Download a PDF brochure of this workshop:
Excel continues to evolve in its capabilities for analytics and automation, offering an ever-expanding set of tools. This workshop explores some of the latest and greatest “power tools” for working with Excel. First, we will delve into maximizing the potential of AI tools for Excel, utilizing resources available both inside and outside of Excel.
Next, we will take a deep dive into the integration of Python with Excel, exploring analyses and visualizations that would be challenging or impossible to achieve using Excel alone. Finally, we will investigate Office Scripts, Power Automate, and other cloud-based tools to elevate your analytics and automation skills to new heights.
Participating in this workshop will equip your team with the skills needed to fully leverage Excel, ensuring competitiveness in a world increasingly dominated by AI, automation, and advanced analytics.
Excel will survive AI… so will you
With the rapid advancements in AI and technology, some might speculate that technical skills, including proficiency in Excel, are becoming less relevant. However, the opposite is true. These advancements are enhancing Excel’s capabilities, and Microsoft is increasingly investing resources to maintain Excel’s status as a premier tool.
If the thought of AI replacing your job concerns you, consider the depth of subject matter expertise and the complex business rules within your organization that are challenging to encapsulate in reports. Reflect on the diverse sources of data you rely on, along with the myriad of customizations, tips, and tricks required to harmonize everything seamlessly.
Should the idea of learning some coding to refine your AI-generated workflows seem daunting, remember the times you’ve incorporated VBA code from the internet to solve a problem or crafted intricate Excel formulas to achieve your goals.
You possess the skills not just to withstand the rise of AI with Excel, but to flourish! This workshop is designed to empower you in doing exactly that.
Workshop benefits
As part of this workshop, your team will be able to:
- Explore current AI features in Excel for pattern recognition, forecasting, and natural language querying, among other capabilities.
- Learn how to generate sample data, troubleshoot formulas, and create reproducible examples using generative AI for Excel.
- Utilize Python within Excel to conduct time series analyses, create statistical plots, and more.
- Automate the creation of reports using Office Scripts.
- Develop shareable, multistep workflows for Excel with Power Automate.
What makes this workshop different
I know there are lots of places to learn Excel these days. What distinguishes this workshop is that it’s:
- Participative. The quicker you apply what you learn, the more likely you are to retain it. This is literally a hands-on workshop where attendees will have plenty of time on the keyboard to try the concepts out for themselves with demos, activities and more.
- Authoritative. The workshop is designed and led by me, George Mount. I run my own analytics consultancy and am both an author with O’Reilly Media and Microsoft MVP.
- Topical. No fake, boring data sources and examples here. Upon request, I will design the workshop to use data from your own organization or industry. In any case, I’ll use a variety of real world and fun datasets.
Due to their hands-on and participative nature, sessions work best for groups of up to 20 in-person or 35 online participants.
Who should attend
This workshop is for professionals concerned about dedicating excessive time to routine, error-prone tasks and would prefer to use AI to automate these processes, rather than facing the risk of AI rendering their roles obsolete. Additionally, professionals uncertain about how the rise of AI affects their career paths—whether it necessitates evolving into more technical roles or stepping back from the technical aspects of their jobs, considering AI integration as a potentially insurmountable challenge. This could be those in accounting, finance, operations or others who use Excel for data preparation and analysis on a daily basis.
Ideally, attendees will possess some familiarity with intermediate Excel functionalities, such as PivotTables, or lookup functions like VLOOKUP() or XLOOKUP(). Even more advantageous would be learners who have some coding experience in VBA, Python, R, etc., and are acquainted with concepts such as loops and user-defined functions.
What you’ll get
- Two full days of either onsite or online instruction (about twelve hours total, plus time for lunch and breaks)
- Step-by-step demo notes explaining the entire course’s content
- Supplemental video content to practice with and share later
- Lifetime access to all slides, datasets and handouts used in the course
Workshop highlights
This is an example of what might be covered in the workshop. Each section includes both instructor demonstrations and time for learner exercises.
- AI-Powered Excel: AI integration in Excel is not a recent development; it has been enhancing Excel’s capabilities for some time. This section will introduce you to how AI elevates Excel, guiding you through the basics of leveraging AI effectively. You’ll gain insights into optimizing your workflow with AI, ensuring a smooth collaboration between you and the technology.
- LLMs and Prompt Engineering for Excel: Ever wondered how to communicate with a robot? Although it may seem daunting, engaging with AI in Excel is similar to traditional problem-solving techniques that have proven effective. We’ll explore various theories and practical approaches to prompt engineering, helping you navigate and solve challenges in Excel more efficiently.
- Python Integration in Excel Simplified: Python has emerged as the universal language for data analytics and automation. This module will teach you Python basics directly within Excel, empowering you to conduct more sophisticated data analyses and create compelling visualizations. By the end, you’ll have expanded your analytical capabilities and added a valuable set of tools to your arsenal.
- Introduction to Office Scripts: Office Scripts offer a powerful web-based scripting language for automating reports, complementing or offering alternatives to VBA. This session will cover the fundamentals of Office Scripts, including script modification and sharing. We’ll also explore how AI can facilitate the learning process, making script creation more intuitive.
- Workflow Automation with Power Automate: Finally, we’ll explore how to extend the utility of Excel beyond the confines of individual workbooks. Learn how to integrate Excel into broader workflows, automate email correspondence, and seamlessly transfer data between forms and other sources. This introduction to Power Automate’s low/no-code platform will revolutionize how you manage data and workflows, making your processes more efficient and interconnected.
About your instructor
George Mount is the founder of Stringfest Analytics. He has over 10 years of experience in data analytics and holds master’s degrees in both finance and information systems from Case Western Reserve University. George is widely recognized an expert in the fields of data analysis and Microsoft Excel and is the author of Advancing into Analytics: From Excel to Python and R (O’Reilly Media, 2021) along with Modern Data Analytics in Excel: Using Power Query, Power Pivot and More for Enhanced Data Analytics (O’Reilly Media, 2024). He is also a recipient of Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for technical excellence and community contributions in Excel.
George has extensive experience in reporting, analytics, and modeling and is a respected trainer in these fields. He provides training for companies throughout North America and beyond.
Software Required
For best results, please have the desktop version of Excel for Windows 365 installed. Earlier versions of Excel or versions for Mac may not track well with everything in the course.
Get started
Ready to get the most of Excel power tools for data analytics? Drop me a line below and I’ll be in touch shortly to get started.