Examples of using Copilot for Excel

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First impressions of Copilot within Office 365 Part three of a five-part series of blogs
You can now add Copilot to your 365 licence, although it isn't cheap - this review looks at whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Using Copilot within Microsoft 365 Getting Copilot set up Examples of using Copilot for Excel (this blog) Using Copilot withn Outlook Using Copilot with Word and PowerPoint

First impressions of Copilot within Office 365

Part three of a five-part series of blogs

You can now add Copilot to your 365 licence, although it isn't cheap - this review looks at whether the benefits outweigh the costs.

Using Copilot within Microsoft 365
Getting Copilot set up
Examples of using Copilot for Excel (this blog)
Using Copilot withn Outlook
Using Copilot with Word and PowerPoint

Posted by Andy Brown on 08 May 2024

In this blog

Creating custom requests
Creating a suggestion for a column formula
Data insights

This blog assumes that you'veset up Copilot (as per the previous part of this blog).

Creating custom requests

So I thought I'd start by putting Copilot through its paces. I started with an ambitious request:

I have tables called Towns and Regions, so why not?

Alas (and disappointingly) Copilot couldn't help:

Fine - I'll be more specific.

So I'm now being more helpful:

The column headings (the field names in the table) are called RegionId and RegionName - surely this is enough?

Alas (again) Copilot wouldn't play ball:

Seriously?

I then tried to make it as specific as I could, and Copilot took about 10 seconds more to say that it couldn't help.

Creating a suggestion for a column formula

I decided to switch tack, and thought i'd see what formula Copilot could suggest for me:

I clicked on the button shown above to show a suggestion for a formula column, and got this.

This is counting for each town how many times its region appears:

This is an almost meaningless statistic!

Data insights

Maybe the data insights button would throw some light on my workbook?

Would this button remove my deep sense of disappointment?

Here's what this produced:

This is AI at its absolute worst! I have 10 tables in this workbook, but Copilot hasn't been able to join them together or include any more than one of them in its analysis, and has shown me a pointless statistic.

Parts of this blog
Using Copilot within Microsoft 365 Getting Copilot set up Examples of using Copilot for Excel (this blog) Using Copilot withn Outlook Using Copilot with Word and PowerPoint