Ryan Gosling as Dr Ryland Grace in Project Hail Mary (2026)
I promise there is some Excel in this post – skip to the end if that’s what you’re here for.
This post is about both the book and film versions of Project Hail Mary. I’m making this post spoiler free, but the links I include may contain spoilers so follow at your own risk. When I first read the book a few years back I was lucky to have no prior knowledge about it or any of the plot points, and I think it made it that much more thrilling. So if you have the chance to enjoy either the book or film without knowing anything first, then I don’t want to take that away from you!
Sometimes this would include some Power Query content, and over time I had developed quite a bit of material for Power Query training. My Power Query training is always really popular with people who use Excel a lot. They just don’t often know it exists.
It occurred to me that my training model might not suit some people who would really benefit from PQ training. For example, if they are the sole finance person in their organisation. Or if they work as a consultant.
And so this time last year, I decided to trial a few sessions where I asked people to register an interest. I then organised these people into groups of 3-4, so that I could deliver a classroom-like training session.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but there was quite a lot of initial take up. And I was delighted that people who did go on the course often recommended it to others. My feedback forms for the courses have been incredibly positive.
We spent an intense four hours learning all about PQ – with Jess providing sample data for us to use so that we could not just watch/listen – but really get ‘hands on’ with the tool – and learning much faster as a result.
Those who I’ve trained appreciate the hands-on nature of the course. And that the examples come from my practical experience. Delegates can follow along and there’s plenty of time to ask questions or go over things. We often have good conversations too, where delegates share ideas for future uses.
The course was brilliant – incredibly useful and perfectly paced. There were many penny drop moments where we realised something was going to save us so much time….. Highly recommend to FDs/FCs, finance teams and anyone that plays around in excel.
I love introducing people to Power Query. It’s fantastic to see them realise how much time they can save by using it, and how easy it is to get fast results. I would love to do more of this in 2026.
People sometimes ask: “Can you give us an example of Power Query uses”?
(In fact, they often ask, “Can you give us an example of Power Query use cases” but I hate that phrase with a passion and refuse to use case it.)
So here are some very recent examples of Power query uses from a part-time FD role that I’m doing at the moment. It’s for a small but not tiny charity with lots of systems that don’t talk to each other.
It comes with a neat User Interface (UI), which gives you hundreds of buttons to click to transform your data. Need to remove junk header rows, extract account codes, calculate figures net of VAT? There are buttons for all of those things.
However, if you get stuck and search for help with Power Query, you’ll almost certainly find the explanation given in M code, which is the code behind Power Query. (Every time you click a button, you’re generating code.)
Last week I delivered a day’s Excel training in Cardiff for a medium-sized charity.
I designed this bespoke course for a group of finance and data folk who had already done my half day Introduction to power query course and had good Excel knowledge to begin with.
I always love training people who work together, because I know that there’s an increased chance that the learning will continue after the course.
What we covered
I’ve posted before that I don’t have a standard “intermediate” or “advanced” Excel course. This is because clients have different needs, and different starting points. I don’t want to waste time showing you stuff you already know, or are never going to need.
But as an example of what could be included in a day’s bespoke Excel training, let’s look at last week’s Cardiff session. I had previously circulated a questionnaire to the delegates to understand what they already knew and what they wanted to find out more about.
We revised key building blocks like Tables, and concepts such as number vs text. We then went onto some upgrades. For example, we went through XLOOKUP and the many ways it’s better than VLOOKUP.
And we also covered lots and lots of new Excel content.
Some of this we did via brief examples – such as REGEX, Checkboxes and TRANSLATE. (It was interesting to see how it copes with Welsh!)
Dynamic arrays were completely new to everyone, so we spent a bit of time looking at FILTER, UNIQUE and GROUPBY, and also discussing what made dynamic arrays different.
We then finished with a session on dynamic charts, including some data visualisation tips.
Throughout the day I shared examples of useful shortcuts and navigation tools to make everyday work in Excel a little bit more efficient.
Book me for Excel training in Cardiff (or Newport)
I can design and deliver a day of bespoke Excel training in Cardiff (or Newport) for £875 (£825 for not for profits). I’m based in Bristol so Cardiff is a really easy trip for me and I always enjoy spending time in Wales.
Please get in touch via my Contact page to discuss your needs in more detail.
