Read a selection of tips & tricks that make using Microsoft Excel, Power BI, SQL and more way easier!

In this article, we look at how compound annual growth rate (CAGR) as the “average speed” at which an investment or business metric grows over time, smoothing out year-to-year volatility. It walks through the manual CAGR formula— (Ending Value / Beginning Value)^(1/Years) − 1 —then demonstrates four Excel-based methods to automate the calculation: the direct formula, RRI, POWER, and RATE functions.

Build a simple Excel calculator to forecast investment growth with compound interest.

Thirty-four Microsoft 365 Copilot prompts that work, grouped by app: Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams meetings and Copilot Chat across your files and mail, plus the follow-up prompts that fix a weak first answer. Each has a note on what to change for your own case and the mistake that gets a vague result. Copy from the page or download the printable PDF. No sign-up.

Thirty-two DAX measures with the formula and the mistake people make with each: the base aggregations, iterators, CALCULATE with every flavour of ALL, time intelligence from year-to-date to rolling twelve months, inactive relationships, variables and SWITCH. Read it on the page, copy any measure, or download the two-page printable PDF. No sign-up.

Forty SQL queries with the syntax and the mistake people make with each: selecting and filtering, GROUP BY and HAVING, inner, left and anti joins, subqueries and CTEs, CASE, text and date functions, window functions, and how to change data without wrecking it. Written for SQL Server, works almost unchanged elsewhere. Read it on the page, copy any query, or download the printable PDF. No sign-up.

This free, printable Excel Skills Self-Assessment helps you quickly gauge your level and pick the right next step in your learning path. It contains 15 multiple-choice questions spanning navigation, formulas, lookups, tables, PivotTables, charts, dynamic arrays, Power Query, and more. You’ll score yourself and interpret the result to see whether you’re Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced - then follow tailored course recommendations based on your score.

Thirty-four Excel formulas with the syntax, a worked example and the mistake people make with each: SUM to SUBTOTAL, IF and IFS, XLOOKUP and INDEX-MATCH, SUMIFS and COUNTIFS, the text and date functions, and the dynamic array functions in Excel 365. Read it on the page, copy any formula, or download the two-page printable PDF. No sign-up.

Download a staff-list workbook and practise calculating age from a date of birth with DATEDIF, a fixed reporting date and checks for blanks, future dates and leap-day birthdays.

Clean a genuinely messy Excel export with Power Query: strip junk rows, standardise text, fix data types, then refresh next month's file in one click. No formulas.