Wise Owl's monthly (ish) news tweet | Issue 89 - July/August 2025

The items included in this newsletter are listed below. Our newsletter go out about once a month - if you'd like to subscribe, just let us know!

You can now book one-hour consultancy slots with our trainers using our website diary

We've finally added a glossy facility to our website to allow clients to book one-hour consultancy slots:

As part of this process we've also redesigned our check-out pages to make them nicer and easier to look at and use.

We've published our course schedule up to August 2026 (!), and added a new scrolling monthly view

Are you someone who likes to plan a long way in advance? We've published our course schedule up to August next year - you can see a four-page downloadable PDF here. But we've also created a new calendar view:

You can use the arrows to move betwen different months, and the dropdown arrow to select a specific category of courses (all as explained here).

Excel's dark mode, a rewrite of our Power Pivot course and a deep-dive into Excel custom data types

Are you in touch with your Excel dark side? You could be:

In other Excel news, we've rewritten our Power Pivot course and created 28 new exercises (you can see more details here), and we've published a blog on creating custom data types as promised from the last newsletter.

The methaphone, the God mode icon and family cruise holidays - 3 completely unconnected stories!

If someone in your life struggles with mobile phone addiction (you?), you could consider getting them the methaphone ("It looks like a simple acrylic slab - and it is"):

Or you could implement the God mode icon on your desktop to allow you to go straight to your computer's settings (it's the one on the right below):

Or you could see whether a family cruise is for you by seeing how Simone and Rick of Wise Owl enjoyed their first family cruise together. There's something for everyone in this newsletter!

The June Power BI update sees sparklines emerge from preview - plus linking to a Bank Holidays API

The only significant change in the June 2025 Power BI Desktop update is the emergence of sparklines from preview after years in the shadows.

In other Power BI news, Sam has written a helpful guide on how to link to APIs (websites which provide data for computer and not human consumption), and specifically how to load UK bank holiday data.

A summer quiz (with a chance to win £50), and the winner and results from our last competition

Your editor has genuinely tried to make this month's quiz easier, with 20 questions about a range of diverse topics including Oasis songs, Whitby ... and airline sickness bags:

As always, the first answer picked out of the randomised Excel sorting hat (weighted by score achieved) will win £50.

Last month we asked you to identify the 24 starters, main courses and desserts from the picture clues. Out of the 19 responses, our sorting hat picked the name of Martin Hall of Blue Machinery, who wins a £50 voucher. You can see the answers to the questions (with explanations) here.

Note that to keep our website content up-to-date we only publish newsletters from the last 3 calendar years.

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