Hands-on Excel Training with Chris Menard | Microsoft MVP
Microsoft Excel
Two people can put the exact same amount of money into the market and still end up with different numbers of shares — and different returns when they sell. That comes down to how the money goes in. The two methods are lump sum investing and dollar cost averaging, and I
Free PowerPoint presentation from Chris Menard - Microsoft MVP
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is getting a redesign, and I got it early at the end of May. This is the layout that rolls out to all users in July 2026, with an opt-in toggle available in June if you want to try it sooner. If you use Copilot
Microsoft Excel
Clean one messy Excel dataset two ways — manually and with Power Query — to see exactly when each approach saves you time.
Microsoft Outlook
If you have a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license, there's a genuinely useful new calendar feature in Outlook: automatic meeting rescheduling. When a conflict arises, Copilot detects it and moves the meeting for you — no manual back-and-forth required. Here's exactly how to set it
Microsoft Excel
I wanted to see whether Claude inside Microsoft Excel could handle something visual instead of a formula: adding a column of real, clickable checkboxes. One short prompt, no fiddling with Form Controls — that was the test. Here's how it went, plus the manual fallback and the formula I
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams just added a new Muted section to the chat list that automatically groups your muted meeting chats. Here's how to turn it on, how it behaves, and the one limitation to know about.
Microsoft Excel
Finding duplicates, highlighting them, and removing them is something I do all the time in Excel. There's no single best tool for the job — the right approach depends on whether your data has a unique identifier, whether you need to compare one list or two, and whether you
Thoughts, stories and ideas.
Use a formula-based conditional formatting rule with a mixed reference to highlight every row where the spend column exceeds the budget column.
I wanted to see how well Claude in Excel can actually clean data — not just a row or two, but a genuinely messy spreadsheet with broken dates, inconsistent states, extra spaces everywhere, dollar signs glued to text, and possible duplicates lurking in the rows. So I built a fictitious order
Microsoft Copilot Cowork is the most exciting addition to Microsoft 365 Copilot I have used in a while. It is a multi-step agent that works across Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and your other apps at the same time — give it one prompt and it can search your mailbox, build deliverables
Microsoft Copilot in Word has a great new feature that just rolled out: the Legal Agent. It can review a contract, leave clause-level comments, and apply insertions and deletions with track changes — all from a prompt inside Word. I am not an attorney, so consider this a demo of
Microsoft Copilot in Excel just picked up three updates I think you'll want to know about. I caught these on Saturday, May 2nd, 2026, and they change how I use Copilot day to day. Let's walk through each one. Update 1: The Copilot Icon Moved Out
September 13-16, 2026 in Nashville, TN
Two real tests of the Claude add-in for Excel: a cross-sheet XLOOKUP profit calculation, and building an HR spreadsheet from scratch with data validation dropdowns, hidden source lists, and dynamic tables.
Chris Menard - Microsoft MVP
One of my favorite productivity tools right now is Wispr Flow. It's an AI dictation tool, but it does a lot more than just transcribe what you say. It strips out filler words automatically, handles mid-sentence corrections, and even formats your text into bullet points when it
Every serious Excel user should have Go To Special in their toolkit. It is one of the fastest ways to find blanks, formulas, constants, or other specific cell types in a worksheet — and it pairs beautifully with the new Excel COPILOT function when your data needs more than a quick
Extra spaces are one of the most common data problems in Excel — leading spaces, trailing spaces, and the trickiest of all, extra spaces in the middle of words. The TRIM function handles all three. But what happens when you switch to Power Query for a larger data cleanup? Power Query&
Microsoft Teams has rolled out new recap features for recorded meetings that work with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Alongside the AI summary and transcript we have had for a while, there is now a Custom summary section with three options — Speaker summary, Executive report, and Create template — plus an
