Welcome to episode 418
of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro podcast,
our first episode of 2026,
recorded live from Workplace Ninjas US in December
2025.
This is a show about Microsoft three sixty
five and Azure from the perspective of IT
pros and end users, where we discuss a
topic or recent news and how it relates
to you.
In today's episode, Kat Schneider and I just
sit down with a goal of having an
anti AI chat with no real idea where
this adventure might take us. In the end,
we enjoyed a conversation about some of the
solutions Kat has built using the Power Platform
and SharePoint.
We talk a bit about OneDrive sync and
libraries in SharePoint, and just some of the
fun times from the conference, which you should
totally join us for in February 2027 in
Arizona.
Hope you enjoy the anti episode chat with
Cat.
We are sitting here with Kat Schneider. I
said it right. Right? You're listening right? Perfect.
Yeah. Kat Schneider at Workplace Ninjas again. This
is like my third fourth? I think it's
Forty third? Fourth? No. Fourth episode
Oh. I've recorded while I'm here. Wow. It's
been busy. It Yeah. It's been hopping around
here. It has been it's been a good
conference. Yeah. I've I've enjoyed it. I've never
gone to a security conference before.
How do you feel about a bunch of
security people at a conference?
I feel like there's not enough talk of
security yet. Is it has it reached a
new level of nerd? It definitely
has been an interesting
experience for sure. It's definitely not a Power
Platform conference. No. Definitely not a Power Platform.
And it is not
an AI conference.
Definitely not. Which is what we're doing. We
came up with this. We did a hackathon
a day.
Monday.
Yep. Monday. Monday. Today's Wednesday. Is that when
we were talking about recording this? And we
said we're gonna do an anti AI episode.
Yeah. We did.
It was at the speakers dinner on the
way to speakers dinner. Something like that. It
was That was probably the problem of coming
up with this. Yeah. And we said We're
gonna do an anti AI episode. So we're
sitting down to record an anti AI episode.
We're like, what do we talk about?
I didn't tell somebody how to be asked.
So What is the opposite of AI? What
is the opposite of AI? Or what was
life
This is like a time capsule episode. What
was life like
back when I was a kid before we
had a high? Back in my day.
I had to walk uphill both ways to
school in the snow. In snow.
Yeah. My god. All the way back to
my dad's days. Jesus.
Right? Well, it's funny because I've been talking
to people here and I'm like, I got
my start in like, Cheerpoint 2003,
2007. I was still in school.
Yeah. We were in the car the other
day and Jay said, he's like, Ben, we're
the old men in the car.
Awesome. Oh. I think I was the youngest
one in the car.
I was like, is it really come to
that that I'm now the old man at
these conferences? I used to be the one
that I go to these conferences at like,
when I was doing SharePoint 2007 and they're
like, they're talking about before SharePoint 2001. I'm
like, I was in kindergarten when you did
that.
I'm on the opposite side of that now.
Yeah. Now
you're the guy that everybody talks about. In
a good way.
What are they saying about me? Because my
sessions have got little we may have gotten
a little wild this week in our sessions.
Did you have you heard about any of
our sessions? I have not heard a peep
about any of the sessions, but I also
have been a little off the rails myself.
It was we may have so there's a
bunch of people with Tim Tams here. Yes.
Okay. So about this conference, so many Tim
Tams here. So many. And another thing about
this conference that as I look back, I
I didn't know how it was gonna go
going into it. I really like it. You
have clippy bucks at this conference. So many
clippy bucks. That we get as speakers and
we can hand them out. And we get
to make it rain. Yes. And we can
use them to bribe attendees.
Yes. 100%.
Or incentivize them. Which I think one thing,
it's definitely incentivized conversations. People here have talked
way more freely, asked way more questions, been
way more
participatory,
is that a word? Participants are. Yes. Designed
sessions.
Because of these, we tried to get attendees
last night in our session to go steal
Tim Tam's from the session next to ours
with Clippy Bucks. Oh my god. It didn't
work. Damn. But it would have been really
funny Yeah. To see them, like, run out
and try to run back in with Tim
Tam's and hear the session next to ours.
That would be fantastic.
