Skillwave Training

News from the Data Monkey Brought to you by Excelguru and Skillwave (Image of a cyborg monkey in a superhero type crouch) February 24, 2026 In This Issue: - New Video on Excel TRIMRANGE() & the Dot Operator - From the AKA Sessions - Latest Meet-up Recording and Next Event Information - Upcoming Courses and Conferences - Available Training Options Another month has flown by with Ken hosting and presenting at various Power BI and Modern Excel Meet-ups, helping students in the live 'Ask Ken Anything' sessions, and leading his first course of the year for Chartered Professional Accountants of BC. This week, Ken is excited to be delivering two days of live, on-site training for a private client. He LOVES being in person with students! However, if you can't join him live, we have the next best thing: 20% off all of our on-demand video courses (excluding 'Ask Ken Anything' subscriptions). All you have to do is register by February 28, 2026 and apply this code at checkout: LOVE20

The latest edition of our newsletter is hitting inboxes now! 📨
If you'd like to stay up-to-date on the latest content from our experts, what’s new in #Excel and #PowerBI, info on courses, events, promos, and more, subscribe at skw-t.com/news

📗 You'll also our free #PowerQuery eBook.

Love Your Data Save 20% on all our business intelligence courses* with this code: LOVE20 Go to skillwave.training/learn Valid February 14-28, 2026 *Excludes 'Ask Ken Anything’ (Skillwave Training logo)

Now’s the time to transform your #DataAnalysis skills and supercharge your career!
🩷 Register today in any of our courses at skw-t.com/lovedata and save 20% with code LOVE20

(Offer valid until Feb 28, 2026, excludes the Ask Ken Anything sessions, and can't be combined with any other offers.)

Yes, Power Query is what adds ETL functionality to Excel and Power BI!

Have you ever extended a schedule in a dataset in Excel and wondered… “Did my formula actually pick up the new rows?” 🤔 In this video, Ken Puls explains how to use the TRIMRANGE() function and the… Excel TRIMRANGE() & the Dot Operator: Formulas That Auto-Adjust to Your Dynamic Data Ranges

Ever extend a schedule in a dataset in #Excel and wonder, “Did my formula actually pick up the new rows?” 🤔
Here, @excelguru.ca explains how to use the TRIMRANGE() function and the DOT (.) operator to build formulas that automatically adjust to changing data ranges:

Love Your Data Save 20% on all our business intelligence courses* with this code: LOVE20 Go to skillwave.training/learn Valid February 14-28, 2026 *Excludes 'Ask Ken Anything’ (Skillwave Training logo)

Now’s the time to transform your #DataAnalysis skills and supercharge your career!
🩷 Register today in any of our courses at skw-t.com/lovedata and save 20% with code LOVE20

(Offer valid until Feb 28, excludes subscriptions to the Ask Ken Anything sessions, and can't be combined with other offers.)

What does ETL mean?

ETL stands for:
1️⃣ Extract
2️⃣ Transform
3️⃣ Load
It's a data integration used to combine data from multiple sources into a single dataset for #DataAnalysis.

#PowerQuery adds ETL to #Excel and #PowerBI, and will save you hours of time and effort. Get started with our FREE intro course: skw-t.com/pqfun

(Skillwave Training logo) skillwave.training Love Your Data Save 20% on all our business intelligence courses* with this code: LOVE20 - Building Financial Statements in Excel with Power Pivot - Self Service BI Academy for Excel and Power BI - Supercharge Power BI Online - Power Query Academy Intermediate to Advanced - Excel Fundamentals Academy -Power BI for the Business Analyst Online - Data Visualization: The Art and Science - Dimensional Modeling for the Excel and Power BI Pro - PL-300 Exam Preparation for Power BI - Demystifying DAX Intermediate to Advanced *Excludes 'Ask Ken Anything’ Valid February 14-28, 2026

Ready to revolutionize your #DataAnalytics game?
💜 Enroll in any of our #Excel and #PowerBI courses by February 28, 2026, and use code LOVE20 to save 20%. Go to skw-t.com/lovedata

(Offer excludes subscriptions to the Ask Ken Anything sessions.)

