Excel. Power Query. Copilot. ChatGPT. Power BI. PowerPoint.
You use them every day to automate Excel and your work - so why not actually master them?
I’ll show you how to:
✔️Automate the stuff that drives you nuts
✔️ Spend less time on grunt work, more time on wow work
✔️ Build reports that look good AND actually make sense
What You’ll Learn Here:
✔️ Excel, Power BI, PowerPoint, VBA, Google Sheets & more
✔️ AI-powered Excel & the future of work
✔️ Data & finance skills that give you an edge
I don’t just teach this stuff - I use it daily.
My goal? To help you think differently about the tools you already have, so you can work faster, and with confidence.
🎓 My background: MA in economics / Economist / Business Consultant / Accounting Systems Expert / Oracle & SAP implementations (for Finance) / Teacher & Microsoft MVP
💡 400,000+ professionals have taken my courses at XelPlus - because working smarter just makes sense.
Join here 👉 www.xelplus.com/courses/
Leila Gharani
So this is what I've been up to the past two weeks, aside from posting here.
I was at the LinkedIn Learning studios in Carpinteria, California. Recording an Excel course. My first time there.
There were 3 people in the room with me the entire time: a director, a producer, and a video production tech. This wasn't just "hit record and talk." They were listening for clarity, transitions, pacing, energy.
Here’s something people don’t realize. I didn’t either when I first started recording videos for YouTube:
When you watch a polished video and think, “that was smooth”, you’re seeing the edit. The raw footage is usually full of pauses, retakes and stumbles.
Plus the camera dumps your energy just like it dumps your makeup. You have to bring WAY more energy than feels natural just to look normal on screen. The hardest part was switching between eye contact with the camera and screen recordings without losing my train of thought or letting the energy drop.
Before any recordings, weeks went into prepping the exercise files and scripting.
Now it's in the hands of the editors. From the early cuts I've seen so far, it looks great.
I'll share more when I have a date. If you use Excel even a little, you’ll want to keep an eye out for it.
Many thanks to the awesome and super fun production team!
1 day ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,559
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Leila Gharani
SKU-1042, SKU-1087, SKU-2201... 😬 your boss asked for a sales report. Not a puzzle.
What if that same pivot table showed product photos, country flags, and employee headshots instead?
No plugins. Just Excel.
The person who sends that report gets remembered. The person who sends the SKU list gets a follow-up email asking what it means.
5 days ago | [YT] | 103
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Leila Gharani
You hit Ctrl+P right before a meeting. Excel turns your clean report into 14 pages of chaos.
Columns cut off. Headers gone after page 1. Page breaks landing in the worst possible places.
It's not you. Excel's default print settings are genuinely terrible and nobody teaches you how to fix them.
So we built a complete Excel Printing Guide that covers everything that goes wrong and exactly how to fix it: scaling columns onto one page, repeating headers, controlling page breaks, setting print areas, and saving clean PDFs three different ways.
It also includes a free one-page printing checklist you can keep at your desk and run through before every printout.
👉 www.xelplus.com/excel-printing-guide/
What's the worst Excel printing disaster you've had right before a deadline?
1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 493
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Leila Gharani
Seen ####### in Excel and panicked?
One double-click fixes it for the entire sheet.
There are 7 more shortcuts like this in the video below that most Excel users have never been shown.
Which one do you use first? 👇
1 week ago | [YT] | 188
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Leila Gharani
Microsoft releases dozens of updates every year.
Some very useful. Some not.
The hardest part is finding out about the useful ones before you continue doing things the hard way for months.
That's why I always look forward to the Global Excel Summit in London. You get to talk to people who've already tested this stuff.
What works? What's overhyped? (ahem ahem Copilot)
Two days of sessions across Excel, Power BI, Python, Power Automate, and AI.
But the best conversations happen between sessions.
I'll be there in May. Would be great to see you there too.
🗓️ 19-20 May 2026 (conference)
🗓️ Optional masterclasses: 18, 20, 21 May
📍 London, UK
Use code LEILA at checkout for an extra 20% off the already discounted early bird:
globalexcelsummit.com/?via=leila
Looking forward to seeing you there.
(You can join virtually too if you can't make it in person)
1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 321
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Leila Gharani
I’ve worked with Excel my entire professional life.
It started in Ottawa, with a view of the Parliament buildings, doing basic lists and calculations in my first job as an economist. Nothing fancy. Just sum, filter, and a lot of cell coloring 🙂
Then came the corporate years. Consultant. Project manager. Excel saved me more times than I can count, from project planning to making sense of things like group consolidation and intercompany elimination.
But nothing improved my skills faster than helping people solve their problems. Seeing how differently people work with data forced me to understand things more deeply and try and explain them more clearly.
Turns out it's also what I enjoy doing the most.
Excel turned 40 this year and @Microsoft sent me this box a few weeks ago. (Yes, I'm late, but at least before it turns 41)
Thank you to Microsoft and to everyone here who watches, learns, and keeps me doing this.
Happy holidays and see you in 2026.
#excel #mvpbzz #microsoft
1 month ago | [YT] | 3,511
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Leila Gharani
Voting is officially OPEN for SXSW London 2026, and I'd love your support.
As AI generates endless info, people are craving real guidance from experts who've lived what they teach and that's exactly what our panel is about.
I'm excited to join a powerhouse conversation with leaders from Teachable and ManyChat, alongside Gabriel Nussbaum, to explore how creators are blending irreplaceable human experience with technology's power to scale, make a deeper impact, and reshape the creator economy.
If this topic matters to you, cast your vote to help get it on the SXSW stage here.
How to Vote:
1. Login/Register here: sxswlondon.awardsplatform.com/entry/vote/bEmMeNzM/…
2. Give our panel a heart
Excited for this!
2 months ago | [YT] | 138
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Leila Gharani
I was so wrong about how much Excel I actually knew.
Early in my career, I thought I had Excel figured out. Then a consultant opened a file and everything changed.
What they showed me led to a job offer I wasn't qualified for. They hired me purely for my Excel skills.
That moment put me on a completely different path.
If you use Excel every day, it's worth asking: how deep does my knowledge actually go?
We're running Black Friday bundles through Dec 2 (tomorrow) - Excel Confidence Kit and Advanced Analytics Toolkit, built from 15+ years in corporate: www.xelplus.com/courses/
2 months ago | [YT] | 65
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Leila Gharani
Black Friday sale is live!
Yes, I share a lot of great tips on YouTube. But the truth is, I can never go as deep as I'd like.
Many topics are too niche for general interest, and there's SO much more to tools like Power Query, Power Pivot, Power BI, Python in Excel etc... than I can cover in short videos.
That’s where my courses come in. They cover the full scope with all the pitfalls and solutions when you work with real data.
We've created special Black Friday bundles we don't usually have (save up to 45%):
1. Excel Confidence Kit
2. Advanced Analytics Kit
3. Complete Analytics Kit
View bundles here: www.xelplus.com/course/black-friday
Offer valid till Dec 2nd.
3 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 207
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