Excel University Blog
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If month-end consolidation means manually copying and pasting data from a new file into your report, there is a better way. In this tutorial, we walk through how to use Power Query’s From Folder feature to automatically combine monthly GL files into a single clean table. Once the setup is done, adding a new month…
Month-end variance reporting is one of those tasks that eats up time every single period. We pull actuals from one source, budget from another, and then manually wire everything together. In this tutorial, we walk through three exercises that show how the Claude Excel add-in can change that workflow entirely. We start by asking Claude…
Most PivotTable reports stop at the sum. But Excel’s PivotTable engine has a whole layer of built-in calculations that most people never touch. In this tutorial, we work through three exercises that show how to display values as percentages of the grand total, percentages of a parent group, and running year-to-date totals, all without writing…
Excel Copilot is a powerful assistant, but left to its own devices it tends to improvise. Sometimes that works great. Other times, not so much. The good news is that we can take control by setting up workbook-scoped rules and custom skills. Rules tell Copilot how to behave inside a specific workbook. Skills tell it…
One of the most powerful things we can do with Copilot in Excel is teach it our preferences once and have it follow them every time. Rather than spelling out formatting rules in every single prompt, we can set up standing personalization instructions that Copilot applies automatically. In this tutorial, we cover two approaches: global…
Multi-criteria lookups are one of the most common challenges Excel users face. Whether we need to find a single matching record, retrieve a full list of matching rows, or sum up values across multiple conditions, the approach changes depending on the goal. In this tutorial, we walk through three exercises that show how Copilot in…
Copilot in Excel can save a tremendous amount of time on routine finance tasks. In this tutorial, we walk through three exercises that show how Copilot can assign expense categories from a reference table, generate a formula-based summary, build a PivotTable report, and even write step-by-step documentation for future updates. If your team processes expense…
This tutorial shows how to use Microsoft 365 Copilot like a reusable macro in Excel. Instead of writing VBA or building Power Query solutions, we describe a list of tasks in plain language, paste that list into Copilot, and let it take action directly in our workbook. Video Tutorial We walk through three real-world exercises…
Have you ever opened an old workbook and stared at a formula packed with nested RIGHT, LEN, FIND, INDEX, and MATCH functions, wondering if there is a cleaner way? There is. Copilot in Excel can read those legacy formulas, figure out exactly what they do, and replace them with modern Excel functions that are easier…
Mapping credit card charges to GL accounts is one of those month-end tasks that is tedious enough once, and exponentially more painful every month after that. Raw credit card descriptions are cryptic, the volume is high, and the manual effort adds up fast. In this tutorial, we walk through three exercises that show how to…