Top Excel influencers are professionals who help users master Microsoft Excel through practical tutorials, financial modeling techniques, dashboard design, automation tips, and real-world business applications. Whether you’re a beginner, finance professional, FP&A analyst, or data specialist, following leading Excel experts can accelerate your learning and keep you up to date with new features such as Excel Copilot, Power Query, Power Pivot, and AI-powered spreadsheet tools. The best Excel influencers combine technical expertise with clear teaching, making complex spreadsheet concepts easier to understand and apply in everyday work.
Microsoft Excel debuted back in 1985, and skeptics have been predicting its demise almost ever since. Yet decades later, the spreadsheet tool remains the closest thing finance has to a universal language. What has changed is how people learn it. Instead of dense manuals, a new generation of creators now teaches Excel through YouTube tutorials, LinkedIn posts, TikTok skits, and even choreographed “numbers karaoke,” turning spreadsheet skills into genuinely shareable content.
This shift has real staying power. Surveys of finance leaders consistently show that a large majority of CFOs still lean on Excel for core tasks like budgeting and forecasting, which is exactly why the people teaching it well have built such large, engaged followings. Below is a rundown of the top Excel influencers worth following in 2026, along with a handful of other names who deserve a spot on your radar.
Why Follow Excel Influencers
Excel influencers do more than post shortcuts. Many are Microsoft MVPs, published authors, or career FP&A professionals who translate advanced Excel skills into digestible lessons for finance teams, students, and career-changers alike. Following the right voices in the Excel community is one of the fastest ways to pick up Excel skills for finance, from cleaning messy datasets to building dashboards that actually get used. Whether you’re brand new to spreadsheets or already fluent, these Excel thought leaders offer something worth adding to your feed.
What makes this group of Microsoft Excel experts stand out is the range of formats they work in. Some build a following through long-form YouTube tutorials that walk through a formula step by step. Others favor quick LinkedIn posts aimed at busy finance professionals who need a tip they can apply in the next five minutes. A few have leaned into TikTok and Instagram, proving that even a dense topic like spreadsheet functions can be turned into short, entertaining videos. That variety means there’s an Excel educator out there for almost any learning style, whether you prefer structured courses, casual social posts, or full-length webinars.
Top 10 Excel Influencers to Follow
Ranked from ten to one, here are the Excel experts to follow if you want practical tips, career advice, and a front-row seat to what’s next for the world’s most enduring spreadsheet tool.
10. John Michaloudis
John is a bestselling author of several Excel books and the founder of MyExcelOnline.com, a hub of free and paid courses built to help professionals get more out of the program. His YouTube channel has grown to well over 153K subscribers, and his Microsoft MVP status underscores the weight his lessons carry with financial analysts.
9. Brian Jones
As Microsoft Excel’s own head of product, Brian offers a perspective no outside creator can match. Following him on LinkedIn is the best way to understand where the software has been and where it’s headed next, straight from the source.
8. Danielle Stein Fairhurst
Based in Australia, Danielle has built a strong LinkedIn following around financial modeling and Excel education, with a particular focus on supporting women in finance. She’s also the author of Financial Modeling in Excel for Dummies, a staple reference for finance professionals.
7. Paul Barnhurst
Known across LinkedIn as the FP&A Guy, Paul posts daily insights aimed squarely at financial planning and analysis professionals. His content ranges from career advice to Excel feature updates, and he also hosts a leading FP&A podcast that has made him one of the field’s most recognizable voices.
6. Chris Dutton
Chris founded Maven Analytics and has taught Excel and analytics to more than half a million students through his online courses on Udemy. His LinkedIn community has grown into the tens of thousands, and his approachable teaching style has made him a go-to resource for aspiring data professionals.
5. Mynda Treacy
Mynda‘s YouTube channel, My Online Training Hub, has attracted several hundred thousand subscribers who turn to her when they need to transform messy, disorganized data into something presentable. Her tutorials are especially popular among finance teams facing tight reporting deadlines.
