Copilot in Microsoft Excel is like having an AI buddy that helps you make sense of your data. It can analyze, explain, and visualize your information much more efficiently. If you have a Copilot Pro subscription along with a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family account, you can start using this tool to work with your data in a more intuitive way.
Getting Started with Copilot in Excel
Before you can fire up Copilot in Excel, you need to make sure you’ve got a table full of data in your worksheet. If you don’t have a table, the Copilot button will be greyed out. So, here’s how you can prepare your data:
- Open the workbook containing your data.
- Select the cell range you want to turn into a table.
- Go to the “Home” tab on the ribbon, and click on “Format as Table”.
- Pick a table style you like from the options.
- A dialog box will pop up, make sure to check “My table has headers” if your data includes column headers in the first row and then click “OK”.
Now, you’ve got yourself an Excel table!
Also, you must save your worksheet to OneDrive or SharePoint. Copilot needs your workbook to be stored in the cloud to work. Once you’ve done that, Copilot will be ready to go.
Using Copilot in Excel
Alright, now that your data is prepped and saved in the cloud, let’s get into how to actually use Copilot to analyze your data.
- Open your Excel worksheet with the table.
- Click on the “Home” tab on the Excel ribbon.
- Find and click on the “Copilot” icon, it’s usually on the right side of the Home ribbon. This opens the Copilot chat panel on the right of the Excel window.
If you haven’t made your data into a table yet, Copilot can help you with this too. Simply select the data, and Copilot will offer options to create a table for you.
To get the best help from Copilot, ensure a cell or range in your Excel table is selected. This gives the AI context for your data.
Find insights with Copilot
Copilot is awesome at finding hidden insights in your data, like trends, patterns, and summaries.
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In the Copilot chat panel, click on the “Analyze” option.
Copilot will then process your data, and suggest some prompts based on it.
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Click on a suggested prompt to get insights, or you can type your own custom prompt in the input box if you have something specific in mind. Then click “Send”.
Copilot will generate insights in various formats like PivotTables, charts, summaries, or highlight trends. If you find a chart or analysis you like, you can add it to your workbook. -
To add a chart or analysis to your workbook, click the “Add to a new sheet” button.
You can check out other insights by clicking the other suggestions, or by clicking “Refresh”.
By analyzing your data through Copilot, you can gain a better understanding and make more informed decisions.
Highlight and sort your data
Copilot also helps to organize your data by highlighting important information and filtering your table based on your needs.
- In the Copilot panel, choose either “Highlight” or “Sort and filter”.
Copilot will analyze your data and suggest some prompts. - Click a suggested prompt to modify your data.
You can also type your own prompt to specify exactly how you’d like Copilot to organize your table. - Copilot will apply the changes based on your prompts to better visualize your data.
Generate formula columns
You can quickly add new columns with formulas using Copilot and it will also explain the formula it created.
- In the Copilot chat panel, select “Add formula columns”.
Copilot will show a list of formula column suggestions.
- Select a suggested prompt to add a formula column, or type your own prompt describing the formula you need.
Copilot will generate the formula and explain how it works.
- To add the new formula column, click on “Insert Column”.
By using Copilot in your Excel workflow, you’ll be able to improve your data analysis and visualization. This tool simplifies complex tasks, making data manipulation more efficient and accessible, allowing you to get meaningful insights from your data.