• Microsoft Excel is a widely used spreadsheet software that has been around for decades.
• To learn Excel, start slowly, play around with the basics, and seek out online tutorials.
• Excel is part of the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity software, that you can buy on subscription.

Excel, Microsoft's spreadsheet program with millions of diehard fans and millions of outspoken detractors, has been around since 1985. In its multiple decades of existence, Excel has undergone myriad updates and improvements and, in the hands of a skilled user, it's truly a remarkable piece of software.

But mastering the many formulas, layouts, and tools that come into play with the countless rows, columns, cells of an Excel file can be a daunting and frustrating process. We're here to tell you that it's worth it, and that Excel can actually be a rewarding and — dare we say it? — enjoyable program to use.

Just ask the data whizzes who participate each year in the Microsoft Excel World Championship. You read that correctly; Excel Esports is a live competition in which participants solve unusual game tasks using Microsoft Excel. It began in the fall of 2020, and it sees competitors advancing through rounds of challenges by scoring points for correctly solving challenges in limited periods of time.

Also called the Financial Modeling World Cup, problems presented during the Microsoft Excel World Championship go well beyond matters of finance and accounting and include challenges based on data analysis, formula creation, and much more.

But even if you don't see yourself competing on the world stage, Excel is a highly useful program for the average user. Here's what you need to know about using Excel:

How much does Microsoft Excel cost?

If you choose to buy just Microsoft Excel as opposed to the Microsoft 365 suite of software, which comes with Excel along with programs like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Teams, the one-time purchase price is $159.99. You will pay just $6.99 per month for the full Microsoft 365 subscription, though, so that's usually the better route.

And if you're wondering why Excel is so expensive, it's largely because of all the security features built into the program. Note that you can get a one-month free trial of Microsoft Excel and all the other 365 programs, including Copilot, the company's AI-powered productivity tool.

What is the easiest way to learn Excel?

There is a lot to learn with Excel — more than most people will ever likely know. The key to mastering Excel is to start slowly, making sure you fully understand each function before moving on to more complicated aspects of the software.

Start by just playing around with the basics, such as changing the width and height of columns and rows, respectively, making text colored, bold, or in different fonts, and so on. When you have the basics down, turn to free online tutorials to help you learn more about Excel's more involved features, such as creating formulas.

You can use the tutorial service Udemy's online courses like "Useful Excel for Beginners" or "Excel Quick Start Tutorial: 36 Minutes to Learn the Basics," to name a few examples.

There are also scores of books you can buy (or get from the library) that are all about learning Microsoft Excel.

What formulas can you make in Microsoft Excel?

You can make hundreds and hundreds of different formulas in Excel, including those that run mathematical equations, that generate calendars or schedules, that calculate averages and values, that reshape the layout of a spreadsheet to make it look better, and so much more.

A few of the must-know Excel formulas include SUM, which is used to rapidly do addition with data entered into cells, COUNT, which, predictably, is used for counting numbers, and VLOOKUP, which can calculate the value in a table or other array. You can enter any formula by selecting an empty cell and typing the = sign in front of the formula (for example, =SUM or =VLOOKUP).

Live updates as wildfires kill at least five people so far and evacuations continue across California.

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President-elect Trump's highly unusual intervention in the Supreme Court's TikTok case reads almost like a guy asking for a favor from an institution that still runs on formality.

The big picture: Trump's last-minute effort to give TikTok a stay of execution is one more twist in a case that already scrambles every ideological dividing line.

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Driving the news: The court is set to hear oral arguments Friday over TikTok's future. A new, overwhelmingly bipartisan law requires the app's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to either sell TikTok by Jan. 19 or shut it down within the U.S.

• There's no simple partisan division on this one. Republicans in Congress supported the law, which President Biden signed, and GOP attorneys general have weighed in to help Biden defend the law in court.
• Trump previously advocated for a ban, then flip-flopped. He filed an amicus brief on Dec. 27 urging the court to pause the law.
• The actual parties in the TikTok case largely ignored Trump's filing, which is mostly about Trump, not the law.
• Whether the justices give it more credence could say a lot about the overall direction of a conservative court that has handed Trump some enormous victories.

