Microsoft Copilot: Transform Excel to Power Apps IN 3 MINUTES

The Copilot maker experience for Power Apps means that you can upload your Excel spreadsheet and have it automatically turned into a Microsoft Dataverse table and a Power App in only a few clicks. From there you can edit your columns, names, and Power App design to whatever you want. This is in incredibly quick and easy way to get started with building Power Apps.

[@EdsonNascimentoEN]

Nice and straight to the point. Thanks for sharing Lisa.

[@jeffsaville_]

Hi Lisa... Your videos are awesome... Thank you so much for publishing them... Your channel is so helpful... Thanks again!!

[@glennisace]

Hi Lisa, thanks for the video. Will the app still work if the spreadsheet is dynamic? ie, I have the data downloading to the spreadsheet from an ODBC connection to my inventory program, every hour? thanks.

[@LisaCrosbie]

this is doing a one-off conversion of your spreadsheet into Dataverse. If you want ongoing updates you'd need to build an integration or use Power Automate to update every time there is a change to a row in the spreadsheet, or periodically.

[@katendefrancis6349]

Are we able to use drop downs or dynamically responsive options? Just starting to explore

[@LisaCrosbie]

If you have dropdowns in your spreadsheet they should turn into choice (dropdown) fields in Dataverse.

[@nigelbradley5709]

Love it - thanks for sharing.

[@paulsprunken]

Dear Lisa, whatched a few videos but only in thisone there is a split second where you show the "app" on a phone. Your emphasis seems to be on the development; not sure if that is what you have in mind as your target viewers: (IT/APP developers) or users of lists and data sets that could benefit from switching frome xcel files to apps? I still fail to see what this does for a user of the data, what was the aim of going through this entire process for this particular data set, ie what has been gained/improved from a business process point of view. I'm not sure if I should invest in the effort to convert just because 'apps' are ruling of stick to the lists we have and use my time on just operating our business process. And by the way, what skill level or qualifications should be required for going through all the steps as you outlined (to avoid the proverbial garbage in and out). Sorry, lots of questions as I think it might well bring some relief but fail to assess at what 'cost' for our small organization to get there ....

[@LisaCrosbie]

Yes, my audience is primarily low code developers. What I'm showing here is a way to get off "mission critical" excel spreadsheets, where data is stored in a way that isn't secure or scalable, and put it into Microsoft Dataverse, where you can then create other related tables, and apply security, and scale to TB of data as needed. The app is the interface on top of that to make it easier to access.

[@labratniigaaniin2788]

I created a template in Dynamics 365 CRM and it works fabulous - a new column was created in the main table and I want to add it to the existing template I designed, is that possible? I really don't want to have to remake the whole template that is currently being used. Thanks in advance

[@LisaCrosbie]

If you mean can you add a new column you created into the canvas app then yes. You’ll need to go to data sources, find your table and refresh the data source. Them try asking copilot on the side to add it or you can just edit it yourself, click on the form and choose edit fields in the properties.

[@samdrey6555]

Thanks for the demo Lisa ! I'm a Microsoftee using your videos to ramp up myself on Power Apps 😊 I love your decorations (I also just finished the lego Delorean 😅)

[@LisaCrosbie]

Awesome, and love hearing from other Lego fans too - I had to wait months to get the Delorean (didn't grab it when it first came out!) but it was worth the wait.

[@mervyndeanhilary2831]

Thank you Lisa, but could you also attach the excel files so it could be used as references?

[@LisaCrosbie]

github.com/lisamcrosbie/excel

[@greenhoodie]

That is super cool.

[@tpaobrien]

Can you make an inventory app please.

[@heniekhenkowy4461]

Can it understand Formulas from Excel and import it to Power Apps? Or we have to do it by hand?

[@LisaCrosbie]

No, it doesn't bring across formulas. If your data contains formulas (e.g. concatenate to put names together) so far from what I've tested it will bring in the data values that come out of the formulas though.

[@heniekhenkowy4461]

@@LisaCrosbie i've done some testing as well and as far as i can tell, there is no way to get calculated columns or autonumbering with copilot am i right? For now he is creating "static" columns only?

[@westleyempeigne6541]

That’s great!

[@ghorayshi]

Hi Lisa, I have Microsoft 365 Family and can not login to Power Apps. Which subscription would be sufficient to get access to Power Apps? I am on Mac OS.

[@LisaCrosbie]

There is an appendix in the licensing guide here that lists all the Office 365 subscriptions that include Power Apps - you will need at least an education / first line worker / business or enterprise license go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2085130 To do what I'm showing in this video though you will need a Power Apps per app or Premium license.

[@lakergreat1]

is there a way to allow the powerapp to be accessed by various employees, but ONLY show them certain fields to edit data on? For instance I want the HR team to be able to see home address and home phone number, and I want that column unavailable for most other users?

[@marti0]

Yes, visibility of any column can be set depending on the user's role

[@LisaCrosbie]

Yes, you can set up a security model in Dataverse right down to the individual field.

[@lakergreat1]

@@LisaCrosbie do you have any videos on this? or could you make some? Maybe you have a dataverse table that has ALL details for each employee and you want to setup roles in your power app that only some people can look at some data columns. Thanks!

[@Ivke-zm7uz]

And where is the copilot part in the vid?

[@LisaCrosbie]

The whole thing. Creating a table and app from Excel is one of the features of Power Apps Copilot.

[@tuyoexcelypowerbi]

Uffff