Microsoft Excel Tutorial: First Look at Copilot in Excel, recorded late August 2024
In today’s video, I dive into my very first experience with the new Copilot feature in Excel on Windows. This is exciting stuff, folks! Imagine Bobby Moynihan’s SNL characters bringing some sass to Excel—because that’s exactly what it felt like working with this tool!
Copilot has some cool new tricks up its sleeve, like no longer needing your data to be in a table format. It can now work with regular ranges, making things so much easier for all of us Excellers.
We’re talking about features like Suggest a Formula, Show Data Insights, Add Conditional Formatting, and even answering your complex data questions. But hey, it's not all smooth sailing. I ran into some interesting quirks—like Copilot claiming it can’t handle pivot tables or create pie charts, and then... surprise... it actually does!
Or is that a “pizza chart”? 
I also share some fun experiments, like asking Copilot for the top three customers in the manufacturing sector, and it’s a mixed bag—sometimes it gets it right, other times, well, let’s just say Copilot’s got some personality.
But the potential here is huge, and I’m excited to keep testing and pushing its limits.
There’s so much more to explore, and I’ll be sharing my findings in upcoming videos. Stay tuned for more insights and a deeper dive into what Copilot can do—because, trust me, this is just the beginning. And don’t forget to check out our new merch below the video. Perfect for you or your favorite Excel enthusiast!
Subscribe, like, and hit that notification bell so you don't miss out on any future Copilot adventures!
Buy Bill Jelen's latest Excel book: MrExcel 2024 Igniting Excel
You can help my channel by clicking Like or commenting below: Why clicking Like on a YouTube video helps my channel
Table of Contents
(0:00) Please click Like
(0:11) Bobby Moynihan's Drunk Uncle is on my mind today
(0:28) Copilot in Windows version of Excel as of August 2024
(0:38) Works with regular range
(1:00) Four things Copilot can do
(1:10) Asking copilot for top 10 customers in one sector
(1:30) Disappointed that it chose Quantity instead of Revenue
(2:00) Ask Copilot a follow up question
(2:40) Admiring the pivot table created by Copilot
(3:08) Copilot is surly and tells me it can't work on a pivot table
(3:33) Ask for Pie Chart for One Year of the Data
(3:59) Copilot says it can not create a pie chart
(4:31) Surly question: Hey Copilot, Why can't you create a pie chart?
(4:43) Copilot CAN create a pie chart
(4:55) Is Copilot just PRETENDING so people use less pie charts?
(5:32) Adding the Pie Chart to a new sheet
(5:51) Is it a Circle Graph?
(6:11) Still in preview. It will get better.
(6:59) New Excel Shirts and Mugs
(7:10) Like, Subscribe, Ring the Bell
#microsoft365 #pivottable #pivot_table #excelpivot #excelpivottablestutorial #powerpivot #excelunpivot #AI #getpivotdata #pivotchart #copilot
This video answers these common search terms:
Excel Copilot first look
How to use Copilot in Excel
Excel AI features 2024
Copilot Excel tutorial
Excel Copilot demo
Excel Copilot new features
Microsoft Excel Copilot review
Excel AI formula suggestions
Does Excel Copilot hate pie charts
Excel 2024 updates Copilot
In today’s video, I dive into my very first experience with the new Copilot feature in Excel on Windows. This is exciting stuff, folks! Imagine Bobby Moynihan’s SNL characters bringing some sass to Excel—because that’s exactly what it felt like working with this tool!
Copilot has some cool new tricks up its sleeve, like no longer needing your data to be in a table format. It can now work with regular ranges, making things so much easier for all of us Excellers.We’re talking about features like Suggest a Formula, Show Data Insights, Add Conditional Formatting, and even answering your complex data questions. But hey, it's not all smooth sailing. I ran into some interesting quirks—like Copilot claiming it can’t handle pivot tables or create pie charts, and then... surprise... it actually does!
Or is that a “pizza chart”? I also share some fun experiments, like asking Copilot for the top three customers in the manufacturing sector, and it’s a mixed bag—sometimes it gets it right, other times, well, let’s just say Copilot’s got some personality.
But the potential here is huge, and I’m excited to keep testing and pushing its limits.There’s so much more to explore, and I’ll be sharing my findings in upcoming videos. Stay tuned for more insights and a deeper dive into what Copilot can do—because, trust me, this is just the beginning. And don’t forget to check out our new merch below the video. Perfect for you or your favorite Excel enthusiast!
Subscribe, like, and hit that notification bell so you don't miss out on any future Copilot adventures! Buy Bill Jelen's latest Excel book: MrExcel 2024 Igniting Excel
You can help my channel by clicking Like or commenting below: Why clicking Like on a YouTube video helps my channel
Table of Contents
(0:00) Please click Like
(0:11) Bobby Moynihan's Drunk Uncle is on my mind today
(0:28) Copilot in Windows version of Excel as of August 2024
(0:38) Works with regular range
(1:00) Four things Copilot can do
(1:10) Asking copilot for top 10 customers in one sector
(1:30) Disappointed that it chose Quantity instead of Revenue
(2:00) Ask Copilot a follow up question
(2:40) Admiring the pivot table created by Copilot
(3:08) Copilot is surly and tells me it can't work on a pivot table
(3:33) Ask for Pie Chart for One Year of the Data
(3:59) Copilot says it can not create a pie chart
(4:31) Surly question: Hey Copilot, Why can't you create a pie chart?