What they're saying: ByteDance and a group of TikTok users argue that the law violates the First Amendment, because it would shutter one of the country's most popular platforms for personal expression.

• The Biden administration says the ban is rooted in national security concerns, and doesn't target any specific speech on TikTok. A new owner could still allow all the same content, it argues, so there's no First Amendment issue.

Between the lines: The conservative Supreme Court usually (but not always) sides with people making First Amendment claims. And it usually (but not always) sides with the federal government when the government says there's a national-security issue.

• In this case, it won't be able to do both.

And then there's Trump. He has asked the justices not to let the law go into effect as scheduled on Jan. 19 — but his argument is not rooted in any of the First Amendment or national-security concerns at issue in the case. It takes no position on those issues.

• "President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government," his brief says.
• The argument is essentially that the court should ignore the deadline Congress and the president decided on, and defer instead to Trump's force of personality.
• "President Trump is one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history. Consistent with his commanding presence in this area, President Trump currently has 14.7 million followers on TikTok," his brief says, arguing that he is uniquely well positioned to solve a social-media problem.

That may be a stretch, even for a court that has sided with Trump on any number of high-stakes issues.

• He is, for now, still just an ordinary citizen with no formal role in this dispute, and there is a statutory deadline that was intentionally set before the next president would be sworn in.
• But it's also a hard case, legally and politically, and any avenue that lets the justices avoid striking down a bipartisan law or banning a wildly popular app might have some appeal.

The devastating wildfires raging through Los Angeles are re-opening the debate about how to model and manage risk for the insurance industry, as climate change makes such destruction more inevitable.

Why it matters: California's insurance market is in the middle of major reforms to deal with the cost of fire, but they may not be fast enough given the billions of dollars at stake.

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• Some market experts warn the state may need to consider becoming a primary insurer for fire risk — much as it already did with earthquakes and Florida did with hurricanes.

The big picture: Climate change has made California vastly more susceptible to wildfires — previously in summer, now no matter the season.

• That growing risk has made insurers wary of covering the state, and led many to pull out of the market altogether.
• California FAIR Plan, the state's insurer of last resort for fire risk, is soaking up that demand — protecting homeowners, but squeezing other insurers and weakening its own financial condition.
• "When the FAIR Plan takes on more customers, it causes traditional insurance companies to withdraw from certain areas, further increasing dependence on the FAIR Plan. This cycle can ultimately weaken the FAIR Plan's financial stability and limit consumer choice," state insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara wrote in a Sept. 2024 bulletin.

By the numbers: As of Sept. 2024, FAIR Plan's exposure to residential fire risk was $431.45 billion, up almost 60% from the year before.

• The number of policies in force rose 123% in four years, the agency says.
• One of the biggest risk areas in the state is the currently burning Pacific Palisades, with $5.89 billion in exposure due in large part to high property values.
• FAIR Plan does have a mechanism to share its burden with insurers in the state if its solvency is at risk, but insurers now have the ability to pass those assessment costs onto their customers.

Between the lines: The California Department of Insurance (CDI) moved in recent years to implement a "Sustainable Insurance Strategy," changes that traded more flexibility for insurers for more coverage of at-risk areas.

• Lara issued new regulations letting insurers pass along some of their reinsurance costs to their customers, and letting them use "catastrophe modeling" to project possible future losses instead of simply relying on historical data.
• Those changes were controversial, as opponents said they would cause rates to rise faster than coverage would expand.
• The Insurance Information Institute, a clearinghouse for the industry, says the regulations are having a positive effect, prompting more insurers to write more coverage.
• This week's fires may have complicated matters, though.

What they're saying: "I think that California is being progressive in a lot of ways in the insurance market," says Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at risk modeling firm First Street.

