What's Changing

Google Sheets becomes Microsoft Excel. The cell grid, formulas, charts, and pivot tables all carry across — Excel has them all and then some. The main shifts are: vastly more powerful Power Query (now full-featured in the browser as of 2026), AI-generated formulas via Copilot, and Excel's specific way of doing Tables (which unlocks structured references and easier sorting).

What Stays the Same

• Cell grid + formula bar — type values, drag the fill handle, press F2 to edit
• Familiar formulas — SUM, AVERAGE, IF, VLOOKUP, COUNTIF, all there
• Real-time collaboration — colored cursors show who's editing where
• Auto-save — every change syncs in seconds
• Comments + @mentions
• Sharing — link-based, with view/edit/specific-people scopes

Migration Heads-Up

• Google Sheets files (.gsheet) are converted to Excel format (.xlsx) during migration. Most files convert cleanly. Watch out for: very large sheets (>1M rows), sheets with custom Apps Script automations (these don't run — see Power Automate or Office Scripts as replacements), or sheets using IMPORTRANGE / IMPORTHTML (no direct Excel equivalent).
• Conditional formatting mostly transfers, but rule order can change — review important formatting after migration.
• Pivot tables migrate but Excel pivot tables have more features. Consider rebuilding important pivots to take advantage of slicers and timeline filters.
• Apps Script does not work in Excel. Office Scripts is the equivalent. Power Automate covers many automation use cases.

The Excel Layout

• Title bar — file name, AutoSave indicator, presence avatars, Comments button, Catch up, Copilot button, Share button
• Ribbon — tabs: File, Home, Insert, Layout, Formulas, Data, Review, View, Automate (where Office Scripts lives), Help, plus Copilot at the right end
• Name Box + Formula bar — left of the formula bar shows the active cell address; the bar itself supports color-coded argument highlighting and = triggers Copilot formula generation
• Cell grid — column letters (A, B, C…), row numbers (1, 2, 3…), fill handle on the bottom-right of each selected cell, freeze panes via View tab
• Sheet tabs at the bottom with the + button, navigation arrows, and the zoom slider on the bottom-right
• Status bar — shows SUM, AVG, COUNT for any cells you select (just like Google Sheets)

Format as Table — The Most Useful Excel Trick

Converting a range to a Table unlocks several things at once:

1. Click anywhere in your data
2. Home tab > Format as Table (or press Ctrl + T)
3. Confirm the range and whether your data has headers
4. Click OK

What you get:

• Filter dropdowns on each column — click any column header to sort or filter
• Banded rows for readability
• Structured references — =SUM(Sales[Amount]) instead of =SUM(D2:D437). When data grows, the formula stays correct.
• Total row option — adds an automatic SUM/AVG/COUNT row at the bottom

This is the equivalent of "creating a filter" in Sheets, but more powerful. Most production Excel work starts with making the data a table.

Formulas — Mostly Identical

If you know Sheets formulas, you know Excel formulas. The big functions are the same:

=SUM(A1:A10)
=AVERAGE(A1:A10)
=IF(B2 > 100, "High", "Low")
=VLOOKUP(C2, Sheet2!A:D, 4, FALSE)
=COUNTIF(D:D, ">0")
=SUMIFS(D:D, A:A, "Toronto", B:B, ">2025")

A few that Excel has and Sheets doesn't (or has a different name):

• XLOOKUP — modern replacement for VLOOKUP / HLOOKUP. Easier syntax, returns from any direction, has a default for "not found"
• FILTER — returns rows matching criteria as a dynamic array
• UNIQUE — returns unique values from a range
• TEXTJOIN — concatenate with a delimiter, ignoring blanks
• LET — name intermediate values inside a formula for readability

Copilot in Excel

Three entry points:

1. = trigger anywhere — type = in the formula bar (or in a cell), then describe in plain English what you want: =count rows where region is West and amount > 1000. Copilot generates the formula. (You still get to review and tweak it.)
2. Copilot pane — Home tab > Copilot button opens a right-side pane. Ask "Analyze this data" — it generates charts, finds patterns, suggests pivot tables. Or "Add a column with sentiment" — for text columns, Copilot can label each cell.
3. In-grid Copilot icon — appears next to a selected cell when there's a useful action available. Click for "Generate formula", "Format as table", or "Add a column".

