Leila Gharani

Just got back from Global Excel Summit in London.
BTW that cape on the table isn't mine. I usually don't take it to conferences.

So much learned in the past few days - here are some of the highlights:

Victor Momoh tackled the thing most people are quietly avoiding, and walked through it step by step until it actually clicked. Yep. REGEX.

Ann K. Emery covered 40! visualization tips in 40 minutes. It was full of golden nuggets.

Damien Bird from Microsoft showed how Power Automate and Copilot Studio can work together. A smooth live demo right on stage. Which is harder than it looks.

Jakob Nielsen also from Microsoft showed us how we can build our own data types in Excel with the Data Types add-in. Since organization data types are retired from Excel, this is the best replacement.

Unpivot had an in person session on Power BI vs Excel. Real, funny, and honest about where each one actually wins.

And Mark Proctor proved Excel can play Taylor Swift songs. 🎸
That wasn't his only point. He also showed how Excel handles values in the backend, and how sometimes 1<>1 in Excel. Standup comedy meets the advanced stuff we thought we already knew.

I had the honor of opening the event. Talking about the topics that are my top interests right now. Python's data science libraries and how complex time series analysis is actually realistically possible in Excel. Unlike what some articles might claim.

The thread running through almost every session:
Excel isn't one tool anymore. It's a toolbox. And the toolbox keeps growing.

Ian Schnoor, put it well. Don't marry a single club. Every tool has strengths and weaknesses. The goal is finding the right fit for the situation and the person.

Danielle Stein Fairhurst and Cristiano Galvao both made the case that even as AI takes on more, the human in the chain still matters. And yes, we might get annoyed with AI for many reasons but how we interact and how we ask AI stuff, matters a lot.

Great to catch up with Oz du Soleil and many others I usually just see once a year. I met many members of our Python in Excel and Power Query courses. Thanks to everyone for stopping by and telling me a bit about your stories.

Huge thanks to Elena Lalovska, Tea Kuseva and the whole DATEL Productions Ltd. team for putting this together. And to Fay Bordbar and Giles Male for being such fun, easygoing hosts.

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5 days ago | [YT] | 802

Leila Gharani

One Excel formula. It returns the name of your most expensive campaign AND your cheapest campaign. Same cell. Same function.

No helper columns. No two separate formulas. Just one.

The function is called TAKE, and most people use it to grab the first or last few rows of a table. That's useful, but it's the basic version.

In this video, I show what happens when you combine TAKE with SORTBY, FILTER, and VSTACK.

You get rolling averages that update automatically, filtered top-5 lists, and cross-table comparisons pulled from multiple sheets.

4 weeks ago | [YT] | 120

Leila Gharani

There's a formula in this video that finds the immediate parent of any part in a Bill of Materials hierarchy. No helper columns. No VBA. Just one line.

It uses LOOKUP in a way I've never shown on this channel before. Our engineer showed me this approach, and it honestly caught me off guard.

The video also covers how to auto-indent BOM levels, strip messy PLM exports clean, and split part numbers from descriptions.

But that LOOKUP trick is the one people keep asking about.

4 weeks ago | [YT] | 73

Leila Gharani

There's a setting in Excel that auto-refreshes your Pivot Table every time you open the file. Most people have never turned it on.

That's one of 3 Pivot Table mistakes I cover in this video. The others:

- Using VLOOKUP to combine tables when Excel can link them for you
- Sticking with the default layout that makes reports look amateur (one-minute fix inside)

195,000+ people have watched it. If you work with Pivot Tables weekly, it's worth 9 minutes.

Which of the three are you guilty of?

1 month ago | [YT] | 137

Leila Gharani

Type "1000100" into an Excel formula and it knows your days off are Monday and Friday.

No VBA. No workaround.

Just a 7-character code that tells NETWORKDAYS.INTL exactly which days to skip.


Most people don't know this version of the function exists. They use the basic NETWORKDAYS, which is hardcoded to Saturday/Sunday.

If your team works a 4-day week, or your "weekend" falls on different days, that formula gives you wrong answers every time.


I break down how the code works (and how to add company holidays on top of it).

1 month ago | [YT] | 149

Leila Gharani

Every Monday, you open the same messy export. Delete the blank rows. Fix the headers. Copy it into your master sheet. Again.

That whole routine? Power Query does it in about 10 seconds. You set it up once. After that, you click Refresh and it's done.


