Ultimate Excel with Power Query and ChatGPT: Master MS Excel's Dynamic Lookup Functions, Generative Al, and Power Query to Navigate Data, Solve Complex Tasks and Optimize Productivity

CHAPTER 1

Excel Environment

Introduction

This chapter will introduce us to the basics of Excel. You will learn why you need to develop Excel skills and the general steps to follow to master these skills.

We will explore the world of Excel formulas and functions, including nesting or combining functions. We will also cover the basics of Excel cell referencing and using Excel tables.

Since the book is about the 101 ways to look up anything in Excel, we will dive into the world of Excel lookup skills and why they are a door to mastering Excel. Finally, we will dig into the different classifications of the lookup functions.

Structure

In this chapter, we will discuss the following topics:

Why you should learn Excel?

How to Master Excel

Introducing Excel formulas and functions

Nesting functions: When one is not enough

Introducing Excel Cell referencing: full column/row, range reference, named reference, absolute, relative, and mixed references

Introducing Excel tables

Importance of having lookup skills

Classification of lookup functions:

Old-Version: Legacy array functions

Dynamic Array Functions

Power Query

Reasons for Learning Excel

Excel is one of the most powerful spreadsheet tools used by millions of people worldwide to analyze, manage, and visualize data. It is extensively used in different industries, such as finance, engineering, logistics, medicine, mining, and operations.

Surveys conducted by two global research consultants (Spiceworks in 2018 and Censuswide in 2019) reveal that over 69% of professionals use Excel regularly, with 57% using it at least once a day. Additionally, 59% of companies with over 500 employees use Excel for data analysis.

Therefore, you are likely to use Excel if your work involves data manipulation or analysis, irrespective of your industry.

At a personal level, Excel is beneficial for organizing information: it is easy to organize and store data in a structured format, create, retrieve, and simply update information. This makes it helpful in maintaining personal budget keeping, tracking personal items, and even creating daily to-do lists.

Developing your Excel abilities is one of the ways to advance your career in today’s data-driven business environment. It enhances your productivity by improving your efficiency and effectiveness at tasks that call for data management, analysis, and reporting. A productive worker is a sure-fire candidate for job promotions.

In conclusion, Excel’s ubiquity and versatility make acquiring and advancing Excel-related skills necessary for any professional.

How to Master Excel

Having used and trained others on Excel for over a decade, we have identified six steps to accelerate acquiring and advancing Excel skills.

These are the steps that have been followed and taught to others, resulting in impressive results.

STEP 1: Love Mistakes

Learning from mistakes is one of the most underrated steps in acquiring any skill.

Learning from mistakes contributes far more than one can acquire from reading theories and practicing without making mistakes. Mistakes provide valuable feedback that helps you refine your technique and improve your performance.

Therefore, a love of mistakes frees you from the decapitating fear of failure and helps you build resilience and persistence.

With the ability to love and learn from our mistakes, we can achieve our goal of acquiring and improving any skill in our chosen field. That is why this is the first step towards mastering Excel skills.

STEP 2: Master the Basics

Mastering the basics is one of the most belittled steps in acquiring any skill, as it seems boring and repetitive. Yet, the basics form the foundation for more advanced techniques. With a strong understanding of the fundamentals, it becomes easier to progress and improve in any given area.

Other hindrances to mastering the basics include eagerness to achieve quick results and placing greater value on advanced skills, believing they are more impressive or essential.

For example, a user wants to start using the nested INDEX and MATCH functions without first understanding the basics of nesting functions and using the individual functions.

In this book, we will devote time to building this foundation as it helps build complex functions.

STEP 3: Progressive Overload

Acquiring and advancing a skill is like building muscles. You need to challenge yourself through progressive overload.

Mastering the basics is essential but sticking to the basics is detrimental to mastering Excel and any other skill.

Mastering requires consistent practice, increasing the difficulty gradually, tracking progress, and seeking feedback and guidance from experts and colleagues.

To promote continued growth and improvement, the concepts taught in the book will move from basic to complex.

STEP 4: Learn to Break your Problem into Small Pieces

How do you eat an elephant? The answer is "One Bite at a Time".

In other words, when faced with a big, complex task, it can seem impossible to tackle it all at once. However, if you break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces, you can approach it one step at a time until you eventually achieve your goal.

For example, how easily can you memorize the number 12110081644936251694?

The hint is to break it down into small pieces and observe the pattern. (See the answer at the end of the chapter).

Complex tasks in Excel require some formulas with over five nested functions. Understanding a nested function is easy if you know how each function contributes to the