#DataAnalysis #DAX #PowerQuery #DataModeling #DataViz

Like Ken, the Data Monkey needs corrective eyewear in order to be able to read properly. In this Monkey Shorts episode, we'll demonstrate how we can quickly scale the DAX font size (in both Excel and… Zooming in the DAX Formula window - Monkey Shorts Episode 014

Like @excelguru.ca, the Data Monkey needs corrective eyewear in order to be able to read properly. 👓 In this Monkey Shorts, we'll demonstrate how to quickly scale the #DAX font size (in both #Excel and #PowerBI), making it easier to author/review your DAX formulas:

(Skillwave Training logo) Testimonial "I love the flow and layout of the course. It fit logically and built on past elements quite seamlessly." Mike M. (5 stars) Supercharge Power BI Online (Caricature of Matt Allington with the covers of his 'Supercharge Excel' and 'Supercharge Power BI' books next to him) Registration includes digital editions of both of Matt Allington’s best-selling books. skillwave.training

Woot woot! Another 5-star review for our introductory #DAX course, Supercharge #PowerBI. 🌟
This structured, hands-on training will help you learn to write DAX and gain more powerful insights from your data. Learn more at skw-t.com/supercharge
♥️ Enroll by Feb 28 with this code to save 20%: LOVE20

(Skillwave Training logo) skillwave.training Love Your Data Save 20% on all our business intelligence courses* with this code: LOVE20 - Building Financial Statements in Excel with Power Pivot - Self Service BI Academy for Excel and Power BI - Supercharge Power BI Online - Power Query Academy Intermediate to Advanced - Excel Fundamentals Academy -Power BI for the Business Analyst Online - Data Visualization: The Art and Science - Dimensional Modeling for the Excel and Power BI Pro - PL-300 Exam Preparation for Power BI - Demystifying DAX Intermediate to Advanced *Excludes 'Ask Ken Anything’ Valid February 14-28, 2026

Ready to revolutionize your #DataAnalytics game?
💜 Enroll in any of our #Excel and #PowerBI training by February 28, 2026, and use code LOVE20 to save 20%. Go to skw-t.com/lovedata

(Offer excludes subscriptions to the Ask Ken Anything sessions.)

#BusinessIntelligence #PowerQuery #DAX #DataModeling

Self Service BI Academy Prepare to change your company's reporting game forever! In the Self Service BI Academy, Ken Puls will teach you how to use Excel, Power Query, and Power BI together to build robust Self Service BI…

🧭 Takeaway: The best solutions are often the simplest ones – if you know where to look.

Get practical solutions to real world challenges! Our #SelfServiceBI (skw-t.com/ssbi) and Excel Fundamentals (skw-t.com/excelfun) Academies give you session access, or purchase just the AKAs at skw-t.com/aka

It's that simple! While 0 is a number that #Excel counts, "null" is empty and gets ignored. This single replacement step fixed the entire counting problem instantly – no complex DAX needed. ⚡

Sometimes you don't need a complex solution; you just need someone who's seen the problem before.

The Two-Second Fix for Counting Problems Problem: Your PivotTable is counting all rows in a column, even those with zeros. Solution: Replace zeros with nulls in Power Query! While "zero" is a number that Excel counts, "null" is empty and gets ignored. (Screenshot of a table containing data on the left and a PivotTable based on that data on the right. The Grand Total count on the PivotTable columns do NOT include the "0" entries.) (Skillwave Training logo)

One of our AKA participants wanted to know why their #PivotTable was inflating their counts numbers. They only wanted to count active line of credit accounts, but their count was including everything, even those with $0 balances.

@excelguru.ca's solution? Replace zeros with nulls in #PowerQuery. 🧵

(Skillwave Training logo) Love Your Data (Image of a cyborg monkey in a superhero style crouch) Save 20% on all our business intelligence courses* with this code: LOVE20 Valid February 14-28, 2026 *Excludes 'Ask Ken Anything' skillwave.training

It’s time to show your data a little love! 😍
Save 20% on all our #BusinessIntelligence courses from Feb 14-28. Go to skw-t.com/lovedata and use this code at checkout: LOVE20

(Offer excludes subscriptions to Ask Ken Anything.)

