A year of introducing people to Power Query

An image of a woman in a training room pointing at a screen.

It’s been a year since I started introducing people to Power Query through my standalone Introduction to Power Query course.

I attended the Intro to Power Query course and cannot recommend it highly enough. Game changer! 

Before this point, my business model had been solely focussed on providing bespoke Excel training to teams.

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.

You can read more here about why Power Query is so useful for Excel users and you can contact me if you’d like to arrange some Power Query training for you or your team.

Power Query uses – small charity edition

Screenshot of the Get Data Launch menu, provided for decorative purposes
Power Query (Get Data) Launch menu

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.

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“The key didn’t match any rows in the table” error in Power Query

“The key didn’t match any rows in the table” is one of the most common errors in Power Query.

The way it’s always explained is that it is caused when the original data changes format or name, or has been deleted.

However, there is a third, related option, which I’m writing about here because it stumped me for a while.

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Ten things I learned at the Global Excel Summit 2024

I attended the Global Excel Summit 2024 online earlier this month, and in no particular order, here are ten things I learned.

1. Power Query at Chanel

The most inspiring session was given by two people who work for Chanel, who explained how they had used Power Query to reduce thousands of hours of processing time.

In the middle of a day that was focussed on the theoretical uses of AI, it was fantastic to hear about a tried and tested but scandalously underused technology being used to deliver real business change.

More generally their approach to business process improvement sounded fascinating and I’d love to see this become more widely known.

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Excel training for auditors

I recently designed and delivered some Excel training for auditors. Specifically, it was Excel training for audit trainees who had just started at the firm.

I benefitted enormously at the start of my career when my employer arranged for all new audit trainees to have Excel training as part of our induction. Even though it was pretty basic, it established a good grounding in things like formula construction, absolute and relative cell references, and a few shortcuts.

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