Introducing the COPILOT function in Excel: Bring AI directly into your formulas
This video demonstrates the groundbreaking COPILOT function in Excel, which fundamentally transforms how organizations can interact with and analyze data. For business executives and decision-makers, this function means the ability to gain rapid, sophisticated insights from vast amounts of data without requiring specialized programming knowledge. It works by allowing users to type natural language prompts and provide data context, which an underlying Large Language Model (LLM) then processes to return results directly into the Excel grid.
Key applications for an organization or department include:
• Efficiently Summarizing Feedback: Instead of manually sifting through comments, a leader can use Copilot to summarize extensive feedback into a paragraph or even a single sentence, quickly grasping key issues or sentiments.
• Automated Data Categorization and Sentiment Analysis: Copilot can categorize unstructured data (e.g., customer comments about a product) into predefined categories like “taste,” “ease of use,” or “maintenance issues”. Crucially, it can also extract sentiment (positive/negative) and even represent it with emojis, all within a single formula. This capability, previously unavailable directly in spreadsheets, opens “a new world of analysis and possibilities,” enabling rapid understanding of customer satisfaction, product performance, or operational bottlenecks.
• Dynamic Data Aggregation and Analysis: The function integrates seamlessly with Excel’s dynamic array system, meaning if new data or categories are added, the analyses automatically update. This allows for dynamic aggregation using functions like PIVOTBY to count occurrences of sentiments across categories, providing powerful, real-time insights into trends and issues.
• Empowering Business Users: By bringing “natural language intelligence into your everyday Excel work,” Copilot empowers any team member to perform advanced data analysis, freeing up IT or data science resources and accelerating the decision-making cycle across the organization.
FAQ:
• What is the COPILOT function and what does it do? The COPILOT function is a new feature in Excel that integrates natural language intelligence directly into your spreadsheet formulas. It allows users to type prompts to analyze, summarize, categorize, and extract insights from data, returning the results directly into the Excel grid.
• How can this help my business analyze customer feedback? It can summarize large volumes of customer feedback into concise paragraphs or sentences, categorize feedback into specific topics (e.g., product features, support), and perform sentiment analysis to gauge positive or negative sentiment, even adding emojis for quick visual cues. This helps in quickly understanding customer satisfaction and identifying key areas for improvement.
• Can it handle new or changing data automatically? Yes, the COPILOT function is designed to integrate with Excel’s calculation system and dynamic arrays. If you update your source data or add new categories, the formulas using Copilot will automatically refresh and update the analysis.
• Is this feature easy for my team to use? It functions like any other Excel function, accessed by typing =COPILOT. Its primary inputs are a natural language prompt and any relevant data ranges, making it accessible to anyone familiar with Excel formulas.
• What kind of “new possibilities” does it unlock for analysis? It enables advanced analyses directly within Excel that were previously impossible, such as sentiment analysis. This opens up opportunities for deeper data exploration and understanding across various business functions without needing external tools or complex programming.
