Copilot in Excel documents

More recently, Microsoft Copilot, an AI-based assistant, has become an integral part of Excel in all its versions. Now it can help you, in English or another language, analyze data, create charts, offer you the appropriate Excel function, or show you its syntax. To put a long story short, it can make your daily work much more productive!

To activate Copilot, click on the icon on the right, at the end of the Home ribbon.

How is it used? First of all, you can use it like any other chatbot by typing a question in the Message Copilot field  or choosing one of the templates (automatically offered questions) on the bottom. For example, if you write:

I would like to sum all the rows. Which Excel function should I use and what is it’s syntax?

Copilot will respond that you need to use the SUM function and will display its syntax.

If you’ve opened an Excel file on your local computer, the interaction is just a chat. If it’s saved in a OneDrive repository, Copilot will also be able to manipulate the data and create charts. For example, if you write a prompt:

Please generate totals by rows.

artificial intelligence will calculate the totals by row for the given table and return the result in the form of a new table. In the paid version, the result can appear directly in the worksheet, and in the free version, it is generated in the panel, so you add it to the worksheet by clicking on the Copy Response icon, and then pasting the data in the desired location.

Every time you want to start a new chat,  you need to click on the green icon in the upper right corner of the panel. By clicking on the icon on the left called Open a navigation panel,  you can view the history of previous prompts. If you start a new chat and write:

Please create a stacked column chart by data inside a table. Years should be series.

Copilot will generate a stacked column chart in a form of image. Again, if you click on the Copy Response icon, you can paste the chart within the worksheet. Remember, in the free version it is an image, it is not in any way directly linked to the data!

The label at the bottom of the window “You’re using Copilot with standard access” emphasizes that you are using the free version of Copilot. The paid version provides more features.