Microsoft Copilot in Excel: Here's How to Use It

In this short tutorial you'll learn how to use Copilot in Excel, as I take you step by step through how to use the natural language prompts to create formulas, add highlights, sort and filter, and analyse your data for insights including creating charts and discovering outliers. I also take you through the prerequisites and licensing - this is available for anyone to use, from an individual through to enterprise.
Timestamps
00:00 Copilot in Excel
00:51 Save your file and set up a table
01:58 Create formulas and insert columns
03:39 Add highlights and conditional formatting
04:39 Sorting your data and using undo
05:42 Analyse and get insights on your data with pivot tables and charts
07:51 Discover outliers in your data
09:11 Copilot in Excel Licensing Explained
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[@LisaCrosbie]

Connect with me: ☕ Buy me a coffee: www.buymeacoffee.com/lisacrosbie 🦉 Learn more about AI: aka.ms/learnwithlisa 🖇 LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-crosbie/ 📼 TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@lisa.crosbie 🐦 X (Twitter): twitter.com/LisaCrosbie 📚Take my LinkedIn Learning Course: Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals (PL-900) Exam: Power Apps www.linkedin.com/learning/microsoft-power-platform-fundamentals-pl-900-cert-prep-power-apps/

[@liapourlesentreprises]

Thanks for the tips!

[@l0bos0lo]

Love it, great work, really so helpful, keep at it, you’re helping so many people!

[@impactfulnesslab]

excellent explanation, thank you!

[@AndyHuneycutt]

Nice explanation, Lisa! 👏👏👏

[@DanielChristian19]

Awesome. Thanks Lisa!

[@priscillajuranitch]

You're amazing. One observation: mastering the art of crafting AI prompts for various scenarios is among the most valuable skills one can possess. I often found myself pausing the video repeatedly just to scrutinize your prompt entries closely. While it may seem trivial, it's truly one of the most beneficial skills to refine when utilizing this tool. Therefore, it would be greatly appreciated if you could place a bit more emphasis on displaying your prompts before proceeding further. Looking forward to more of your tutorials. Cheers

[@carmscaffidi]

This is AMAZING @LisaCrosbie thanks!

[@LeoKukral]

Game Changer :D

[@anthonyrodighiero723]

Great video Lisa, thank you for sharing! By any chance can you make this spreadsheet available for download?

[@squareggs]

I think in 6 months it will be a game changer but at the moment like everything else it gets better with time.

[@LisaCrosbie]

You’re right, it’s still early days.

[@beardenbob6567]

Always helpful Lisa, thanks. As a side-rant, I can't understand why you, as a valuable member of the MS community, promoting and teaching the use of their tools, had to PAY for this feature to learn/have access to/teach it.

[@LisaCrosbie]

Thanks - and yeah, don’t get me started on access to licenses, indeed!

[@rwhite9511]

Lisa, you did a great job getting me started with Copilot in Excel. Do you have additional Copilot in Excel videos or plans for additional training?

[@LisaCrosbie]

Once it’s out of preview or when more features are added I will most likely do more on it, yes.

[@johnkelly393]

@lisaCrosbie your content is awesome, thank you for sharing. I'd love to know if it's possible to do the following in excel? If I have multiple tabs, one of which is my master and contains questions in column A and model responses in column B can I use that as my baseline to fill out another tab where questions in column A may be worded differently but subject matter is broadly the same. Is that even possible?

[@digivod6897]

Can I use multiple prompts at one time? Will that give multiple pieces of content and analysis in one go?

[@xt3708]

thank you, awesome video. can I trust the data it presents? if it's not a calculation

[@LisaCrosbie]

With anything AI you should always check the references and results, I would never 100% take what AI gives me without checking.

[@xt3708]

@@LisaCrosbie for sure. For data analysis, it presents a big problem, how to verify correctness in anything meaningful with lots of rows means checking it, and does checking it make the task longer.. tbd

[@oliverrossi5013]

Hi Lisa, does it allow users to record the steps/prompts and results generated by the copilot and save it as a macro for future use? Like a person has to do the same steps for some monthly reporting etc.

[@LisaCrosbie]

That isn’t part of Copilot for Excel but the new AI recording for desktop flows (Power Automate) just announced at Build would most likely be the right solution there.

[@MuhammadAhmedMuddie]

I cannot use Copilot in the app for Excel like I can for Word and powerpoint. I can only utilise Excel on the browser. Help?

[@LisaCrosbie]

Try going into the file menu, then choose account, and you will see an option to “update license”. Then restart Excel.

[@MuhammadAhmedMuddie]

@@LisaCrosbie sadly, I can't see “account” in the file drop-down menu… 😔 do I have to do that on the browser version of Excel?

[@user-dz5us2tv3q]

how to get copilot in excel?

[@LisaCrosbie]

You need to buy a Copilot Pro or Copilot for Microsoft 365 License.

[@dumb400]

Thanks Lisa. Does it have functionality to analyse unstructured data that might be in a column? For example highlight themes in a list of complaints or customer questions? Or sentiment analysis?