On January 15, Microsoft launched Copilot, its new generative AI tool for Microsoft 365. Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, it’s already creating a lot of buzz with powerful features that can save users a lot of time – particularly if they’re not Excel wizards.

For people paying the $20/month fee, it’s accessible via the Excel ribbon and promises to bring Excel to new heights with faster ways to analyze, sort and filter, and generate formulas for Excel data.

If you’ve just signed up or you’re thinking about trying it, we’ve rounded up some insights and reviews from data analysts sharing Copilot tips and their thoughts on its performance so far.

How Copilot works: the basics

One of Copilot’s current limitations is that it can only work with Excel data that’s formatted as a table. Format your data as a table, then select the table and click on Copilot in the ribbon and select “Get Started.” From there:

• If you select “Analyze,” Copilot will come up with suggested prompts, or you can ask it your own question to identify outliers, create Pivot tables, or show summaries.
• To filter and sort data, just type in how you’d like Copilot to adjust the spreadsheet in natural language.
• To create a new formula column, you can either add formula columns on your own or get Copilot to suggest one based on the data in your spreadsheet.

Six weeks after the launch, Excel experts online have shared unique takes on how to make the most of Copilot’s abilities. Below, we’ll cover a few tips from around the web.

A few things you can do with Copilot in Excel

One of Copilot’s most popular features is that it lets users create formulas using natural language. Instead of spending time trying to look up a formula online, you can now type out what you want Copilot to do with your data. It will come up with a formula that you can add to a new row with one click, and an explanation of what that formula does.

You can also use it to:

• Input unformatted data into the chat and ask Copilot to create a table and ask it to modify the data in the same request
• Add new sheets within the chat window
• Add conditional formatting to visualize or highlight data, including red-green-yellow formatting for a quick grasp of data ranges and highlights of outliers
• Add all insights to grid for a dashboard based on the data in your table, including pivot tables and visualizations of the key points.

Upskilling with Copilot

For accounting firms, this creates a unique opportunity to help new hires upskill quickly and learn as they go. Since Copilot can explain the formulas it creates, it’s an easy way to help new users understand Excel’s capabilities without having to Google formulas for a specific use case.

It’s also a significant advantage for intermediate Excel users who know the basics, but don’t have a full grasp of everything on the Excel ribbon yet. For example, users that know about conditional formatting but don’t know where it is on the ribbon can work around it by asking Copilot – even though it would be faster for an expert to apply the formatting manually.

Since it also offers suggestions, it can help intermediate users find data insights that they wouldn’t normally think of on their own.

Finally, Copilot can also walk new users through how to find something in Excel on their own, making it a valuable tool for finding their way around Excel without having to ask a team member.

Copilot still has limitations

That said, there are still some important limitations to consider. Like many AI tools, there are still times when it might misunderstand a request if the prompt isn’t specific enough. Some users found that it also still fails to generate responses altogether in some cases when the request is too broad – so users will still need some intuition about how to generate the right prompts.

Additionally, while Copilot can create pivot tables, it can’t work on them yet. So you’ll still have to manually modify data in pivot tables for now.

One reviewer suggested using the online version rather than the desktop version, since the desktop version is buggy. Your data needs to be stored in OneDrive in order for Copilot to access it yet, so it’s not possible to modify data without an internet connection.

One user also mentioned that it doesn’t work as well with particularly large datasets. If you’re using it to analyze very large spreadsheets, it might not be as likely to generate a response as quickly or at all.

Is Copilot worth the subscription?

Overall, the general consensus is that Copilot is worth it. That’s especially true for accounting firms hiring new grads who are still mastering Excel formulas and would otherwise have a lot of questions.

That said, there are a lot of other AI tools on the market to help level up Excel, as well as automation tools that can support teams with high volumes of expense data, month-end review, and financial reporting. So if your firm has a highly specialized focus, it might be worth weighing the pros and cons of using Copilot vs. another specialized tool.

Finally, pairing these AI tools with ProCharted can help you get the basics of practice management right as you scale. With the simplest all-in-one tool for time tracking, billing, workflow management, and more, you’ll free up more time to experiment with supercharging your spreadsheets.