40 pillar guides

Complete Excel mastery guides.

40 in-depth tutorials across five categories — each 5,000-10,000 words with real workbooks, video walkthroughs, and downloadable examples.

While function pages answer "how does this one thing work?", pillar guides answer "how do I actually get good at this skill?". Each guide walks you through a full topic from beginner to advanced, with real business examples, working Excel files, and video demonstrations. Free, no signup, no paywalls.

📌 Currently building: These guides are being written and published progressively throughout 2026. Links below reflect final URL structure. If a guide is not yet published, the link will lead to a "coming soon" page with an email signup for launch notification.

Choose your learning path

Beginner

New to Excel

Start with these five guides to build a solid foundation.

  1. IF Function Deep Dive
  2. VLOOKUP Complete Guide
  3. Excel Tables (Structured References)
  4. Pivot Tables Complete Guide
  5. Excel Charts Complete Guide
Intermediate

Level up your workflow

You know the basics — now build faster and cleaner.

  1. XLOOKUP Complete Guide
  2. Power Query for Beginners
  3. Dynamic Arrays Complete Guide
  4. Excel Conditional Formatting
  5. Building a Dashboard from Scratch
Advanced

Master Excel

Modern Excel — LAMBDA, Python, AI, and team workflows.

  1. LAMBDA Functions Guide
  2. Power Query Advanced
  3. Excel + Python 2026
  4. Financial Modeling in Excel
  5. Excel VBA Macros Complete

All guides by category

Core Excel Mastery

10 guides

The essential foundation. If you master these ten, you'll outrank 95% of Excel users at work.

Feature Deep-Dives

10 guides

Master the powerful features hiding in Excel's ribbon. Each guide is a complete tutorial.

Workflow Guides

10 guides

Complete workflows for real business tasks. Each guide walks through a full project from start to finish.

AI in Excel

5 guides

Deep dives on each AI option in Excel — how it works, how to prompt it, what it's best at.

Performance & Troubleshooting

5 guides

When Excel gets slow, crashes, or refuses to open — these guides get you back to work.

Frequently asked questions

How long is each guide?

Between 5,000 and 10,000 words depending on topic depth. Every guide is designed to replace 5-10 shallow blog posts you'd otherwise have to piece together from search results.

Do guides include downloadable Excel files?

Yes. Every guide ships with a companion .xlsx workbook containing every example from the guide, so you can follow along and experiment.

Are the guides free?

Yes — free to read forever, no signup, no paywalls. If you want to support the project, install the Add-in (free tier available) or share a guide with a colleague.

When will all 40 guides be published?

The publishing schedule runs from Q1 2026 through Q4 2026 — approximately one guide per week. Subscribe to the newsletter to get notified when new guides drop.

Can I request a guide topic?

Yes — email info@sheetsandcells.com with the topic you want covered. Popular requests jump to the front of the queue.

Skip the guide — let AI apply it for you.

The Sheets & Cells Add-in has Claude built in. Ask it to build a dashboard, fix a workbook, or write any formula — right inside Excel.

Get the Add-in →