Yeah. Anyways, that's the type of sessions we've
had this week. Yeah. No. I definitely have
talked a lot about AI in sessions this
week, which is why I was anti AI.
Okay. But So what did we do? Anti
AI back when we were kids Oh, my
gosh. And we were doing this, you were
talking about
We don't know what we're gonna talk. We
tried to come up with ideas. Flows, SharePoint,
like, before AI. Yeah. We can't talk about
AI, so we can't compare and contrast.
Yeah. But I think some of these solutions,
like you were talking about some of the
flows you built Mhmm. Because it was flow
back then. Yeah. It was We started talking
about flow, and we both knew what we
were talking about. Yeah. Even though it's power
automate. And you were like, oh, wait. No.
It's power automate. Definitely power automate. Definitely did
not mix that one up.
It I was like, we should just sit
and talk about, like, some of what we
did Yeah. Before AI because I think there's
so many conversations about AI now that sometimes
you we forget about Mhmm. Let's go do
something that's not AI Yeah. That's anti AI.
Because it's so refreshing to be, like, back
to basics. Yeah. And one of them you
were talking about that I'm, like, I never
thought about this was SharePoint permissions with flows
Yes. Was something you did. Yes. So tell
us about SharePoint permissions and flows and the
solution. Okay.
Okay. What we were trying to do is
we were trying to manage our SharePoint permissions.
We were trying to
identify
who was in what cost center doing what
job and how they were all involved and
have
a nice landing page for
a call center so people knew, like, oh,
okay. This is who I go to and
this is where I can ask questions and
whatnot. Okay. And so I was like, well,
if we're gonna do that and we're gonna
have this information already in SharePoint because it's
associated with people pickers Yep. Like, why not
just put it in a list
that somebody can manage?
They literally, the cost center manager will be
like, oh, hey, I got a new manager.
I'm gonna go put my new manager's name
over here so people know that, hey, this
is my new manager. Okay. Like, the managers
can manage the people that work for them
and below.
Kinda makes sense. Right? Isn't that what they're
supposed to do? It's so
crazy idea. It was Mind blowing.
Breaking technology.
I'm like, why don't we just, I don't
know, do what we're supposed to be doing
and manage the permissions this way? And so
I ended up building a list Yeah. Right.
That incorporate,
like, that that thing back in the day,
the code called JSON.
Yes. Yeah. Where you could, like,
show the list in very specific format and,
you know, there was tools that you could
have in browser so that you could format
your the SP formatter tool. Yep. Fantastic tool.
I love that tool. And that's even newer
than I mentioned SharePoint Designer and you laughed
at me.
Oh, I've used SharePoint Designer and I was
like, oh, I hated that thing so much.
Hated it. Okay.
Anyways, back to Visual Studio Code and JSON.
Yes. Well, no, because I'm still in the
browser. I haven't even made it to Visual
Studio Code yet. Oh, yes. That's right. Yeah.
No. So JSON,
we're managing that list in JSON. So I
could have, like, their picture from their profile,
like, show up nice and big. Doing the
whole list formatting. Yeah. I was I was
doing all kinds of fancy things. And then
I was also incorporating the list on the
front page, like, the home page. Okay. And
so
you could click on the person's
or their picture
or click on the little email icon that
I incorporated with it, and then you could
send them an email or you could open
up a Teams chat and, like, you could
do all these crazy things. And then when
somebody moved in or out
of a position, like, say, somebody moved on
to another
spot within the agency and I wasn't managing
their SharePoint collection and they had to do
their own thing Uh-huh. They just got moved
out and they lost all their permissions to
access anything in Teams or any of the
SharePoint that it was being managed by. Like,
I was managing lots of permissions, like, even
for Teams
groups and whatnot from the SharePoint list. From
the SharePoint. So was that, like, one central
SharePoint list that everybody was in there? Did
you have separate SharePoint list for each
call center? Or For each call center, I
had their own site collection because I didn't
want finance and accounting to be able to
manage To change permissions for another department. For
them to be changing permissions for HR and
Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It was
all over the place. So I was like,
you get a site collection and you get
a site collection. I was just Oprah. Oh,
yeah. Just handing out site collections left and
right. Yeah. Even though the SharePoint team was
like about governance of SharePoint sites. Yeah. So
I ended
up being really close friends with our SharePoint
governance Why? Folks. And I was like, I
need another site collection. I'm like, oh, would
you please just use the form?
