Alan Murray’s career as a tech training specialist had humble origins.
Near the dawn of the 2000s, at around age 20, Murray landed a job with the UK’s National Health Service—tasked with a chore familiar to many young people of the era: teaching older people about computers. “Just helping staff with real, real basics,” he recalls. “Like, just being able to send email and attach documents.”
With a few of those early pupils, Murray demonstrated how to enter patient data into spreadsheets. And, though he didn’t realize it at the time, the seeds of a future Excel guru were planted.
In the meantime, Murray discovered a growing reputation as a basic computer trainer. “Things started coming in thick and fast,” he says. “I used to teach something called the ECDL—the European Computer Driving License. That probably doesn’t mean anything over in North America.” Job applicants, he explains, used the accreditation to prove they possessed a standard range of basic computer skills. Murray’s course covered areas like Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access—and Excel.
Gradually, over the course of years, Excel’s gravitational force pulled him in. “At first I was teaching not just Microsoft stuff, but other systems, like internal systems for business. And at some point that kind of morphed into just Microsoft stuff, and from there into only being Excel stuff.”
The big shift came with the arrival of the Office 365 era. “It started getting almost impossible to master everything. I said, right, I’m going to focus on Excel and Power BI.”
In 2009, Murray launched an Excel-themed blog, followed a year later by a YouTube channel, and his Computergaga brand was born. “I brought it out back then just to help people and support my training,” he says. “I’d get a question, and I would write a blog post on that. I thought, first of all, there must be other people in the world who want that help. Second of all, when people would ask me that again, I’d have a resource to answer it in the room. And I could also say, let me send you a link.
“The goal was not to make money, or to become an MVP or any of this malarkey. It was really just to supplement my training as a resource, so I wouldn’t have to keep saying the same thing over and over.”
In an era saturated with online Excel resources, Murray remains committed to keeping one foot firmly in the real world. “Community is a big thing for me,” he says. “Although I do all this stuff on YouTube and things, I’d rather a world where I didn’t only do that.”
Whenever he had occasion to meet or work with other Excel experts, Murray often discovered they had a lot to learn. “They might be a very good trainer, and have very good Excel skills, but they weren’t keeping up with things, especially as we move into the 365 world. I would talk about Power Query, or talk about a new function, and they wouldn’t have a clue what I was talking about.”
As a response (and as a remedy for his own pandemic-era social isolation), Murray launched a series of Excel meetups in 2020. “I thought I’d create a space where somebody—whoever, I don’t care— would give a presentation on something that they know, to learn from each other.”
The meetups are free, and the organization demands a chunk of Murray’s time and energy, but the idea has taken flight. “I try and do one in person and one online every month, which doesn’t always work. But I really try and get the in person one going. The online events are great for the international people, but it’s not a real meetup. I want people to actually meet—you know, have a beer, shake hands, take a photo, talk. I think people who can attend really appreciate the opportunity to be in a room with other people and have that real conversation.”
Despite spending so much of his working and social life embedded in Microsoft Excel, Murray still finds himself inspired when he launches the app.
“I love the fact that Excel just opens to a blank sheet and tells you, get on with it. Like, do what you want, how you want. I love that there’s always a way. And I think that’s what draws enthusiasts of Excel to it. That puzzle solving, that aspect that you can do something creative—but with data, rather than with art or with words.
“In the Excel community, some of us will say, whatever the question is, the answer is yes.”