• "The downside of that is, there's a correction that has to be made. There's what I call a climate debt," Porter says. "All of those fees, all of those insurance premiums, they're all going to adjust upward as we talk about risk."
• In other words, Californians have to accept they're going to pay more if the risk of fires is modeled properly and insured in a sound manner.

What's next: It's far too soon to say what kind of losses this week's fires will generate, for FAIR Plan or the industry. But the evident damage is enough to get people thinking about outcomes.

• "Things could still break for the positive, but it is seeming more likely that the losses from tonight's fires could push insurance markets over the brink in California — despite all the good work CDI and stakeholders have done over the past few years to stabilize the situation," Michael Wara, a senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, posted on X.
• "I am beginning to think that we need to be having a much bigger conversation about the structure and assumptions that underlie this rate regulated industry. The current model may just not be sustainable," Wara wrote, pointing to the difficulties in Florida, which has a strained state-run insurer for hurricanes.

Heather Richard has been open online about her journey in sobriety

"She has been allowed to get back in her own way. She has been able to pace it," says a source

The California fires cause the voting deadline and announcement to be pushed back by two days.

Layoffs come at a time of growing losses and turmoil over editorial decisions at the US newspaper.

Influencer and model Kayla Nicole is one of 16 celebrities featured on Fox’s Special Forces: The World’s Toughest Test — and it didn’t take long before her ex-boyfriend Travis Kelce and his girlfriend, Taylor Swift, became a topic of conversation.

At the start of episode two, which aired as part of the two-part premiere on Wednesday, January 7, Nicole, 33, informed surfer Alana Blanchard and Disney alum Kyla Pratt that her ex is Kelce, 35.

“He’s dating Taylor Swift,” she said. “I just get a lot of s— online because he’s dating such a mega superstar.”

Nicole and Kelce dated on and off for five years and before calling it quits for good in 2022. The Kansas City Chiefs tight end started dating Swift in summer 2023.

Later in the two-part premiere, the Special Forces soldiers pull up an article with the headline: “Travis Kelce’s ex Kayla Nicole asks trolls to ‘leave her alone’ as Taylor Swift releases new album.”

Travis Kelce's Ex Unfollows the Mahomes Family After Taylor Swift Hang

The article was originally published by The Independent in April 2024. At the time, Nicole had tweeted, “There’s just no way I can fully digest all these new albums. I’m still on Cowboy Carter.”

The post was taken as a dig at the release of Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department a.k.a the first album that features tracks inspired by Kelce.

“I’m unproblematic. Mind my business. Never respond to the constant vitriol,” she fired back at the time?. “Solid as they come & don’t expect a pat on the back for it either. Just know everyone has a breaking point & would love for ‘yall’ (because you know exactly who you are) to leave me alone.”

On the show, one of the spiders told Nicole that they wanted to explore what happens “when social media becomes a battlefield.”

Elsewhere in episode two, the rest of the cast chatted about Kelce.

Travis Kelce’s Ex Kayla Nicole Tearfully Says She Regrets Podcast Honesty

“I didn’t know that that was her ex,” Pratt said before Blanchard asked, “Is he a football player?”

Wide receiver Golden Tate subsequently informed them that Kelce is “arguably the greatest of all time to play tight end.”

“OK we ain’t here to pump that f— up right now,” Pratt declared. “We’re just gonna say he good.”

Keep reading for more quotes from Nicole about Kelce and Swift:

The Public Breakup

“Going through a public breakup, just to be frank, is overwhelming,” she said in a confessional on episode two. “I’ve never experienced anything like it. Being reduced to a headline —to something so small as someone’s ex-girlfriend — I feel like if I complete this it will be a massive impact for myself.”

A Fan

“I really like, like, her,” Nicole told Blanchard and Pratt on episode two, referring to Swift. “I think she’s very talented.”

An Interrogation

Before calling Nicole into the interrogation room on episode two, the Special Forces soldiers learn how Nicole was dragged into Kelce and Swift’s relationship online.

“Yeah it’s pretty consistent [and] exhausting,” she told staff about the discourse. “It doesn’t matter — I could post about the sky being blue and people will have a response about an ex and their new situation. It’s inadvertently affected me to the point where it makes me question my overall value as a person.”

