Maximize Excel: Regular Expressions (Video) (Course Id 2642)

• Who is this course for?
  This course is designed for CPAs, accountants, and other professionals who need Continuing Professional Education (CPE) and have prior experience with Microsoft Excel.

• What is this course about or what problem does this course solve?
  The course addresses how to enhance Excel usage by teaching regular expressions and pattern-based lookup techniques, helping users perform complex data searches and text manipulation more efficiently.

• How can the knowledge from this course be used?
  Participants can apply this knowledge to perform precise and flexible data lookups in Excel, using tools like XLOOKUP and functions such as REGEXTEST, REGEXEXTRACT, and REGEXREPLACE.

• Why is this course important to a CPA, Accountant, or IRS Enrolled Agent?
  It equips financial professionals with advanced Excel skills that can streamline data analysis and improve accuracy in financial modeling and reporting tasks.

• When is this course relevant or timely?
  The course is especially timely for users of Microsoft Excel 365, which frequently updates with new features, and also provides guidance for users of Excel 2021, 2019, and 2016.

• How is a course like this consumed or used?
  This self-study video course is consumed online and includes detailed handouts, Excel workbooks, and a final exam, with techniques demonstrated through both PowerPoint and Excel software walkthroughs.

In this presentation author and Excel expert David H. Ringstrom, CPA, introduces you to the world of pattern-based lookups using powerful tools like XLOOKUP and regular expressions. You’ll discover how to perform exact, approximate, and partial matches with XLOOKUP, as well as how to go further with advanced techniques such as either/or logic and pattern-based matching. David demystifies regular expressions by breaking down token structures and core components, and he demonstrates practical Excel functions like REGEXTEST, REGEXEXTRACT, and REGEXREPLACE. Along the way, you’ll see how sites like RegEx101.com can assist your pattern-building efforts and learn when to use fuzzy matching instead of regular expressions.

David is the author of “Microsoft Excel 365 for Dummies”, “Exploring Microsoft Excel’s Hidden Treasures”, and has written or co-authored six other books. He demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Excel for Microsoft 365. David draws your attention to any differences in Excel 2021, 2019 or 2016 during the presentation and in his detailed handouts. The handouts include an Excel workbook with most of the examples he uses during his demonstrations.

Excel for Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based product that receives periodic feature updates. Conversely, perpetually licensed versions have year numbers in their names and do not receive any feature updates.

Video - NASBA QAS - NASBA Registry - 2642

Course Learning Objectives

• Identify and understand the key components of regular expressions, such as character classes, quantifiers, anchors, and groups, which are used to define search patterns in text.
• Identify the correct method or token for enabling case-insensitive behavior in a regular expression pattern.
• Recall the correct function arguments for the REGEXTEST function in Excel.

Chapter 1 - Maximize Excel: Regular Expressions

Chapter 1 Review Questions

Key Terms