And I'm like, I will, but just know
it's coming and this is what I want
it to be named and don't go naming
it anything crazy.
So, like, there was all of that. And
then I would be the site collection administrator
and go in there and do all of
that fun stuff. Okay. But, yeah. The I
would go in there. I would set it
up for them. I would set up their
teams
and get this one single SharePoint list. And
then every time it got updated,
it would kick off a Power Automate instant
flow. Okay. Like a, automated flow. That's a
mouthful. A Power Automate instant flow. Yeah. And
it would say, oh, hey. This list item
changed.
What was the change?
And I actually got it to the point
I was able to go back into the
previous version
of that list item to see what was
the value of that people picker before Uh-huh.
And what is the value of the people
picker now
and be able to revoke permissions and grant
permissions based on
which it was. So So you're just adding
and removing people then from the SharePoint
permission group SharePoint groups. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I
would have individual
specific permissions, and then I would make it
so that, like, that specific list, I didn't
use groups per se, but everywhere else,
there were groups. There were groups. Yeah. And
then managers could essentially manage their own users'
permission. Were they owners of their own SharePoint
sites, or did this let you manage their
permissions without them being owners of the sites?
So
I would not allow them to be full
owners.
Okay. Because if you let them be full
owners, then they'll go in and delete something,
and you're like, what are you doing?
Because while version history was a thing, you
can still delete something and then not be
able to recover it. And then I wanted
to murder people. But, you know Yeah. Working
for the state, murder's frowned upon.
I'm I'm I'm glad you refrained
that we get to sit here and have
this conversation
here versus in jail somewhere?
She was having this conversation with barks between
us. Why would I why are you incarcerated?
Jail so I can interview Kat about her
SharePoint work and Why were you incarcerated? Because
I murdered somebody for their SharePoint permissions?
Oh, that would be fantastic.
My. That's like a whole other side quest
that I feel like
needs to be unlocked somewhere.
Oh, god.
This is going even more off the rails
than my sessions this week. Too much caffeine,
too little sleep. And way too many shenanigans.
Too many shenanigans. Actually, it was the ninjas.
I blame it on the ninjas. The ninjas?
I got a selfie with the ninjas. Oh,
did you? I did. Oh, you did? I
did that. I was in the speaker room
and they were like, oh, can we take
a picture? Because there was a workplace Ninjas
sign on the door. Yeah. They went on
a picture with them behind the glass with
a sign in front. So I'm like sitting
here working away and they're off behind me
and doing their photo op.
And I'm like, Can I get a picture?
A 100%, that was definitely required.
Yes. And accidentally going out at night, that
was something else that came up this week.
Yeah. But we couldn't accidentally go out at
night. But
I I started to see how it happened
because we came back from, we went out
to watch the Dallas Stars game last night.
We came back and Jay and I were
both like, oh, we're tired we need to
go to bed, we need to get work
done. And
we walked out of the lobby. And we
accidentally sat down in the lobby with a
bunch of other people and got up an
hour later.
Yeah. I heard there were a lot of
sushi boats involved last night. I saw a
picture. I do not eat sushi, so I
don't have the appreciation for it. But the
pictures, it was a lot of sushi. I
So I didn't see all of these pictures
that apparently are going around, but I got
one picture of one boat. One boat with
92 pieces of sushi in one boat? Yes.
And there were I heard there were at
least three boats. I heard somebody ate one
boat all on their own. I wonder if
they're here today or They are? Are they
doing okay?
They seem to be standing on their own
two feet, but just fine. Alright.
That was a lot of sushi. That's a
lot of sushi.
Wow. And our friend who may have accidentally
gone out. Did he? He accidentally went out
with them. Accidentally go out with them? I
have I have not seen him yet today.
Oh, there is a reason why. Okay.