In this video, I walk through three real scenarios: cleaning messy data, combining multiple files, and turning a cross-tab report into something a Pivot Table can actually use.


If you do any kind of recurring data cleanup, this will save you hours every month.

1 month ago | [YT] | 232

Leila Gharani

Your Excel macro works on desktop. Then the file lands in Teams... and it’s useless.

That’s where Office Scripts comes in.

In this video, I'll show how to:

- record your steps in Excel for the web
- tweak the script so it works with changing data
- run it in Teams without the usual macro headache

If you still use VBA, but your files now live online, this is the upgrade path.

2 months ago | [YT] | 116

Leila Gharani

Your Excel formula isn't advanced. It's just unreadable.

You've seen the type. Maybe you wrote it.

A formula that calculates the same thing three times because there's no way to store a result and reuse it.

So you copy the same AVERAGEIFS or FILTER block into multiple spots.

The formula grows. It gets slower. And when you need to change one piece of logic, you have to find and fix it in four places.

There's a function that lets you name a calculation once, then reference it as many times as you want inside the same formula.

Shorter. Faster. Actually possible to read six months later.

Check out the video with clear examples and download the free practice workbook so you can try it with your own data.

What's the longest formula you have in a workbook right now?

2 months ago | [YT] | 131

Leila Gharani

We just passed 3,000,000 subscribers!

10 years ago, some of my corporate friends made fun of me for starting a YouTube channel. Fair enough. Corporate people didn't really take YouTube seriously back then.

But here's what 10 years and 3 million people taught me:

#1 - Don't box yourself in.

I deliberately never named my channel "Excel." I knew I didn't want to be stuck in one lane. But even then, it took me years to actually post something outside of Excel because I was scared my audience wouldn't approve.

Then last year, I posted something completely different. A Rubik's cube tutorial. Yes. A Rubik's cube! On an Excel channel.

That video now has nearly 3,000,000 views. It's actually still our #1 most watched video. Hundreds of people have commented that they finally solved a Rubik's cube because of it.

I almost didn't post it. If you're following you know I teach tools like Excel and Power BI. But I realized, my main thing is helping people solve problems. It doesn't always have to be Excel.

After all, I left corporate because I didn't want to be boxed in. It didn't make sense to create that box in my own business.

#2 - Do things you're passionate about and stop overthinking it.

The Rubik's cube wasn't a strategy. I just loved it. Not everything has to be strategy. What's the fun in work if you can't take some time and do things you love.

#3 - Know when to switch from "growth mode" to "sustainable mode."

For years, we posted every week. Then twice a week. There was a time we posted three times. I was terrified that if I stopped, everything would collapse.
Then I started getting stressed out. I was working on videos, courses, everything. And I had a YouTuber friend whose burnout got so bad he couldn't turn the camera on anymore. Beautiful channel. But he just couldn't do it anymore.

I took a month off. I didn't want to start hating what I loved.
Nothing collapsed. The channel was fine.

Your stats do go down when you post less. But you have to decide what matters more. I love teaching, and I want to keep doing this for a while. So I found a pace I can actually sustain.

It's like losing weight. You need the calorie deficit to get there. But at some point, you have to eat in a way you can live with. And only you know when that point is.

I'm grateful for 3 million. But that's just a number. What makes me happier is reading the comments below the videos from people sharing their wins. Whether it's solving a Rubik's cube or getting a promotion because they finally learned Power Query.

A big thank you for watching my videos and reading this post.

2 months ago | [YT] | 5,482

Leila Gharani

𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬. ✍️💼

Most people treat professional notes like they’re back in school—trying to capture every single word. Then two days later, your boss asks for a "next steps" summary, and you’re frantically scanning six pages of messy text. 😅

There is a better way. I use the Quadrant Method [02:35] to distill an entire 60-minute meeting into four clear "buckets" on a single page.

It forces you to identify:
✨ Questions that still need answers.
✨ Personal To-Dos with deadlines.
✨ Action Items for the rest of the team.
✨ General Insights that aren't just "transcriptions."

I also share the controversial reason why I think you should close your laptop and pick up a physical pen (or a tablet/stylus 🖋️).

Quick Question: Are you a "Write everything down" person or a "Just the highlights" person? I'm curious to see which side wins! 👇

2 months ago | [YT] | 175