Wise Owl's monthly (ish) news tweet | Issue 95 - March 2026

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!

We've updated our course schedule from now until the end of the year

We've made significant changes to our scheduled course schedule. You can see a month-by-month view here:

You can move between months, or use the drop arrow to choose a particular subject.

Alternatively you can download a PDF of our latest course schedule, or see an online summary of all the courses we give. Remember that if you can't see the scheduled dates that you want you could always consider booking a tailored course just for your organsiation, whether online or at your offices.

Two new Excel functions to import data, a fuzzy logic add-in and a new Excel data course

Microsoft have introduced two new functions into Excel - IMPORTTEXT and IMPORTCSV - which let you import text files into worksheets without going through Power Query. You can see full details of how to use each function here, or find how to make your file import dynamic:

Here a user can choose the year of data they want to import and the number of rows.

And staying on the Excel data theme, we are running our first new one-day Power Query within Excel course on Tuesday April 7th - or read our blog to learn how to download (and use) the fuzzy logic add-in in Excel.

A webinar on showing your Netflix usage in Power BI - plus details of the February Power BI update

Our next free webinar is on Friday 13th March, and will show you how to start from scratch with Power BI to create a report showing your Netflix search history. Like this, in fact:

This person clearly has children!

In other Power BI news, last month's February 2026 update includes a revamped (and renamed) input slicer, a great new feature for pasting multiple choices onto a slicer and a few other smaller changes.

Project Genie: the best or worst of AI? Plus how to watch last month's webinar on using AI tools.

Google's Project Genie will let you navigate a virtually infinite (but logically coherent world) of your imagination:

You can be any character you like, and explore any world - the limit is your imagination.

See some examples here (and also see why this might not be quite as amazing as it sounds, at least just yet). Or staying on the AI theme, why not invest 45 minutes watching our webinar on using AI tools effectively?

See if you agree with our book choices, or if you know your Tolkien from your anti-depressants

Andy the Wise Owl has created a list of his best 20 books of all time - see if you agree with the choices, and let us know which books he's missed out.

Too celebral? Why not see if you can distinguish your Tolkien characters from the names of anti-depressants?

Swipe left or right?

It's surprisingly difficult, even if you've read The Lord of the Rings!

Complete our blocked word search to win £50 (plus the answers to last month's song name competition)

This month we're inviting you to pick out the related things from a word search:

With uncharacteristic kindness we've blocked off lots of the lettters to make finding the "words" easier.

The first correct entry pulled out of MANDELSON (Model for Automated Non-Deterministic Excel Lottery Selection and Output Notification) will win a £50 prize and a (small) measure of glory. Congratulations to Ross Leavers of Stonecot Trustees for winning last month's song title competion (you can see the answers here, together with an apology that the puzzle was a tad difficult!).

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

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