But he is a good boy. Same as
said friend
also was really mad yesterday that his session
was at 9AM in the morning. He's like,
nobody ever schedules me for sessions before 2PM
because
said friend apparently has a habit of accidentally
going out.
So many times. Accidentally going out. I love
him to death though. Okay. He's fantastic.
Yes. It is
he has
made for many adventures this weekend. Our Uber
driver he had our Uber drive I'm glad
our Uber driver could drive safely with how
hard our Uber driver was laughing
when we
were hearing about shenanigans
on the car. And as I was arguing
with him to tell the story correctly.
So many shenanigans. Okay. Anyway, SharePoint. For real.
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So that was flows in SharePoint. Another one
we talked about, this is interesting. We're gonna
go to another it's a pre AI topic
that keeps coming up over and over again.
Mhmm. I've had this conversation
at least twice this week at a security
conference Mhmm. And you and I were talking
about it. You've had experience with this SharePoint
and file shares Mhmm. And syncing Mhmm. And
migrations
and MSPs
that are trying
to Yes. Do file syncs for their clients
and treat it like it's still a file
share. Yes. And we've talked about this. I
know we've had at least one. We've probably
had two or three episodes already on the
podcast about it, but we've been going for
nine years and people still don't seem to
get the message. So we're gonna talk about
this again. Alright. I'm gonna get I'm gonna
beat this horse and hopefully it doesn't end
me up in jail.
It'll probably end up in a co pilot.
No. Anti AI. No AI. No co pilot.
No co pilot. Okay. SharePoint lists. Yep. What
has your experience been guidance from you. Scott
and I have beat this horse. It's time
for somebody else to beat the horse. Alright.
SharePoint lists are just Library. Libraries. SharePoint libraries.
Files. Syncing. Because, I mean, SharePoint is really
just SharePoint's third listception.
Okay. True. So we could phrase those lists,
but technically, you can't sync a list. Well,
you can't sync a list that's not a
library. You can't sync a list
to a library, but you can sync a
list to an Excel. Oh. We could talk
about that too. Mhmm. Have you done much
with syncing list to Excel? Uh-huh. Does it
still work? I don't know if it still
works, but it definitely did work when I
was doing it. Okay. Talk to me about
your SharePoint syncing list to Excel.
So it's one of these things where what
is it? You you still have to so
it's in the trust center where, like, you
can turn on and off, like, macros,
but it's not a macro per se.
No. It's like whether hey, this is connected.
Do you really wanna do this? Yep. It's
an o date. Was it o date of
queries? I think it was o date of
queries. Yes. You're like But you could turn
it on and off. Yeah. And then even
if that didn't work, you could still use
Power Query within Excel
to access the list and generate the data
in Excel, which is why I had so
many issues with people like, no, I can't
use like, all of my Excel data lives
in it's I can't put it on SharePoint
because then it doesn't sync. And then it
I get so many problems with trying to
access this because it says it wants to
get into a local file share and I
can't access and it's like, well, if you
put it in SharePoint Mhmm. You can either
put it in a list, like export it
from Excel into a list Yep. Or put
the file in a document library, and you
can sync it from there and make sure
you change every single location that you're pointing
it to every other workbook that you're pointing
to. And that is no longer listed in
a file share because now it's all in
SharePoint. And
I
I had one client, bless his heart,
62 Excel files
that he would create
every single year in order to manage all
of the financials
for his organization. Were they all linked together
too? Every
single
one of them with macros,
all point like, trying to open up one
Excel,
that took some patience.
Because it's like, it would go to load,
and then it was, like, waiting to connect
to SharePoint.
And then it was just spinning and spinning,
and it's like, well, how's the kids? How
are things going?
Eventually, it would load. It opened. So did
you help him get that into a SharePoint
list? No. I ended up not getting the
project because when we quoted them for how
I was like, it's really not gonna cost
that much for us to do it. But
you're trying to make me put a number
on it. And
they almost croaked at the number Okay. Because
they wanted everything moved for the last twenty
years.
Oh. Yeah. And And I was like, yo,
that's not gonna be so whoever they end
did end up going with, I was like,
you undersold it, first of all.
You did not think this went all the
way through. Or there were lots of change
orders. There had to have been. Happened before
too. It had to have been. But, like,
the guy so they call me a wizard.