Travis Kelce and Ex-Girlfriend Kayla Nicole: The Way They Were

Nicole then began to cry. “It’s just the comparison. It’s just, like, on loop. I think I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with that.”

When she got back to her costars, Nicole explained what happened. “They pulled up an article about my ex. I didn’t think they were going to do that,” she said. “They’re just really good at, like, putting the pieces together to the feeling of me needing to prove myself to people.”

Carey Hart — a motocross champion who is married to Pink — replied, “Well, good. Well, move forward from that s—.”

Denise Richards’ husband, Aaron Phypers, is being sued for alleged fraud and breach of oral contract.

Rupert Perry filed a lawsuit on November 13 that accused Phypers, 52, of violating a verbal agreement concerning treatment at his wellness center, Quantum 360, in Malibu. Perry’s wife, Elina Katsioula-Beall, died of cancer in May 2024 and was allegedly treated by Phypers the year prior, per documents obtained by Us Weekly on Wednesday, January 8. 

According to the filing, Katsioula-Beall was diagnosed with Sarcoma — a rare cancer that develops in the bones and soft tissues — in 2019 and sought “a stem cell treatment for her cancer” that Phypers’ Q360 Club had provided. Perry claims that Phypers promised the treatment “would cure or at least ameliorate [Katsioula-Beall’s] condition.”

Perry’s suit alleges that Phypers had “claimed that the treatment had a 98 percent success rate and he was so confident in it that, if it did not work, he would refund” half of the money — $126,000 — that Perry and Katsioula-Beall paid him for the procedures. 

PDA Alert! Denise Richards and Aaron Phypers Kiss on Red Carpet

Katsioula-Beall was treated there between July and September 2023. That December, she learned that her tumors had grown, prompting her and Perry to reach out to Phypers with a written request for a $63,000 refund. 

“[Phypers] ignored her request and instead proposed that she undergo another round of treatment,” Perry claims in the filing. 

He alleges that Phypers had also ignored further requests for a refund. 

“On May 21, 2024, Ms. Katsioula-Beall succumbed to her illness and died,” the suit stated. “On June 28, 2024, Mr. Perry spoke with [Phypers] by telephone, who acknowledged the debt but proffered a series of excuses for his failure to pay the $63,000.”

Denise Richards Shares the Secret to ‘Great’ Marriage with Aaron Phypers

Perry, who requests a jury trial, claims that Phypers must pay Katsioula-Beall’s estate, as her illness became worse after treatment at his facility. 

“[Phypers’] aforementioned misconduct was intentional, willful, and done for the purpose of depriving Plaintiff of property and/or legal rights or otherwise causing injury,” Perry states in the documents. “This despicable conduct subjected Plaintiff to cruel and unjust hardship in conscious disregard of his rights.”

Us has reached out to Richards’ team for comment. Phypers, for his part, has not yet filed papers with an attorney in response to the lawsuit. His Q360 Club appears to have closed.

In late December 2024, his wife, Richards, gushed over her “great” marriage with her husband. 

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“I love being married. I love my husband. I know not everyone does,” Richards, 53, exclusively told Us at The Hollywood Christmas Parade on December 1. “I don’t understand them. But we like each other, and love being with each other.”

Richards noted that she and Phypers, with whom she previously appeared on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, are “best friends” and always make time for themselves.

“I say this to other couples with children, I always say you have to have time for yourself. Don’t feel guilty,” she added. “If this ain’t working, it starts at the top and s— rolls down. If [your marriage] stays strong, your family is intact.”

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The British No 1 had a breakthrough 2024 season but has already withdrawn from events in 2025 ahead of the start of the Australian Open this Sunday

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Young Tottenham mascots were caught on camera making a hilarious request to Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk.

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Francesco Molinari will bid for a second win as captain of Continental Europe.

© PA Wire

The Scot will sit in his former rival’s coaching box for the first time at the Australian Open.

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