[Christine Layton:] ...
as they try to solve an original task.
The championship was broadcasted on the
ESPN network and attracted a large audience.
I actually have one of the commentators, MrExcel
himself, Bill Jelen, joining us from the U.S..
Hello, Bill.
[Bill Jelen:] Hey, Christine, how are you?
[Christine:] I'm good.
Now, what is the seemingly useless
thing you're really good at?
[Bill:] Oh, my.
Back in uni, I won a thousand dollars by
stopping an electric fan with my tongue
at a stupid human tricks competition.
[Christine:] Had you done it before that?
Did you have experience in this field?
[Bill:] It was definitely something after a
happy hour kind of event where you tried
it on a small fan and then worked your way
up to the big fan, so yes.
[Christine:] Look at that.
[Bill:] I had a year experience
before I won that money.
[Christine:] Yeah, that would be quite the
qualification to put into a LinkedIn profile.
So look, how did the event
go over the weekend, Bill?
What can you tell us about
the World Championships?
This is just the best event I've heard of.
[Bill:] It's crazy.
So the eight people who are competing are
some of the best Excellers in the world.
They're very, very fast at Excel and the
competition throws very unusual tasks at them.
So instead of just doing an income statement
like you would normally do at work.
They had to simulate one was a regatta.
So, you have a series of ships and the
wind constantly changes and you have
to figure out where the ship ends up.
Another one was modeling a slot machine
kind of thing, but with alternate scoring.
So you have to be able to take your Excel
skills and just turn 90 degrees and use it
in ways that you normally wouldn't use it at work.
All while competing in a 30-minute clock against
everyone else to see who can solve the fastest.
[Christine:] Wow.
I did not even know you could do that in
Excel, but I'm sure that the competitors did.
Can you tell us about some of the...
Yeah, can you tell us about some
of the eight expert modelers?
[Bill:] Yeah, so the best person in the
world is a guy named Diarmuid Early.
He's from Ireland.
He generally wins these and he
has a very interesting strategy.
There's five levels.
So you can get 200
points in each of the five levels.
And Diarmuid almost always goes
straight for the hardest example to
try and put points on the board fast.
And that worked out for him in the first and
second round, so he advanced to the finals.
But then the third round was so hard he
actually ran out of time before he could
post his answers to the board.
He ended up getting upset by a young fellow
named Andrew Ngai, who won the championship.
So it was interesting to see Diarmuid just so
dominating in the first two rounds and
then, just because of a timing error,
basically, go down in the finals.
[Christine:] Wow, what an upset.
[Bill:] Right.
[Christine:] So that is...,
yeah, definitely.
So can you tell me,
so there were three rounds, is that right?
Were there finals before this, by the way?
How did the eight people get through?
[Bill:] Yeah, that's right.
So the way that it works, every
October, the FM World Cup, Financial
Modeling World Cup has an open competition.
So anyone who thinks that they are good at Excel.
If you're the Excel person at
your work, you can sign up.
I think it's $50 to sign up and you compete.
The top 100 finishers in that
two-hour round then move on to Round 2.
And then the top 16 will advance to the finals.
And those finals last year were all on
ESPN3, which is the streaming channel.
So that's how they advanced last year.
And then this year, they just chose,
they call it the "eight all-stars", right?
So people who have done well in the past who
are kind of, it's hard to say this, who are kind
of household names in the competitive Excel world.
Which is a sentence that I
never thought I would utter,
But other people who made a name for
themselves in the last competition.
One fellow, Michael Jarman, who developed a huge
following in the chat window, they started calling
themselves "Jarmy's Army", they invited him
back just because he was such a fan favorite.
So yeah.
[Christine:] Wow.
That is...
It's 12:45.
If you have just jumped in the car and you're
wondering what's going on, we're talking about
the Microsoft Excel World Championships
with one of the commentators, Bill Jelen,
who is crossing to me from Florida.
You know what I really love, Bill,
was the banner photo with the eight faces, so all
of the main competitors, and it kind of looked a
little bit like the Hunger Games.
They all look really serious.
They had some good blue steel going on.
But how in the world did you become
a commentator for this?
I mean, what is the road?
What is the path that you
have followed to be here now?
[Bill:] Okay, so about 20 years ago,
I launched a website called MrExcel.
I'm MrExcel, mrexcel.com, and I've written
about 67 books about Microsoft Excel.
I have 2,400 YouTube videos about Excel.
So I know a lot about Excel.
I traveled around the country doing seminars.