I don't call myself a wizard. I just
ran with it. Okay. Like, they they told
me, you're gonna get into tech. You're gonna
need a name. And I was like, I
don't know. Like, I don't know. Everybody just
calls me a wizard. That's Whatever. You're a
wizard cat. That's my name. But this guy
was the CFO
for his organization. He's Okay. The only one
who touched this Excel document because he had
to change it every year. He was very
particular about this, like, to the point that
the person who was supposed to be coming
in after him when he retired
Uh-huh. He wouldn't even share the password to
get into the macros
with her made her leave the room so
that he could tell me by writing it
on a piece of paper and showing me
the camera showing it to the camera so
that I could get into it and I
could see what the macros were doing. I
mean, at least he was security conscious and
he wasn't. Trying to be Yeah. Very much.
But I sat on a call I sat
on two different calls with him for a
grand total about six hours Okay. Where he
explained
the entire process The process of, oh, wow.
Of this is what we have to do
every year at the beginning of the year.
This is what happens. This is where all
the changes are made. Every quarter, we have
to do this. We have to create this
whole financial book. This all has to get
printed out in very specific ways so that
it can be then given to the CEO,
and then all these decisions can be and
it was six, six and a half hours
straight,
beginning to end.
At one point in time, I was like,
thank God we are able to record this,
and I can get, like, transcripts,
because there's no way I would have been
able to do this. But after the first,
like, two hour session that I had with
him, of him just, like, explaining everything, and
we went to go meet for the second
session, and I was like, this is what
I understood from the first session. He was
like, yes.
I'm supposed to retire in six months. Absolutely.
I believe 100%
without a doubt, if anything was to happen,
that you guys could do it because you
have the person there who understands it. And
I was like, Excel is my jam, man.
Like, I could fix this for you. Like,
I re that was my biggest problem
working at an MSP Okay. Was seeing people
struggling with their Excels and being like, I
could fix this for you right now. Like,
I could make your life so much easier
for you right now, and it would take
me less than ten minutes. Like, can we
please please stop hurting yourself? Yeah. Can I
give you years back on your life?
So yeah. No.
I enjoy that work. But So what else
did you do with SharePoint lists and Excel?
Did you I did everything with them. I
tried to get everybody off of using Excel.
Okay. If you could use SharePoint and lists
and you didn't want everybody to have access
to every single list item Uh-huh.
Like, I don't I can only share this
much of this Excel with you, or I'm
gonna have to split it up into six
different Excels so they can share the information
that's relevant from this one with that person,
and this one with that person. Like, I
was like, why why do that? Put it
in a list. Yeah. You can provide individual
permissions, and you can say, oh, hey. This
is supposed to be for financial, and this
is supposed to be for HR.
Excuse me. That was a burp. You can
check that out.
I had a lot of Coke today. And
cola.
Coca cola.
Pop. Yes. I'm from Michigan. It's pop.
I'm from Florida. It's Coca Cola. It's
No. I would try to get them off
of it because I'm like, it's so much
easier to manage your permissions
using Flow. As long as you set the
logic, it's not that difficult. Yep. And I
was like, if it's gonna be, oh, I
only need these three people to have access
to it, you can either put a group
together and put those three people in it
and assign that group.
Or if it's just, hey, this one time,
I just need these people to have access
to it, put them in a people picker
field, give them the permission, and when they're
not in the people picker field, take it
away. Take it away and remove their permissions.
Yeah. Like, I was using Flow to manage
permissions all the time. Flow. Power automate.
But it was Flow when you did it?
I think it Probably? It was, like, right
around the time between Flow and Power Automate
name change. Okay.
So it was I was, like, I don't
understand why they called it Power Automate, but
okay. And then it was like, oh, there's
a Power Platform and everything's gonna be Power.
And we've got Power Automate and Power Apps
and Power BI. And then they're gonna take
Power BI off the Chrome. Marketing had to
justify their Yeah. Marketing needs to their existence.
Every six months.
Oh. So So the other one with an
MSP.
Yeah. Going back to syncing, OneDrive syncing. Mhmm.
