Microsoft Excel
Excel Conditional Formatting: Highlight Rows Where Spend Goes Over Budget
Use a formula-based conditional formatting rule with a mixed reference to highlight every row where the spend column exceeds the budget column.
Chris Menard
Chris Menard is a Microsoft MVP. He is certified in Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint. His YouTube videos have over 25 million views.
Microsoft Excel
How to Use Claude in Excel to Clean Messy Data (Step-by-Step Walkthrough)
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 365 Copilot
How to Use Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork to Build Word Docs, PowerPoint Decks, and Outlook Emails in One Prompt
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 in
Microsoft Word
How to Use the Copilot Legal Agent to Redline Documents in Word
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 the
Microsoft Excel
Excel Copilot Got 3 Updates: New Icon Location, Preview Mode & Anthropic Claude Models
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
public speaking
APC Conference - Sep 2026 - Chris Menard's Full Schedule
September 13-16, 2026 in Nashville, TN
Microsoft Excel
Claude in Excel: Cross-Sheet XLOOKUP and Building a Data-Validated HR Spreadsheet from Scratch
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.
April 2026 Blog Roundup: Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams, Excel, and Word
Chris Menard - Microsoft MVP
Wispr Flow: AI Dictation That Removes Filler Words Automatically
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 thinks
Microsoft Excel
Fix Blanks in Excel Data with GO TO SPECIAL and the COPILOT Function
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
Microsoft Excel
Power Query: Remove Extra Spaces in the Middle of Words (Beyond TRIM)
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
New Microsoft Teams Meeting Recap Features with Copilot (Speaker Summary, Executive Report, Audio Recap)
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