Giles Male and Harry Matthews talk Excel with Jeremy Vine
Last Thursday (30/05/2024), Jeremy Vine was joined by two guests on his BBC Radio 2 afternoon show. They were Giles Male, co-founder of Full Stack Modeller, and Harry Matthews, Group Financial Controller at the Landauer Group. Both discussed their love of Microsoft Excel and the versatile uses it has in everyday life. There was even talk about VLOOKUPs, XLOOKUPs, and INDEX and MATCH.
However, despite being enlightened and curious to find out more, it’s fair to say Jeremy was a tad confused by it all!
Firstly, he mispronounced VLOOKUP. Soon after, he was told by Giles that its use is discouraged at Full Stack Modeller, only to ask him a couple of minutes later what’s so great about the function. 😁
Being the radio presenter of a show like Jezza’s means you’re compelled to talk about a wide variety of topics, from politics to social issues to music to entertainment. Spreadsheets may not be his forte, but I’m sure he learnt a few hard lessons from this eight-minute chit-chat.
Luckily, I recorded the conversation, so you can listen along by playing the YouTube video. I’ve also included a transcript.
Enjoy!
Transcript
*END OF MUSIC*
Jeremy
So, that is Dua Lipa and ‘Break My Heart’, and we’re talking about spreadsheets now because this seems to divide society.
Some people just cringe at the thought of using a spreadsheet — very, very hard the entry level just to work out the world of PivotTables, IF formulas and vlukeups.
*LAUGHTER*
It’s a VLOOKUP isn’t it? But there are people out there who love nothing more than a well-constructed spreadsheet. And if you can get over the initial learning curve then they can simplify your life, I’m told.
You can track the value of your investments, automate your shopping list — even plan out your holiday.
There’s something, apparently, something beautiful about watching your budget calculations cascade down the page. If you add a bit of splash of colour and some nice formatting they can be very pleasing to look at, but they’re complicated to use, they need a bit of skill and not everyone is a fan.
So, today we’re talking about those who love spreadsheets and why a good spreadsheet is a real plus for your life. I’ve got somebody on the team who uses it to track the dinners he eats, and if he clicks on a meal he can find out what the ingredients are that he needs to buy, so it’s not just numbers.
vine@bbc.co.uk is the email. Please enclose your number — when you do email we can get back to you.
So, we’ll speak to Harry Matthews — an accountant who’s a big fan of the Excel spreadsheet system.
Giles Male is the co-founder of Full Stack Modeller. Giles, sorry, what is that?
Giles
It’s a training company. So, we help individuals and teams get better predominantly at Excel, to be honest.
Jeremy
Um, okay. So you start from the basics, do you? Of this is what a cell is — this is the space you’re going to write a number into.
Giles
We probably assume that level of knowledge, but we do take kind of beginners. As long as you know what a cell is and what you’re looking at, we can help from there on.
So, you mentioned VLOOKUP. We would train people probably to avoid things like VLOOKUP and get up to date with XLOOKUP.
Jeremy
Okay, gosh! I’m already out of my depth. Harry Matthews, where are you on VLOOKUP?
Harry
I’m a bit more old school — I prefer an INDEX/MATCH rather than an XLOOKUP, which is even more advanced than a VLOOKUP.
But they’re good — they serve their purpose, and I think that’s always the thing with Excel.
Jeremy
Sorry to interrupt, but I’m assuming that you just basically put numbers in it and then at the end of it you type a formula — if you can do that — that adds the numbers together.
But you’ve added XLOOKUP and everything else. What’s that?
*GILES BRIEFLY INTERRUPTS HARRY*
Jeremy
Listen to you both now rutting trying to get the explanation! I’ll come to you in a second, Giles. Go on, Harry — XLOOKUP.
Harry
It’s a bit like looking things up in an index at the back of a book. So it tells you where something is in a list of things. So, say if you were looking for the letter D in a list of the alphabet — you’d want it to return 4. And it can be really helpful when you’re trying to find a specific value that links into something.
So my day-to-day, I’ve got to find and look up invoice numbers. It’s really helpful so I can find the specific invoice and then I can pull and return the invoice value with it as well — just formulaically — so I’m not having to copy and paste endless amounts of data. And that’s a really good way of how I can save you a load of time.
Jeremy
So, that’s the XLOOKUP. Giles, go on. Tell us why the VLOOKUP is better.
Giles
Oh, it’s not. XLOOKUP’s better, but Harry just touched on some really good points. It’s all about automation nowadays, helping teams do things at the click of a button, which 10–15 years ago may have taken many, many days to work through every month.