#DataModeling #DataViz #DataAnalysis #PowerBI #Excel #DAX #PowerQuery

(Skillwave Training logo) Love Your Data (Image of a cyborg monkey in a superhero style crouch) Save 20% on all our business intelligence courses* with this code: LOVE20 Valid February 14-28, 2026 *Excludes 'Ask Ken Anything' skillwave.training

It’s time to show your data a little love! 😍
Save 20% on all our #BusinessIntelligence courses from February 14-28, 2026. Go to skw-t.com/lovedata and use this code at checkout: LOVE20

(Offer excludes subscriptions to the Ask Ken Anything sessions.)

#PowerBI #Excel #DAX #PowerQuery #DataAnalytics

In this episode of Monkey Shorts, Ken will show you how to keep your queries organized within Power Query. In addition, you'll see how the Excel Queries Pane and the Power Query Navigator Pane have… Keeping Organized with Folders in Power Query - Monkey Shorts Episode 013

In this episode of Monkey Shorts 🐵🩳, @excelguru.ca will show you how to keep your queries organized within #PowerQuery. In addition, you'll see how the #Excel Queries Pane and the Power Query Navigator Pane have some slight behavioral differences:

Glad you've been enjoying them, Jeff!

Ask Ken Anything Get more than just a course – get access to an expert who will help you build real world solutions. The Ask Ken Anything (AKA) sessions are live, interactive coaching calls that are held twice each…

That’s the power of AKA sessions: real problems, real solutions, explained clearly. Subscribe to the AKAs today at skw-t.com/aka, or get access included with our #SelfServiceBI ((skw-t.com/ssbi) or #Excel Fundamentals (skw-t.com/excelfun) Academies.

Seeing paid dates, invoice dates, and transaction dates handled correctly – all from one calendar – was a big “aha” moment for many attendees. Smarter models come from understanding relationships, not adding tables. 💡

#FinancialAnalytics #DataAnalysis #BusinessIntelligence #PowerPivot

Rather than creating multiple calendars, @excelguru.ca showed how a single #PowerQuery Calendar table could be connected to multiple data fields in the Fact table using inactive relationships. From there, with a little CALCULATE magic in a #DAX measure he unlocked multi-date reporting cleanly.

One Calendar Table… or Five? In a recent Ask Ken Anything call, Ken Puls showed how a single Calendar table could be connected to multiple data fields in the Fact table, and then used a little CALCULATE magic in a DAX measure to cleanly unlock multi-date reporting. (Screenshot of two PivotTables side by side, one titled Sales by Fiscal Period and the other Sales by Transaction Date, overlaid with the Power Query data model view highlighting the relationships between the Date query on the Calendar Table and the Date_Period and Date_Transaction queries on the Sales table) (Skillwave logo)

During a recent Ask Ken Anything session, an attendee shared a frustration: “ChatGPT told me to create multiple calendar tables – should I?” 📆❓
The root of the issue was around transactions being posted to fiscal periods that did not line up with calendar periods. 🧵

News from the Data Monkey (Image of a cyborg monkey in a superhero-style crouch) Brought to you by Excelguru and Skillwave February 10, 2026 In This Issue: - New Video on Power Query Refresh Weirdness - From the AKA Sessions - What's New in Excel - Latest Meet-up Recording and Next Event Information - Upcoming Courses and Conferences - Available Training Options We've been having a busy month getting back to our twice-monthly User Group meet-ups, and preparing for Ken's upcoming courses for CPABC in the coming weeks and the Global Excel Summit in May. More details on all of these are below. The team is also preparing for a special promotion later this month - stay tuned for more details! Don't forget that 2026 Global Excel Awards nominations close on February 13! We'd be honoured if our readers would like to nominate Monkey Tools in the Excel Add-in of the Year category and/or Ken Puls in the Excel Training Provider of the Year category.