File syncing. Yep. Like, this is one that
I
Again, pre AI it's a problem. Post AI
it's a problem.
AI does nothing to help with this. Nope,
absolutely not. And it just continues to be
a problem is,
I'm guessing with an MSP, you saw it
as well, you go in and people are
like, we need to migrate file shares to
SharePoint because we're done with file shares. And
they like take their entire file share and
say And dump it in home. It's going
in this SharePoint site and then everybody can
sync it and life will be dandy because
we don't have a file share and it's
all in SharePoint. And then they wanted to
immediately
sync back to it so that everybody could
access it? Yeah. They're like, why is this
taking eight hours to sync back? Or why
isn't everything staying updated? That's like, well, you
understand there's a fundamental difference here between SharePoint
and between file shares. Like, file shares, you're
actually accessing it on the file share. SharePoint,
you're doing it locally and syncing it. And
if you try to sync 590,000
files,
one, I'm surprised it would even work. And
if it does, it will take hours to
keep everything up to date. I might have
had a client. I might have had a
client who had
74
layers of files
or seventy seventy four Folders? Folders. They didn't
hit the, like,
name blank. No. A whole whole whole whole
whole whole whole whole whole whole whole, please.
Okay. I'll be patient. 74
levels of folders
in their document library.
Okay.
And there were over 672,000
files
that were in here. And every time they
would go to move a file in there,
it would take forever for it to go
or it would stop. Uh-huh. And then they
were trying to automate this using Power Automate
and not understanding why the flow would break.
Oh my. And I was like, first of
all, oh my god.
Second of all,
oh my god.
Third of all, that's never going to work
in a million years.
Like, there's a limit on how deep you
can go because there's a limit on the
number of characters that are allowed. And 74
of those characters are already used by forward
slashes.
Wow. Which is also where I found out,
don't use spaces.
Dear God, do not put spaces Don't use
in your folders. No. It's I feel like
it they've done something. It's gotten a little
bit better.
Maybe? Maybe.
I still don't like folders or spaces and
folders. What was I gonna say about that?
There was something else. Moving files
I don't know. It's gone.
I had something I was thinking of that
I was gonna relate that to. Yeah. I
don't know. Yeah. No. That was a fun
project. I was like, you you guys do
know that you don't need folders
in order to store your files.
Right? Like, you can have actual,
like, views Like, yeah. Set up. And then
we can set up filters
because the first level was all of their
clients, and then the next level
was individual folders that they needed for those
clients. And then it was like, well, this
is for quarter one, and this is for
quarter two, and this is for quarter three.
And then it was just Got it. It
was years and years of data. And I
was like, oh,
this is gonna be fun. And then Microsoft
came up with channels and teams that created
folders,
and I said,
I give up.
I can't keep telling people to stop creating
folders because Microsoft says to stop creating folders.
And then they create folders. When they create
folders and channels, they're like, it's a losing
battle. Go create folders to your hard content.
Oh, I remember what I was gonna ask.
Okay. So have you ever seen this when
you start getting that many files and folders?
And I feel like I've seen this a
couple times where, like, two people will sync
it. Mhmm. One person will go to move
it. And because it takes so long to
sync,
the other person's
computer back in there. Gets confused and, like,
puts it back as people are moving it
out, and you end up with Multiple No.
Multiple copies because it takes so long to
sync
that the two OneDrive clients on the two
different computers That's awful. Lose track
of what's going on. That's so awful.
Like, this user
will put I think this is the other
one I've seen. User a
will like add files to the folder. Mhmm.
User b takes takes like the whole folder
And while user a is still waiting to
synchronize,
so then user a recreates the folder
and puts the new files in it. So
now you have not duplicate files, but you
have duplicate folders
In different places. In different files. Yeah. User
b is like, I'm missing files that user
a was supposed to add and user a
is like, where'd all the files go that
were supposed to be in this folder that
I added these other ones to? Oh. And
then it's turned into a massive confusion and
it's one of those things where it's,
again, beating this horse of
SharePoint is not a file share.
Please, I get you want your users to
feel comfortable with SharePoint and OneDrive and syncing
and all that, but don't try to make
OneDrive a file share. Yeah. No. What I
have found really helpful
is Power BI use
with SharePoint.