4. Oz du Soleil
After a layoff in 2008 pushed him toward freelance Excel work, Oz built a following around data quality and clean, usable spreadsheets. He now runs regular Excel courses and challenges on LinkedIn, championing the idea that good analysis starts with clean data.
3. Jon Acampora
If you’re trying to level up quickly, Jon’s Excel Campus channel is a great place to start. With 704K YouTube subscribers, he covers everything from pivot-table dashboards to the kind of advanced tricks that separate casual users from power users.
2. Kat Norton
Better known as Miss Excel, Kat has turned spreadsheet education into genuine entertainment, blending dance routines and pop-culture references with practical tips. With a massive following across Youtube, TikTok, and other platforms. She’s proof that Excel content doesn’t have to be dry to be useful.
1. Leila Gharani
Leila tops the list as one of the most-subscribed Excel YouTubers in the world, with a channel covering nearly every corner of the program, from balance-sheet tutorials to lesser-known formula tricks. A Microsoft MVP herself, she pairs technical depth with an engaging, easy-to-follow teaching style that’s earned her a loyal following on both YouTube and LinkedIn.
2025 Excel World Championship
Excel isn’t just something you pick up from a tutorial anymore. It’s also become something people watch live. The Excel World Championships trace back to 2020, when Latvian financial analyst Andrew Grigolyunovich launched the Financial Modeling World Cup after the long-running ModelOff competition wound down. What started as a niche modeling contest has since grown into the full-scale Microsoft Excel World Championship, and by 2025, the Excel World Championship had turned into a three-day, in-person event in Las Vegas where competitors race the clock to solve complex spreadsheet cases, earning every bit of the title spreadsheet champions.
Excel World Championship Winner: Diarmuid Early
After coming close in previous years, Diarmuid Early finally claimed the Excel World Championship Winner title in 2025, closing out three days of competition with a near-flawless run through the final rounds. His performance in the closing cases was sharp enough to settle the outcome with time to spare. The win carried extra weight thanks to a symbolic passing of the championship belt from Andrew Ngai, the outgoing multi-time champion, to Early, a moment that felt less like an upset and more like the natural next chapter for one of the community’s most consistent competitors.
When AI Nearly Changed the Rules
One of the bigger storylines heading into 2025 had nothing to do with formulas. In 2024, a startup called Shortcut AI built an Excel-focused AI agent capable of solving championship-level cases in minutes, often outperforming experienced analysts. Until then, competitors had been free to use outside tools, largely because nothing could keep pace with a skilled human. That assumption stopped holding up. Organizers responded by banning external AI tools from competition entirely, while still allowing Excel’s own built-in features. Championship leadership framed the move less as a fear of AI and more as a way to protect the speed, judgment, and creativity that make the event worth watching in the first place.
Other Notable Excel Influencers
Not every standout creator makes a top-ten list, but that doesn’t make their contributions any less valuable. These Excel content creators and educators are well worth a follow:
- Wyn Hopkins — A Microsoft MVP with a well-known enthusiasm for VLOOKUP, active on both YouTube and LinkedIn.
- Bill Jelen — The face behind MrExcel.com and author of more than 40 books on the program.
- Mike Girvin — Creator of the long-running excelisfun channel, respected for its detailed breakdowns of complex functions and formulas.
- John Macdougall — Runs the “How to Excel” blog, packed with practical, real-world examples.
- Jeff Lenning — President of Excel University, focused on structured, in-depth Excel training.
Final Thoughts
Nearly four decades in, Microsoft Excel shows no sign of slowing down, and the community teaching it has only gotten more creative. Whether you’re chasing advanced Excel skills, brushing up on Excel skills for finance, or simply want to know who to follow for Excel tips, the influencers above are a solid place to start building a feed that actually makes you better at the job.
Consider picking two or three names from this list, based on the platform you check most often, and following them for a month before adding more. Excel content creators tend to build on each other’s ideas, so once you’ve settled into a few core accounts, the rest of the community becomes far easier to discover. Skills that once took a training manual and a weekend to absorb are now available in a five-minute video, which is exactly why these creators have become such a fixture in modern finance work.