If you're a newsletter subscriber, the new edition should be in your inbox! 📬
Not subscribed? Sign up today at skw-t.com/news to get the latest content from our experts, what’s new in #Excel and #PowerBI, info on courses, events, promos, and more! We'll also send you our free #PowerQuery eBook.

Have you ever refreshed a Power Query table and thought… “Wait — who moved my rows?” 🤨 You’re not imagining things. In this video, Ken Puls walks you through a surprising behavior in Excel when… Power Query Refresh Weirdness: Shifted Rows, Inserted Columns (and How to Control It)

Ever refreshed a #PowerQuery table and thought… “Wait — who moved my rows?” 🤨 You’re not imagining things.
Here, @excelguru.ca walks you through a surprising behavior in #Excel if Power Query tables are refreshed when multiple tables are placed on the same worksheet:

As mentioned in Monkey Shorts episode 010, Ken prefers to keep his measures stored on different tables, as this helps act as folders to keep related measures grouped together. In Power BI we can… Keeping Organized with Measure Folders in Power BI - Monkey Shorts Episode 012

As mentioned in Monkey Shorts episode 10, @excelguru.ca prefers to keep his measures stored on #Excel different tables to keep related measures grouped together. In #PowerBI we can keep things even MORE organized by creating folders within a table. 📂 See how:

Power BI Skills - Thinking of Data in Tables Level: Beginners One very important concept that Excel users often struggle with when starting on their Power BI and Power Pivot journey is that they need to learn to think about data in tables…

An important concept that #Excel users often struggle with when starting on their #PowerBI and #PowerPivot journey is that they need to learn to think about data in tables rather than thinking about data in cells. 🤔 Matt Allington explains it here:

Master Your Data in Excel & Power BI Pattern Difficulty: Easy Split Records Into Rows Recipe: Right click the Values column - Choose to Split Column > by Delimiter - Choose appropriate Delimiter - Click Advanced > Split to Rows > OK (Screenshot of 2 tables with Date and Records columns. The first table is labelled "Original" with multiple entries on separate lines in the Records cells. The second table is labelled "Desired Output" and has each data point in the Records column on its own row.) Where this works well: - Desired output is Unpivoted - Number of elements may change (Image of a cyborg monkey cheering with its fist up in the air) Did you know? You can pivot the Records column to ensure that you’ll always get all columns if the number of elements per record may change Course Subscribers: Click the icon below to see this recipe in action (Icon of a film projector) For more data patterns, check out our courses at (C) www.skillwave.training Recipe: 10.105.2319

This is one of the1st tricks we show to new #PowerQuery users:
Ever had to split the contents of a cell in an #Excel table into individual rows? 😔 Instead of manually cutting and pasting each item into its own row, P! can do it in just a few clicks!

👩‍🍳Get the full collection at skw-t.com/pqrecipes

Now you can master data cleaning an transformation (Database icon with a broom sweeping the top) (Skillwave Training logo)

#PowerQuery allows you to master you data in #PowerBI and #Excel, so you can automate your #DataCleaning 🧹 and #BusinessIntelligence processes. We help people in finance, sales, data analytics, and business owners just like you - so you don’t have to learn it on your own. 🦾 Go to skw-t.com/pqacademy

If you prefer to keep your Power Pivot or Power BI Measures on a dedicated measure table, this video will show you how. Ken shows an easy way to create a measure table with Power Query, as well as… Creating Disconnected "Fact" Tables - Monkey Shorts Episode 011

If you prefer to keep your #PowerPivot or #PowerBI Measures on a dedicated measure table, @excelguru.ca shows an easy way to create a measure table with #PowerQuery, and what you must do in order to avoid the dreaded "Relationships May be Needed" error in #Excel:

Very interesting read!

Self Service BI Academy Prepare to change your company's reporting game forever! In the Self Service BI Academy, Ken Puls will teach you how to use Excel, Power Query, and Power BI together to build robust Self Service BI…

These kinds of advanced patterns that surface organically in AKA sessions, because they come straight from real project pain .
Enroll in our #SelfServiceBI (skw-t.com/ssbi) or #Excel Fundamentals (skw-t.com/excelfun) Academy and gain to live AKA sessions where we help you solve your own scenarios.