For Blue Ant Media producers and finance staff, the most useful Copilot prompts:

• "Find duplicate vendor names in column A"
• "Summarize Q1 spend by category"
• "Add a column showing variance vs. last month"
• "Highlight rows where status is Overdue"

Power Query — Get Data from Anywhere

This is one of Excel's most powerful features and it's now full-featured in the browser as of January 2026.

Data tab > Get Data > pick a source:

• Excel workbook — combine multiple Excel files
• CSV / Text
• JSON (e.g., from an API)
• SharePoint Online List — pull a list directly into a sheet, refreshable
• OData feed — common for ERP / accounting integrations
• Web — scrape a public table

Once you've imported, the Power Query Editor lets you clean and transform without writing code:

• Remove duplicates, filter rows, split columns
• Pivot/unpivot, group by, merge two queries
• All steps are recorded — when you refresh the data, every step replays

This replaces ad-hoc data import macros and is much more reliable than IMPORTRANGE in Sheets.

Charts and Pivot Tables

Charts work like Sheets but with more types and customization:

1. Select your data (or click in a Table)
2. Insert tab > Recommended Charts to see what Excel suggests, or pick a specific type from the chart group
3. Click the chart, use the + button to add elements (titles, data labels, trend lines)

Pivot tables:

1. Click in your data > Insert > PivotTable
2. Drag fields to Rows, Columns, Values, Filters
3. Excel calculates automatically — change the layout by dragging fields
4. Add Slicers (Insert > Slicer) for clickable filter buttons — this is much nicer than Sheets pivot tables

Conditional Formatting

Highlight cells based on rules. Home tab > Conditional Formatting:

• Highlight Cell Rules — greater than, less than, between, equal to, text contains
• Top/Bottom Rules — top 10, bottom 10%, above average
• Data Bars — like a horizontal bar chart inside cells
• Color Scales — heat map across cells
• Icon Sets — traffic lights, arrows, shapes
• New Rule — write a custom formula like =$D2 > $E2 to highlight whole rows

Conditional formatting from Sheets mostly transfers, but rule order can shift on migration.

Co-Authoring

Same as Google Sheets:

• Avatars in the title bar
• Colored cell selection rings show who's selected what
• Auto-save every couple of minutes
• @mentions in comments → emails the person + creates a task

Office Scripts vs. Apps Script

If you used Apps Script in Sheets to automate work, the Excel equivalent is Office Scripts (Automate tab):

• TypeScript-based (Sheets used JavaScript)
• Records actions and turns them into a script you can edit
• Can run on a schedule via Power Automate
• Works in Excel for the web (not desktop in all cases)

For one-off automations, Power Automate is often easier — it has a visual designer instead of code.

Google Sheets to Excel — Quick Reference

Tips

• Make your data a Table first (Ctrl + T). Most other features get easier.
• Use XLOOKUP not VLOOKUP for new formulas — it's simpler and doesn't break when columns are inserted.
• Try Copilot's = trigger for any formula you'd Google. Faster than searching, and it explains what it generated.
• Power Query for repeat work — if you do the same data cleanup every week, build it once in Power Query and just refresh.
• Slicers > filter dropdowns for dashboards — they're clickable buttons everyone can use without knowing how filters work.

Quick Reference Downloads

• Excel for the Web Quick Reference Card (coming soon)

Need Help?

If something is not working or you cannot find what you need:

1. Check the Quick Start guide on this site
2. Browse other modules — especially Office on the Web for the broader picture
3. Contact your regional IT support team (the Contact page lists the right email for your office)

See the Contact page for the AI assistant and security incident reporting.