Excel Tips & Tricks #484 – Best of 2023

1. Excel Tips & Tricks #464 - Refreshing Keyboard shortcuts
   This tip covers some of the most useful shortcuts you can use to navigate the workbook, format cells and work with data to improve your experience of using Excel.
2. Excel Tips & Tricks #472 – Conditional formatting components
   In this tip, learn how to use different components of conditional formatting including data bars, colour scales and icon sets.
3. Excel Tips & Tricks #478 - Introduction to Power Automate
   This tip demonstrates how to use Power Automate to run an Office Script against multiple Excel files simultaneously. No prior knowledge of Power Automate is needed!
4. Excel Tips & Tricks #474 - How to REDUCE repetitive calculations to a single step
   This tip explores how to use the relatively new REDUCE function to perform repetitive calculations in a single step.
5. Excel Tips & Tricks #466 - Setting range permissions in Excel Online
   In this tip, learn how to set up range permissions in Excel Online to protect your spreadsheets.

Throughout the year, our members get access to a variety of webinars, blogs and articles. This year, our content covered a huge range of Excel functionalities and concepts.

We introduced a new webinar series exploring Microsoft’s ‘Power Tools’ which was a huge success! We helped members learn how to use Power Query to automate spreadsheets and reduce manual tasks, how to use Power BI to create effective data visualisations and derive insights, and how to use Power Automate to streamline ESG reporting. In 2024, we will complete the series by looking into the best ways to use Power Pivot and Power Apps.

With our large membership, we receive a lot of engagement and questions in our webinars. As a result, we launched a new series of articles called ‘Your Questions Answered’ to ensure we address as many of your questions as possible, and can give you practical help and advice. This year, we answered some of your most burning questions on VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP and also gave you an expert’s opinion on their favourite underappreciated formula in Excel.

Our priority is to ensure our members stay on top of the latest developments in Excel and the wider Office suite. This year, we continued our webinar series that covers some of the major new tech features including what’s new in Excel. We also helped members learn how to best use the updated functionality in the new Outlook.

This year we also rounded up ten of our best articles of all time on the design and format of your spreadsheets. In 2024, we will bring you more round ups on different topics to help you get the most out of our existing content.

In 2023 all our content became free for all ICAEW members. As the community continues to grow, we will continue to build our content programme with webinars and articles on the most relevant topics and more on-demand bitesize content so you can pick up new skills on the go.

We have already launched a new online training to help you master Excel through more in-depth interactive learning. The six-module course covers the basics on navigation to more advanced skills such as working with large sets of data and using macros.

• View the first module.

Excel is rapidly changing. Microsoft recently announced new Python integration in Excel, and copilot which will change the way we use the suite to work. In 2024, we will ensure members stay up to date with all these changes and any new functionality – there's plenty of exciting features in the Beta and Preview channels that we can’t wait to talk about once they’re more widely available.

We are very proud of the thought leadership our advisory group and volunteer experts have produced over the years. Our flagship piece of thought leadership is the Twenty principles for good spreadsheet practice which was designed to be straightforward with practical ways to help users create easy-to-use and error-free spreadsheets. We’re very excited to launch the latest version of the principles in 2024, reflecting changes in the way we use spreadsheets and the technology that goes with them.

In 2024, we intend to cover more relevant content and topics through articles, webinars, and on-demand content to help you Excel wherever you are in your professional and learning journey. If you have any thoughts or suggestions on what you’d like us to cover, or would like to get involved to contribute to the success of the community, do drop us an email at Excel@icaew.com. We’d be delighted to hear from you.