Jeremy
I’m guessing, Giles, that a lot of people will have a spreadsheet maybe to keep track of different invoices, it’ll be numbers-based, and it’s probably financial. Is that right, do you think?
Giles
Definitely in my world. I mean, Excel is used for far more than just financial problems. But yeah, predominantly if you’re in the accounting space or in a finance team — you’re dealing with numbers, and you’re dealing with quite often quite boring things, so if you can automate the boringness, it gives you more time to do the more exciting stuff.
Jeremy
Can you sell me the idea of a spreadsheet that is not just numbers and not money, Giles. Give me an idea, and I’m coming to you in a second on this Harry so get your answer ready! What can you do with a spreadsheet that isn’t just numbers?
Giles
So, you can do loads of things. You can do lots of wrangling of text. If you imagine companies nowadays have so much data out there, you can use tools like Power Query to essentially clean up all your data, and from that you can take loads of insights. You might just be collecting different bits of information about your customers, about your sales; it could help build a kind of strategy into the future that’s maybe nothing to do with numbers to start off with.
Jeremy
Harry, what about you? What’s the most exciting spreadsheet you’ve seen?
Harry
The most exciting spread — I mean, I can’t even think! I genuinely, I mean, I adore Excel. That sounds sarcastic, I think I sound sarcastic, but genuinely I love Excel. I think the most exciting spreadsheet I’ve ever seen was a model for an airline because it allowed you to deep dive into calculations about different routes and see passenger numbers and income. But I know that’s very accountancy.
Jeremy
No, fine! Listen, we’ve given up trying to keep this simple, so I think it’s good — let’s just go for complication here.
Harry
Sure!
Jeremy
So, yeah. Go on!
Harry
But, I think coming back to your sort of question about what else you can do. I use it for itineraries a lot of the time. So, my partner, bless him! He’s not the organiser — I’m the organiser. And having an itinerary means I can plan out exactly what we’re going to do. It’s not necessarily numbers, but I can go…right, this is the start time or the date, what we’re going to do, how long it’s going to take, and it can drive it through so then I’ve got something nice and easy to look at, so we know what we’re doing when we go on holiday.
Jeremy
But I don’t… Okay, I missed that because that to me is a list. I don’t see if you’re writing down times of flights and hotels — what are you adding up in there?
Harry
So, for example, if I’m doing travel. I might say well I know how long this will take, so I can get it to add immediately the next start time automatically. And if I’m looking at different flights that may take a different amount of time, I can just change that rather than…
Oh okay, it’s 10:15. Or maybe if I look at a different flight, I can get it to do more of the maths for me. Because as an accountant, I’m very lazy I don’t like using a calculator, I don’t like doing mental arithmetic. If I can get Excel to do it for me, I absolutely will!
Jeremy
Giles, you’re one of the commentators, I gather, on the Microsoft Excel World Championships.
Giles
I am!
Jeremy
Words fail.
Giles
Yeah, it’s a proper eSport. There there’s tens of thousands of pounds of prize money on the line. Every year, it culminates in a face-to-face final in Vegas. You are literally watching the best Excel eSports competitors battle it out on screen and it’s my job to kind of tell them what they’re doing and make it interesting.
Jeremy
And they’d be given information they’ve got to assign into a spreadsheet, and compete with each other like that?
Giles
They’re pre-built spreadsheets. So, normally there’s a theme — it might be sort of poker or battleships. There’ll be some sort of game and there’s a bunch of problems that you’ve got to solve. They get more complex the further you go through, and you’ve got to get as many points on the board, usually in 30 minutes. The winner gets a huge amount of kudos in our crazy little industry.
Jeremy
What’s the hardest thing you can do on a spreadsheet, Giles?
Giles
The hardest thing I’ve seen done is predict the orbit of planets in the solar system using VBA. I can’t do that, but it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever seen.
Jeremy
Brilliant, thank you. We’ve learned a lot. Harry, were you disagreeing? I heard you sigh.
Harry
No, no, no, no. Impressed, impressed! Absolutely, I thought that’s really cool!
Jeremy
The spreadsheet community is obviously a very friendly place. Thank you both so much!
We’ve delved deep there. Harry Matthews is an accountant who uses Excel a lot. Giles Males is the co-founder of Full Stack Modeller, of course — always add ‘of course’ when I haven’t heard that before. And [he is also] one of the hosts of the Microsoft Excel World Championships, which do exist in Vegas.
What a brilliant item, and all I do is use it to add two numbers!
