Tips & tricks For Microsoft Excel, Power BI, SQL and more

The article explains Excel’s LEN function, which counts the number of characters in a cell - including spaces, punctuation, and numbers—to aid data validation and cleaning. It covers the simple syntax (=LEN(text)) and walks through examples like checking 5-digit employee IDs and totalling character counts across multiple cells.

This article highlights the importance of Microsoft Excel in modern business and the gap between daily use and formal training. It introduces the 5 best online Excel training courses—Coursera, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Office Courses, and Future Savvy—each catering to different needs, budgets, and learning styles. The guide emphasises building foundational skills, mastering formulas, and using structured learning for long-term growth.

This article explains how to use conditional formatting in Excel based on the value of another cell, making it easier to visualise and track data. It provides a step-by-step guide, including how to apply formulas like =$D2="Paid" to highlight rows automatically. The article also shares practical use cases, such as monitoring sales goals, invoice statuses, project deadlines, and inventory levels.

This article explains how to easily compare two columns in Excel, especially when working with large datasets. It outlines common methods such as using formulas like IF, EXACT, and VLOOKUP, as well as conditional formatting to highlight differences or similarities. The guide also covers why column comparison is useful for identifying duplicates, missing values, and patterns in data. Finally, it offers best practices like ensuring data compatibility, verifying formulas, and labelling columns clearly for accuracy.

Mastering Excel formulas and functions boosts efficiency, accuracy, and workflow, so the article offers a downloadable PDF of 25 essential formulas - ranging from SUM and IF to VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP - each with syntax and practical use cases. The article also spotlights five must-know Excel visualizations (heat maps, box plots, Pareto charts, histograms, and scatter plots) and compares Excel’s hands-on data control with Power BI’s cloud-hosted, interactive dashboards for large datasets.

The article defines standard error as the measure of how much a sample mean is expected to deviate from a population mean and explains its value for assessing dataset reliability. A detailed walkthrough demonstrates entering data, finding standard deviation and sample count, then applying the formula to return the standard error in one step.

Excel’s table formatting makes data easier to read and analyse, but you may need to remove it for a cleaner look, better compatibility, or a smaller file size. The guide also covers fixes for common hiccups, such as lingering visual styles and the Table Design tab appearing greyed out when no table cell is selected.

Microsoft Copilot operates within Microsoft 365’s compliance framework, using data minimisation, encryption, and role‑based access controls to safeguard information. Users can verify and adjust privacy settings - such as personalisation, conversation deletion, and opt‑outs from model training - across web, desktop, and mobile platforms. Тo stay secure, avoid entering sensitive data in prompts, use sensitivity labels, enforce MFA, and regularly review privacy updates and logs.

Mаnу businesses need first and last names in separate Excel columns for easier sorting, searching, and personalised communications. Excel’s Text to Columns feature lets you split names fast by selecting a space delimiter, while LEFT/RIGHT formulas achieve the same result with flexible cell references. Dragging these formulas down fills the entire list automatically, saving hours over manual copying.