Okay. Because I can point a URL,
like, in Power Query and Power BI to
a document, like, a document library URL. Okay.
And then I can see all of my
files
in that library. Like, I can break it
down. Oh, because it flattens them all out?
It flattens the whole thing. And so then
you can see, oh, hey. Well, here's this
file in this folder, and here's the same
file in this other folder. But if you
look at the URL for where these files
are at, you can see there's a big
difference in the URL length and how this
is all set. It's fantastic. I haven't tried
that yet. Dude, I 100% guarantee it's, like,
mind blowing. When you get in there, you're
like,
this is beautiful. It's blowing my end right
now. I'm gonna have to go try this.
You
should There are so many things that I've
done with Power BI and that you probably
should not have ever done or be able
to do. But, like, I use Power BI
to unzip files from
Okay. Yeah.
Explain.
Okay. So I actually
started on this project for PowerApps and Canvas
apps Okay. Where I wanted to know the
in internal
guts of what was in a Canvas app.
But when you export it, it comes out
as an MS app file. Yep. Dot MS
app. Well, inside the dot MS app file,
like any other Microsoft file that is created,
is a bunch
of XML files and JSON files and all
of that. So, like, if you change the
extension of the file to dot zip and
unzip it, you can now see all of
the internal guts and glory.
And so there are
different tools that are out there. I think
I found it somebody had it on GitHub,
I think, for how do you decompress
a file using Power BI. Okay.
And so I have gone in and I've
fiddled with that myself. Okay. And I've made
it so that I can point it to
a document library
in OneDrive.
Okay. And I can unzip every single file
that is in that document library and see
the internal contents of this file, so that
I can then verify what's in the file,
where it should be, how it's supposed to
be set, like Can you actually unzip it
too and have it go back to SharePoint
as an unzipped file? Well, no. Because Power
Query doesn't actually physically Doesn't go right back.
You can actually do the reporting or the
Yeah. Look at it. Yeah. So like if
there was a like an Excel file, say,
that's got a whole bunch of financial data
in it, and you have another Excel file
and another SharePoint list somewhere
or SharePoint document library with some other financial
data in it, and you wanted to compare
the two, you could pull it into Power
Query, Power BI, and
and validate. And compare. Yeah. And never actually
physically touch the files. To say, I have
never done this. I'm gonna have to go
start playing with it. This might be part
of the reason why they call me a
wizard. No. Because I find all these little
hacks that nobody thinks about. Did you know
you could do that with have you ever
done that to an office document too? Change
the name to that zip? Yeah. It's fascinating.
Office document, Excel document, PowerPoint documents,
every single one of them, even Power BI
files.
Are just zip files? Every single one of
them is zip file. Everything after
Office 2007.
Yes. The when they added the x to
the document extension. Yeah. Yep. Even the template
files and everything is great.
Very cool. It's how I wanted to start
building crap. I'm like, oh, I can just
change it to to dot zip and unpack
it, and then I can just put whatever
I want in it and zip it back
up and change the extension to whatever it
is. Just randomly tried it now with every
file you get is just change it to
dot zip to see what happens. Yep. A
100%. I've actually saved my bacon before because
I was working on a Power BI report.
Okay.
I accidentally made a change in which it
froze the whole thing up, and I forgot
to save
after working on this for twelve hours.
Oh, no.
Thank god I always turn on the auto
save part. Yep.
But then I tried to open up the
backup file
Okay.
And it had saved it with the error
in place so that it was frozen as
soon as it opened.
Oh. And I was like, oh, no. This
is not good. Because the number of power
query, like, changes that I had made Twelve
hours worth. I was never going to remember
exactly how I had done it. Yeah. And
I was like, oh, wait. I can change
this file to dot zip, and I can
open it up and look at it in
Versus Code, and I can get all of
the Power Query
Okay. Out of there and make sure that
I change the one specific part that was
freezing everything.
No. You can't. Yes. You can. No Power
Query. It's John. It's John. Very stupid. No.