And I consider myself to be very smart in Excel.
Smart enough to know that I should
never compete against these people.
So when someone called me years ago for an
earlier competition and wanted me to be a judge,
I'm like, "Yes, I'll be happy to be a judge.
“I can come and help explain what's going on”,
but not have to be as fast as these people.
They say it's a young man's sport.
These people probably use Excel 40, 60, 80 hours
every week so they're super fast at what they do.
[Christine:] So how did you
come to love it so much?
I mean, 67 books?
That's a lot.
[Bill:] Yeah.
[Christine:] Yeah.
Where did you start with it?
[Bill:] Right, yeah, so I was working in
an accounting department in Akron, Ohio, taking
data from the mainframe and producing reports
and it just became my go-to product.
We would take the data out of the mainframe
and I was sitting back there in the back, just
hunched over, first Lotus 1-2-3 and then Excel.
I became really good at it.
And at one point, one of my coworkers
said, "You know, you should write a book."
I said, "How am I ever going to write a book?"
And he said, "I'll give you
an Excel question every day."
And so after six months, we looked in the
drawer where we threw the Excel questions
and there were only three questions in there.
I said, "You're not doing a very good job."
So I launched a website and I encouraged
people to send me their Excel questions.
"Send me your Excel question, I'll send
you the answer." And then each week,
I'd write up an article of the best question that
came in that week, and then eventually, there was
enough material there for the first book.
And then, once you have the first book,
you just keep adding more stuff.
When I do a seminar, I always start the
seminar by saying, "Someone in this room is going
to know some Excel trick I've never seen before."
And I have a little prize, a little dollar
prize I hand out and I get so many great
Excel tricks from that.
Right?
Someone in the audience gives me some amazing
thing I've never seen in Excel and I always
collect those and put them in the next book.
[Christine:] Well, what are some tricks
that you can tell us about now, Bill?
[Bill:] Okay, so here's my #1 trick of all time.
[Christine:] Okay.
[Bill:] You download data,
you have 10,000 rows of data and you put
in some amazing little formula up in Row 2.
So Row 1 is the headings.
You build a great formula
in Row 2 and you need to get that formula
down to all 10,000 rows or all 100,000 rows.
Most people will grab that formula,
there's a little dot called the fill
handle, and they'll drag.
And dragging is such a
hassle because dragging down 10,000 rows
takes you forever and you always miss.
You lose interest and you
end up way below the data.
Okay, so here's the tip, and everyone
who has ever dragged that fill handle,
just go to the fill handle and
instead of dragging, double click.
Excel looks to the left, figures out how many
rows of data are sitting next to the formula
and copies the formula down to the bottom.
Anytime I do that trick in a seminar,
I hear half the room just go, (gasp] Right?
And I know it's going to be a great
day when I get that at 8:45 AM.
[Christine:] Your job here is done.
12:50, Bill Jelen is my guest, we're talking
about Microsoft Excel tricks and tips.
Oh, wow.
So, I suppose,
what are the rules around this whole competition?
Are there any things that aren't allowed?
Any tricks that aren't allowed, Bill?
[Bill:] No, it's amazing, any trick is allowed.
So when I first saw the competition, I said,
"Well, would we be allowed to flip over into the
macro language and write some sort of a macro?"
And they said, "If you're fast enough
that you think that you could beat
Diarmuid Early with your macro,
then that's certainly allowed."
All right?
And I remember, at one point...
[Christine:] Does anyone do that?
Has anyone done that, Bill?
[Bill:] I think, in last year's competition, there
was one woman who did flip over into VBA and just
wrote a tiny little function to reverse some text.
So the text was going left to right, of course.
And she needed it to go backwards,
I don't remember exactly
what the point of that was.
But she flipped over into VBA and I remember that
she called her function "FlipItAndReverseIt".
And I said, "Wow, that's a
Missy Elliott fan right there."
You know, so it occasionally happens.
[Christine:] That's very funny.
Have there been any disqualifications
in the past, maybe using Clippy?
I love Clippy.
Or the F1 key?
The help key?
I don't know if…, you shouldn't need the F1 key
if you're in these competitions, though, right?
[Bill:] Yeah, and,
in fact, the F1 key is such a dangerous key
because if you accidentally click F1 for help,
you lose a good 8 or 10 seconds
while the Help panel opens.
And when I first saw this
competition live, one fellow,
he had a keyboard and the F1 key was missing.
I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, is that an old keyboard?"
He said, "No, I bought it
yesterday for this competition."
