What I learned at the 2025 Global Excel Summit

I attended the 2025 Global Excel Summit last week – this time in person for the first time.

It’s become a bit of a tradition that I blog about what I learned, so here goes!

What REGEXTEST is for

I wrote about the new REGEX functions recently. I’m really excited about them and their potential, but I must admit to struggling to find a use for REGEXTEST. However, not anymore – Leila Gharani showed how this could be used in combination with FILTER. Her excellent presentation showed a number of other killer combos (eg TAKE with TRIMRANGE to always get the last 12 months of data). What I love about her presentations is she always starts with something nice and accessible and then shows you something really clever you can do with it.

Power Query in Excel online exists…

…but in a pre-BETA BETA and it crashed in the demo, so it might be a while off yet.

“Dead input” as a phrase

We know that one of the key principles in Excel is not to mix “hard coded” references into formulas. For example, don’t write A2*20% to calculate VAT. Put the VAT rate somewhere else and reference that instead it (ideally with a Name to make it easy to read). That way if the VAT rate changes, you only have to update one place.

I’ve always struggled with what to call the 20% in this case because “hard coded” isn’t quite accurate. And nor is “constants”. (It is a constant that there are 12 months in the year. It is not a constant that VAT = 20%).

Ian Schnoor of the Financial Modelling Institute introduced me to the phrase “dead input” which I might use now.

Maybe PowerPoint has a purpose

I’m not a big fan of PowerPoint. Or rather, it’s probably fair to say I’m not a fan of how most people use PowerPoint.

But Danielle Stein Fairhurst showed some really great examples of how PowerPoint genuinely could enhance the story telling for the end user, including an interactive waterfall chart. It’s a good reminder that what we do in a spreadsheet is not usually the end product, and it’s useless if people don’t actually understand what the finances are telling them.

Everyone thinks they are a “7 out of 10” at Excel

Even at a Global Excel Summit. This was part of Ken Puls’ and Oz du Soleil’s session on “rethinking beginner, intermediate and advanced Excel”.

As an Excel trainer, this session was particularly interesting to me, and it was also good to discuss it with other Excel trainers afterwards. There is an essential difficulty to overcome, which is that we all know the phrases “intermediate” or “advanced” Excel are meaningless without a lot more context. And yet this is what people are usually searching for.

I have a few thoughts on what some alternative frameworks might look like which I’ll probably post about sometime.

The importance of “baby-proofing” Power Query

Melissa de Korte gave an excellent presentation on building in error prevention and detection into Power Query. This is something I do as a matter of course when I build an Excel model, but it isn’t ingrained in me in the same way for Power Query, partly because I didn’t have a toolkit to do it. Now I do.

A little bit of DAX or Cube functions can bring PowerBI functionality to your workbook

Chandoo gave an excellent presentation on adding a DAX calculated field to be able to produce a PowerBI style graph in plain old Excel. And Carolina Lago explained how using CUBE formulas can enable more exciting graphics from a plain old Pivot Table.

I don’t use PowerBI much as the organisations I work with tend to be small and don’t have the right licences, or the need. However, I’m more convinced after the 2025 Global Excel Summit that I should dust off the old DAX textbooks.

One function can sustain a whole presentation if done well

Chandeep Chhabra won the “best presentation” award for a topic that might not sound massively exciting – “The magic of the CONCATENEX function in powerBI”. I’ve never used it, and may never use it, but I was absolutely enthralled throughout because of his showmanship.

It’s also a good reminder to me as a trainer that it’s sometimes better to go deeper into one or two topics than try to cover as much as possible, and that you can use one function to illustrate a range of points.

It really was better in person

I’d been a bit apprehensive about going to the 2025 Global Excel Summit in person. I thought that I would struggle to follow some of the presentations if I couldn’t “play along”, which is what I usually do. However, I found it engaging in a different ways. Most of the presenters have really well-honed delivery skills, which you appreciate more in person. And of course there is also the networking element….

Networking is actually fun when you have stuff to talk about

I had so many interesting conversations while I was there. It was just so great to be surrounded by people who think about Excel as much as I do. I’d say there seemed to be a good mix of people at different stages of their journey and from different industries – so there was more variety in the conversation than you might think.

And all the superstars are generous with their time (and tolerance for selfies).