Artificial intelligence has finally landed In one of the most famous spreadsheets in the world: Excel. But he hasn’t done it as many imagined. Talk to the program in natural language and automatically solve everything for us? Only in part. Copilot’s shortcuts allow to summarize, classify and order databut they do not turn Excel into a agent able to take control of a project from beginning to end. In addition, the novelty comes with clear limits: the function can make mistakes.
Microsoft is testing co -pilot as a native function within the Excel calculation engine. The idea is simple: write an instruction in natural language within the sheet and obtain a result that is placed directly in the grid, with the same behavior as any Excel exit. Integration allows you to continue working with defined ranges, tables and names without changing the structure of the file, and the results are updated when the data changes, without resorting to scripts or external accessories.
Copilot is landing in Microsoft Excel
As we see, it is a useful function, but with clear limitations. At the moment we cannot ask in natural language things such as “fuses the books of the subsidiaries, make everything to euros to the official change, eliminate duplicates and enter me a quarterly consolidated balance with comparative graphics.” Copilot, for now, plays in another land: Understand instructions in natural languageYes, but it does it within Excel and always about the data you have on the sheet itself.
Accepted that Copilot is not an automatic pilot, it is worth exploring what it is practical. Microsoft points to four daily fronts that are resolved without abandoning the sheet:
- Rain of ideas without leaving the sheet. Ask for a list of concepts, titles or keywords from a brief description. If we need it, we can ask that you rewrite a text in a lighter or more formal tone and leave the result ready to polish.
- Summaries that go to the point. Point out a wide range and request a short text with trends, peaks and falls. This is useful when a table must be converted into an understandable paragraph for a report.
- Direct classification in the grid. Deliver a column with comments, tickets or survey responses. We can ask that you return labels such as “positive/neutral/negative” and a brief category. Everything would turn to new columns to continue working.
- Lists and tables on the fly. From a description, which proposes a table with the columns that we indicate (task, responsible, date, state). It is a basis for organizing without wasting time mocking.
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In the official noteCatherine Pidgeon (Excel team) offers a very clear example of what Copilot can do today. Imagine a sheet with a column full of opinions about a new coffee maker in the office. Some value flavor, others complain about noise or deposit size. Copilot can read that column and return, right next to us, a table with two fields: the feeling of each comment (positive, neutral or negative) and a category Cut that helps you group (“taste”, “noise”, “capacity”). In minutes we would go from a messy list to something analyzable. There we decided: filter for the most frequent problems, count a category or prepare a summary.
And how is it used in practice? Exactly like any other Excel function: writing the sign equal to the beginning of a cell and then the name of the function. In this case, Simply put = co -pilot () and add inside the instruction in natural language or the range of data that we want to use as a context. There are no tricks or hidden menus, it is invoked as invoked a = sum () or un = search (), which makes learning minimal and experience is familiar from the first moment.
It is time to put the caution on the table. Copilot works within the book itself: it does not access the web or documents of the company, and its results must be reviewed and validated before including them in reports or business decisions. Microsoft is clear about it: it is not appropriate for high -risk scenarios (with legal, regulatory or compliance implications). There are also operational limits: the function has quotas of use (up to 100 calls every ten minutes and 300 per hour).
Microsoft is clear about it: it is not appropriate for high -risk scenarios.
What we are seeing should not surprise us either. Artificial intelligence has advanced by giant steps, but still has a weak point: it can be wrong. These inaccuracies are usually called “hallucinations”And, although technology improves with each generation, the companies that develop it warn that It is not convenient to re -one hundred percent. It is almost a courtesy reminder that we have already normalized: every time we open a chatbot as COPILOT, Chatgpt either GeminiWe find a warning that reminds us that what we read can contain errors.
Will the day come when these failures disappear? There is no clear answer. Even paying for the most advanced versions, the fastest or most expensive, absolute security does not exist. That is the reflection that also applies in Excel: Copilot is useful and opens possibilities, but never replaces the tranquility it gives for oneself that the numbers walk.
Copilot does not reach everyone yet. Microsoft is gradually display They are on the beta channel, both in Windows and Mac. The company ensures that in the coming months it will also be available in the Excel Web version through the Frontier program. Nothing must be done to activate it: the function appears on the sheet when the requirements are met, and its use is completely optional.
Images | Microsoft | WIRESTOCK
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