On this page you can learn more about my forthcoming book with Wiley, Excel Power Tools: Unlocking the Power of AI, Python, and Power Automate. If you are a an Excel user looking to get the most of Excel for AI, analytics & automation with Excel, this book is for you.
Availability
As the book comes to life, I will share information on where it can be read and purchased.
Becoming a reviewer
If you’re interested in getting a sneak peek of the book and assisting me along the way, consider becoming an early reviewer.
This opportunity will not only allow me to craft the best book possible but also provide me with valuable testimonials for the marketing phase. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, please complete the form, and I will follow up with you regarding the next steps.
Book description
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.
This book will show you, among other things, how 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.
Learning objective
By the end of this book, you will be able to create powerful automations and analyses for your work using AI, Python, Office Scripts, and Power Automate.
Prerequisites
To meet the book’s objectives, I make some technical and technological assumptions:
Technical Requirements
To make the most of this book, it is recommended that you have a Windows computer with the Microsoft 365 version of Excel for desktop. The features covered in this book are relatively new and may not be available in older Excel versions. Please note that many of these tools are still being developed for Mac, and compatibility may vary. Due to the fast-paced nature of Excel’s development, it is difficult to provide a precise list of what’s available for each version.
Technological Requirements
This book is written for intermediate Excel users who wish to explore modern features that they may not be familiar with. To get the most of it, the Excel topics you should be familiar with include the following:
- Absolute, relative, and mixed cell references
- Conditional logic and conditional aggregation (
IF()statements,SUMIF()/SUMIFS(), and so forth) - Combining data sources (
VLOOKUP(),INDEX()/MATCH(), or other lookup functions) - Sorting, filtering, and aggregating data with PivotTables
- Basic plotting (bar charts, line charts, and so forth)
If you would like more practice with these topics before moving on, I suggest Excel 365 Bible by Michael Alexander and Dick Kusleika.
Table of contents
I. Getting Started with AI in Excel
1. The Excel Skills Needed for AI
2. AI-Powered Data Manipulation
3. AI-Powered Data Entry
4. AI-Powered Data Analysis
II. Generative AI for Excel
5. First Steps with Copilot for Excel
6. Data Management with Copilot
7. Data Analysis with Copilot
8. ChatGPT Prompt Engineering with Excel
III. Next-Generation Analytics and Automation
9. Python in Excel
10. Python Automation for Excel
11. Power Automate for Excel
12. First Steps with Office Scripts
Companion repo
The companion repository for the book is publicly available on GitHub. This contains all datasets, workbooks, scripts, exercise solutions, and other files used in the book. Please keep in mind this is a preliminary repo that will be edited along with the book as it heads to final release.
You can download a compressed folder of the files or, if you are familiar with GitHub, clone it to your computer.
Consulting
If you are looking to make the most of Excel for data analytics at your organization, check out my Modern Data Analytics in Excel workshops:
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