Why Mastering Excel in 2025? It can boost your career.

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Introduction

In these modern days with ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude ruling the world, it's a natural question: Why should I learn Excel? If AI is here to help me do my job more easily, what's the point?

Back in my young days working at the Mexican tax agency (Servicio de Administración Tributaria), my boss used to tell me I was lazy - so lazy that I let Excel do my job. You might say that's exactly what you're doing now with AI. But let me tell you something: You have to know the basics, and I'm here to lead you to mastering Microsoft Excel the easy way because I'm the one who can do it.

In my life, I've had a diversity of jobs, and since high school, I've been using Excel in some way or another, even in the simplest jobs you can imagine. When I was at SAT, I always saw my coworkers doing simple tasks in Excel, but using it as a very expensive typewriting machine. Even most of the accountants with bachelor's degrees were using it to type random text and a traditional calculator to do their job. Seriously, I'm not kidding!

I was different. I used Excel as a tool, and a good friend from high school once told me that if I could program Excel to bring me coffee, I'd surely do it. That's why my boss called me lazy. But I'm not lazy - well, yes, but let's be honest: who wants to do boring tasks when a computer can simplify them and make your mornings in your 9-to-5 job more tolerable? That's the knowledge I want to share with you to make your job easier.

While it's tempting to write into AI, "Write me a formula that adds all the values of the sales report for July," and voilà, you have an Excel formula with the result you expected. That easy, that fast, and of course, you impressed your boss, coworkers, or even yourself. But deep down, you know you're kind of cheating.

I remember watching a Season 14 Doctor Who episode called "Dot and Bubble" It was like a Black Mirror episode where the main character depends so hard on technology that she can't even walk without the device. That's how dependent we are on technology.

Based on that, we have to know the basics. Without them, we get stuck, we can't solve anything, and we're quitting the thinking that makes us human. I want to teach you how to walk - the basics of Microsoft Excel - so later you can not only walk but run. You'll be able to face any challenge easily. And of course, I'm not demonizing modern technology. On the contrary, you can do impressive things with it, but you have to know how to walk before you can run. If you know the basics, you can get the best out of AI simply because you'll know how to make a prompt to get the result you want. And if not, you'll know how to read the formula, improve it, and apply it to your project or projects.

So for example I remember a coworker that have to fill a report in Excel and then compare the paperwork with the query in Excel so she highlight the rows with the matching data in the paper work, just imagine select 4, 5, 6 or even more cells, then pick the color and come back to the paperwork and look for another.

But what about if she were using conditional formatting so for example:

·      Go to Home → Styles → Conditional Formating.

·      Hit in Conditional Formating it will open the Conditional Formating Manager then hit New Rule.

·      Again New Rule it will open the New Formating Rule.

·      Hit in the last option: Use a formula to determine which cells to format.

·      In Format values where this formula is true field type the following formula: =$E8="a" Remember we're using a Mixed Reference. In this article Abosulte & Relative you can learn more about this.

·      Then hit on Format and give the format you want.

When finish click on Ok

·      Then you come back to the Conditional Formating Rules Manager in the field Applies to you type where you want to apply that Conditional Formating in this case $A$8:$E$524.

·      Hit Ok

·      Now in E8 type "a" and see what happens…

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See…

·      But since a sad “a” looks so simple you can apply some format so choose the font Home → Font I choose Font Webdings, size 14, Bold text, color Green, Middle Align and Center. I Picked font Webdings because it can convert the “a” in a Check.

·      But in Excel, in computers in general its always different ways to reach the same result, for example in the condition you can put x, check or whatever you want, but in the latest Excel 365 (after July 2024) they added checkbox to make more dynamic and user friendly our Excel. Here is how to insert a checkbox in Excel:

·      So Select the range you want to apply, in this example E8:E524 go to Insert → Controls → Checkbox:

·      Now just change our conditional formatting so go Home → Styles → Conditional Formatting and click on Manage Rules.

·      Then in the menu on Show Formatting Rules For: select This Workbook.

·      When open the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager you can simple hit in Edit or Double Click in your rule:

·      And Change the Rule to =$E8=TRUE

Click on Ok

·      Now see what happens:

Voilà! As you can see with by only typing "a" you highling all the rows you want and don't have to select the range, then apply color or hit F4 (Learn more about the “Repeat the Last Action: shorcut here) to repeat that format.

Another example of people doing tasks that Excel can achieve easily is... Imagine you have an office expenses record, and you have different values, per Supplies, per Department, per Month and so on. So also I used to have coworkers that highlighted the values they want to add by color then copy and paste in another section or even in another workbook. Problem is that sometimes you have Accounting in range D15:D37 you could see more about ranges here Ranges in Excel but what about if there is more information on D98 then a little more in range D119:D126?

Yeah there are people a little more clever and do the filter (also you can see more about filtering in excel here Filter in Excel in Excel) and sooner or later you have your information and some of those people do the SUM function or the same copy and paste in another worksheet, workbook or another place in the same sheet.

And that, the filtering thing, is almost the right answer. You only must use the Subtotal formula is that easy so just watch:

·      Type in the last cell of the range (in our example D525) you want to add the following formula SUBTOTAL(9,D8:D524) where:

• SUBTOTAL is the formula itself.
•  9 Is the Function_num, in this case 9 means SUM and the range you want to add, also you can get the average, the count, max, min, etc.
• D8:D524 is the range you want to apply the filter.

·      As you can see if you don’t apply any filter, you have the total, the whole sum, 961,183.83 o yes that company must record their expenses!

·      But if you apply Filter, you can see the power of Subtotal function.

• To Apply the Filter this is several methos, this is the shortcut one go to cell A7 then press CTRL + SHIFT + L
• Or Home → Editing → Sort & Filter → Filter

• Another way Data → Sort & Filter → Filter

• Now in Filter on Department select Accounting and see what Happens:

As you can see the Total updated dynamically so now you have the value 43,242.12 with technically doing nothing, just updating your filter.

• With the same filter you can keep selected Accounting but applying another Filter, for example Office Supplies.

Now you know that the Accounting Department on Office Supplies have expended 3,541.54

So when you apply the filter for example Accounting Excel adds all the cells with that data, so you don't have to bypass anything or do extra work and waste your sight in that.

See... As I told you: Make Excel Work for you!

So that's why it's important to know the basics. That's why you can use AI to empower your knowledge and do things much faster. But if you know what kind of data you want to get from Excel, it will be much easier to write a prompt that can help you with your task. Or if you have enough experience to do things in Excel but you get stuck on something, you know exactly what to ask. It's not about what will survive; it's a complement, like a marriage, so you can get the best of both worlds!

Download the free exercise here.