanced Formula Environment, a function called LABS.GENERATIVEAI, and a Python Editor.

Excel 2024: Using Artificial Intelligence with Copilot for Excel »

June 4, 2024

Copilot is a broad term for several features at Microsoft. Each of the apps Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams have different functionality. There is also a Business Chat feature in Copilot that uses a Large Language Model along with data in your calendar, e-mails, chats, documents, meetings and contacts to perform tasks. The descriptions below are of the Copilot tools in Excel.

Excel 2024: Ask Excel's A.I. a Question About Your Data »

May 30, 2024

A Natural Language Query feature rolled out to Microsoft 365 in late 2019. The feature uses artificial intelligence to answer questions about your data.

Excel 2024: See Why GETPIVOTDATA Might Not Be Entirely Evil »

May 29, 2024

Most people first encounter GETPIVOTDATA when they try to build a formula outside a pivot table that uses numbers in the pivot table. For example, this variance percentage won't copy down to the other months due to Excel inserting GETPIVOTDATA functions.

Excel 2024: Tip: Replace a Long Slicer with a Filter Drop-Down »

May 27, 2024

Slicers can get too large if there are too many tiles. The figure in this sample shows a slicer with 146 items. The Slicer is already too big, and you aren't seeing all of the tiles nor all of the text in the tiles.