It is not. Blah blah blah. It is
the Let's go do some KQL over at
it. Christ. I talked about KQL earlier. I
do? Yeah. You have to talk really loud,
John, so you get picked up on the
mic for the podcast. Oh, you're on a
podcast? Yeah. Now you are too. Nice. We
just got joined by John the mastermind
behind
the workplace ninjas conference. As you get all
the feedback from my microphone. Hello. Just like
I told him at the MVP summit, the
only person that you have to learn KQL
are people who do defender are, like, Nathan
McNulty. Making everybody else learn it is cruel
and evil.
Now I'm gonna go away. You're gonna go
away. Alright. Thanks, John. Can't wait for are
we allowed to talk about next year? We
are announcing Is it public?
At 05:30PM,
we are announcing the 2027
date and venue.
Okay. So this podcast will come out after
that, so we will talk about it. You
can announce the fact that it is going
to be at the Scott And Scottsdale
The Scott? Next week of February Okay. 2027.
The Scott And Scottsdale,
last week, 2027.
You should absolutely come and accidentally
go out. Go out at night.
Enjoy all the shenanigans at which 100% shenanigans.
This is I don't know as many people
at this conference as when I go to
some of the other ones. Mhmm. This is
by far the most fun I have ever
had
at a conference.
To be fair, I found out today that
I'm royalty.
I did not know this. You're not only
a wizard, but you're royalty. I'm apparently royalty.
I'm MVP royalty, and I did not know
this. Like, some of Congratulations.
Yeah. I so, Ramona g Oh, yeah. I
know. Ramona's awesome. Yeah. So I went down
to her session before and, like, I only
met her through WhatsApp chat, like, a few
weeks ago. Okay. Two months ago, something like
that. And I walked into her session and
there's, like, there's a handful of people or
whatever because they put her out in the
middle of nowhere land like they did to
me yesterday. I'm sorry. And definitely did not
complain to John about that several times with
a number of expletives.
And so That never would have imagined.
I went walked into her session, and she
got, like, got all super excited and whatnot.
And then, like, at at the end of
her session, like, my friend, he wanted me
to come introduce,
like, him to her. He's like, she's fantastic.
And I was like Is this the same
friend that accidentally goes out? This is a
different friend? Okay.
And so he's like, you need to come
introduce me. And I was like, I'm pretty
sure she knows me, but sure. I'll come
down there and I'll make an introduction.
And so at the end, he, like, he
jumps up and he's like, hey, I'm gonna
do and so I was like, okay. Okay.
And she's like, yeah. This is royalty right
here. And I was like, what?
This is the fun part. We just get
random people stopping that. Yeah. Yeah. John I
thought you were just shooting the shit now
because No. This is that's the fun part
of the podcast. Here's this is random Yeah.
Just into
the Lindsay came to say hi. We have
Lindsay. We have Lindsay Shelton here from Epic
with a q.
So and Lindsay is epic.
She is epic. She works at Epic and
is epic. Exactly.
Except I know how
to
spell
epic.
Oh my. But I love my work, I
love my employer. Alright. Yes. In case they'll
send to this case later. We'll make sure
that is noted
and Yes. Acknowledged.
Alright. But we should probably wrap
up. I don't even know how long we've
been recording for. Anything else that's anti AI
that we wanted? We did well for anti
AI. We did. A little I mean off
the wall on everything. I did mention CoPilot
once, but, you know, I feel like that
you have to as an MVP for anything
that you're speaking at least mention it one
time. It's yeah. It's an obligation. I think
we signed something that says It's actually obligated.
Time we talk, we will mention Copilot at
least once.
So I think we have done our contractual
obligation. Well, thanks, guys. This was a lot
of fun. It was.
I will put links in the show notes
to anybody that wants to
meet Kat, the royal
wizard.
The royal wizard.
You need a new handle.
Half the royal wizard.
I've added a dinosaur to my LinkedIn name.
Now, like, what more can you ask? Perfect.
Alright. Well, thank you so much. This was
a lot of fun. Yeah. And we will
have to do it again sometime. Yes. For
sure. Alright. Alright. Thanks, Kat. We'll talk to
you later. K. Bye.
If you enjoyed the podcast, go leave us
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