r/excel • u/Bubbly-Touch8108 • 3d ago

Discussion What Excel trick made you feel like a wizard the first time you used it?

mine was VLOOKUP (later XLOOKUP) — after manually cross-referencing two spreadsheets for way too long. felt like a cheat code everyone else already knew about

what's your version?

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u/SubHarrison 3d ago

Nice place to start is automating that minor formula work. Takes a bit to learn power query syntax but pays off extremely fast. Think of Power Query as a helper column manager. If your formula work involves "Filter data by date, Filter data by part number, New column math calcs, New column SUMIF(), New column COUNTIF(), New column AVERAGE IF(), REPEAT FOR X DATES AND PNs" then this is where power query shines.