Excel is getting better at finding answers
(Watch our short video or read the full article below)
If you use Excel regularly, you’ll know that the hard part is getting your information into the format you want.
Perhaps you always present figures in a certain way or maybe reports need specific headings. Perhaps your team uses formulas, naming conventions, or layouts that everyone is expected to follow.
It’s all repetitive – and repetition is just the thing AI is supposed to help with.
Microsoft has been steadily building Copilot into Excel over the past couple of years.
Some of the updates have been more useful than others, but this improvement feels like one that could make a difference. It lets you teach Copilot how you like things done.
For example, you can tell it how you want currency displayed, how reports should be structured, or how certain types of data should be formatted.
Once you’ve explained your preferences, Copilot remembers them and applies them automatically in future.
If you’ve ever found yourself repeatedly asking Excel to make the same adjustments over and over again, this will be music to your ears.
There’s another part of this update that could be useful for teams, too.
Organisations often rely on shared spreadsheets where everyone is expected to follow the same rules.
One person creates a report one way, somebody else does it differently, and before long there are three versions of what should be the same document.
Microsoft is introducing workbook rules that can travel with the spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet can contain instructions that help Copilot understand how that specific workbook should be handled.
If the file is shared with colleagues, the rules go with it.
That helps create consistency across a team without someone having to repeatedly explain how things should be done.
This update moves AI beyond answering questions.
Up until now, people have used tools like Copilot to help generate content, summarise information, or explain formulas.
However, this starts to feel more like teaching the software how your organisation works.
That could make the results more useful because the AI has a better understanding of your preferences and processes.
Of course, it doesn’t remove the need for human oversight.
Spreadsheets can contain important business information, and any AI-generated output should still be checked before being relied on. That’s especially true when formulas, financial figures, or reporting are involved.
But for the everyday tasks that eat away at your time, this looks like a sensible step forward.
If Excel can spend less time asking how you’d like something formatted and more time helping you get work done, that’s a change worth having.
If you’d like to learn which AI tools inside Microsoft 365 could improve productivity for your team, we’d be happy to help
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