And I said, "What happened to the F1 key?"
He says, "I ripped it off so I never
accidentally press F1."
And I kind of went into the
room where the other people were to sort
of make a little bit of fun of this guy.
I said, "Oh, my gosh, this guy is so serious
he ripped the F1 key off this keyboard."
And all the other seven competitors looked
back at me like I was the weird one.
Like, "Of course, We all
ripped F1 off our keyboard.
“How could we compete when you would
accidentally press F1 for help?"
So they are pretty serious.
[Christine:] That is so clever.
That is really, really clever.
And I have to ask the obvious question.
Is Microsoft involved in this championship?
[Bill:] So yeah, last year they
were one of the lead sponsors.
It was a $30,000 prize for the winner
of the FMWC World Cup last year and I
think Microsoft provided that prize money.
[Christine:] Yeah, right.
[Bill:] And, of course, Microsoft loves to see
people using Excel and embracing Excel and
being really good at Excel so they're always
out to promote the competition.
[Christine:] Yeah,
right.
Okay.
I'm asking the audience seemingly useless
things you're really good at - 0437922720.
Excel doesn't count because, obviously,
you could take part in the World
Championships if you needed to.
Neil has sent me a text, Bill.
It says, "I remember my sister not happy when they
took away command line Excel. It was mouse-only.
I wish I was a macro master in VB."
Can you translate?
[Bill:] Yeah.
Yeah, so it used to be
back...actually, I'm not sure it was Excel.
I think it was back in the days of Lotus 1-2-3,
there was, you couldn't use the mouse at all
and so it was all just keyboard shortcuts.
And so a lot of people got really, really fast
at using Excel with never touching your mouse.
And so, yeah, that could be what
he's talking about, those old days.
[Christine:] What a world. Wow. That's...
[Bill:] And actually, you're much faster by
using the keyboard shortcuts and never touching
the mouse, so that's hard to do that today,
to not reach for the mouse every once in a while.
[Christine:] Definitely.
How much time do you spend on Excel now, Bill?
I'm curious.
Are you still fine-tuning your skills daily?
[Bill:] I'm still learning things all the time,
especially from the people...
If I post something on YouTube
and I say, "This is the best way to do it."
I never say it's the best way to do it anymore
because I know that someone who watches the
video will post a comment with something
completely better.
So I'm constantly
learning new things.
And back in the day,
when I had a day job and I was actually using
Excel, I would use Excel 40 hours a week.
And then my joke is, "And those
were the weeks I was on vacation."
So for me at work, we had Excel open all the time.
You would never have a computer on without
being in Excel.
That was our life.
[Christine:] Ah. And I'm sure you've heard all the
puns there are in terms of you excelling at your
job, so I'm not going to do that to you, Bill.
But look, I noticed that there was a
real lack of Australian competitors.
So for those who are listening from Perth and WA,
if they want to get into this, if they've got mad
Excel skills that they could wow the world with,
what advice do you have for them?
Is there a website they can go to
to start getting into this?
[Bill:] There is.
If you are the fastest person in Excel in your
company, go right now to fmworldcup.com and sign
up for the open competition.
I think it's October 8th
or thereabouts is the first round.
It's easy to join.
And in fact, this week, because they were on
ESPN, they've lowered the price from $50 to $25.
So a very low barrier to entry.
And you'll actually find out where you rank
in the world of competitive Excel.
So it's very easy.
If you're the best person in Excel in your job.
And we have that person in every company who
you're the person that everyone goes to with
your Excel questions, I encourage you to sign up.
It's a lot of fun, it'll take two hours
of your life one day, you'll solve a
few problems and then get your ranking and
you'll find out, you'll have bragging rights.
Although everyone at work already knows
that you're the MrExcel of your company,
or MrsExcel of your company.
[Christine:] You just get to
find out where you rank in the world.
Bill, this has been such a fun chat.
Thank you so much for coming on.
If we get any WA entrants, I'll let you know.
[Bill:] Sounds great, I hope to
see them on the finals next year.
That would be awesome.
[Christine:] Yeah.
Would be.
Thank you, Bill.
Bill Jelen - so he's from
Florida, he's called MrExcel.
He's got 67 books, 2,400 YouTube videos
and he was one of the commentators and
judges of the Microsoft Excel World
Championships over the weekend.
As you heard, somewhat of an
upset and yeah, that looks like
that World Cup is on the 8th of October.
So if you do enter, can you let me know?
And I will track your...