(4:43) Copilot CAN create a pie chart
(4:55) Is Copilot just PRETENDING so people use less pie charts?
(5:32) Adding the Pie Chart to a new sheet
(5:51) Is it a Circle Graph?
(6:11) Still in preview. It will get better.
(6:59) New Excel Shirts and Mugs
(7:10) Like, Subscribe, Ring the Bell
#microsoft365 #pivottable #pivot_table #excelpivot #excelpivottablestutorial #powerpivot #excelunpivot #AI #getpivotdata #pivotchart #copilot
This video answers these common search terms:
Excel Copilot first look
How to use Copilot in Excel
Excel AI features 2024
Copilot Excel tutorial
Excel Copilot demo
Excel Copilot new features
Microsoft Excel Copilot review
Excel AI formula suggestions
Does Excel Copilot hate pie charts
Excel 2024 updates Copilot
Transcript of the video:
Hey, just down below the video, if you click Like.
that will make sure that YouTube shows this video to more people – thanks!
August 27th, 2024 - First look at Copilot in Excel.
There's starting to be a lot of buzz about this 50th season of Saturday Night Live that's starting.
And I don't know why this morning, but my mind is on Bobby Moynihan and those awesome characters that he would play.
Down in the YouTube comments below, let me know who your favorite Saturday Night Live character is.
Hey, some great experiments here with Copilot running in Excel.
This is in Windows, my first test with Copilot.
The first great thing that we have is that it now no longer requires your data to be formatted as a table.
It can be just a regular range.
So it understands a A1 to I564 is the data that'll work with. That's a nice improvement for me.
It still has to be saved to OneDrive or SharePoint Online and Auto Save has to be turned on.
There's four tools right now. Suggest a formula, and this is pretty amazing.
I've done a lot of experiments with this and I'll show you some over the next several videos about this. Show Data Insights.
Add conditional Formatting. And then ask questions.
So some chat history here of my first experiments with this.
I asked “who are the top three customers in sector manufacturing”?
So you see that we have a column, a heading called sector.
There's a value in there called manufacturing.
And I want to know who the top three customers are.
And it came back and it said, alright, I analyzed the data in A1 to I564.
That's good, it's telling me what it sees as the data.
And here's what I found the top three customer, oh, by quantity for sector manufacturing.
And it got it right, General Motors, Cummins and GE are the three large manufacturing customers in here.
But I'm kind of disappointed that it's giving me quantity instead of revenue.
You would think that they would understand that word revenue is more important than quantity.
It gives me a little paragraph here.
Top three customers in manufacturing are General Motors, Cummins, and GE. See the pivot table that's above for more details.
Now here's the beautiful thing.
So in my opinion it got it wrong, but you're allowed to give feedback. And so I said “Nice Try”.
“Run the same analysis based on revenue”.
So this means that they have to be able to go back and see the last thing I asked and kind of modify it.
And with that second question, wow, they get it right.
Top three in customer by revenue for sector manufacturing.
And then there was an option there to add that pivot table to the workbook right there.
So it's a regular pivot table. They've added Sector as the filters.
We have the three customers and right here in the customer filter you can see where they went to Value Filters and Top 10 and chose top three. [ Angela ] See, I wouldn’t know how to do that!
[ Bill ] I mean, it left me a nice pivot table that is accurate and working.
And wow, that's actually pretty good. But then here's the really weird thing.
They took me to Sheet2.
And the only thing on Sheet2 now is this pivot table.
But now they are telling me, Hey, currently I don't analyze pivot tables and charts and sheets.
Go back to your source table and try the question again. I don’t know.
This is, to me, just a little bit surly, right? Like, hey, they're showing me the answer.
Give me a chance. I'll go back to the original data.
Rather than kind of tell me that you can't. Alright, now this is cool.
So then I say, great pie chart showing revenue by sector for sales during 2023.
Now that's pretty tough because look at the data. The data has daily dates.
It spans from 2022, January 1st, 2022 down to December 31st, 2023.
They're going to have to create a pivot table by sector totaling revenue out of filter that filters this to just a year. And it looks pretty promising here.
They show me a pivot table. But then as I scroll down a little bit.
It says, oh, I can't create a pie chart, but here's an answer that may be helpful.
The total revenue by sector for sales during 2023 as follows.
And they kind of read me the table, at least the first few items from the table.
But this confuses me because I've seen an example elsewhere on YouTube where Copilot did in fact create a pie chart!
And remember back here where we were able to say, Hey, nice try, but analyze it.
So I decided if Copilot is going to be a little surly with me, I'm going to be a little surly with it.
And I said, “Why can't you create a pie chart from the last result”?
And at the time I'm still on Sheet3 where you're telling me, “Hey, I can't work on pivot table, let's go back to your original data”. Why can't you do this?
And you know what their answer is? I love their answer.
They do know how to create a pie chart.
Maybe they just didn't want me to create pie charts. Maybe they were pushing back.
“No, I don't know how to create pie charts”, because pie charts are oversed and maybe you should use something else!
And so much for their, “I can't deal with pivot tables and pivot charts”.
“I analyzed the data in C5 to D12, which is a freaking pivot table.
So you get them saying, “I can't create pie charts and I can't work with pivot tables”. And what does it do?
It works with the data in a pivot table. And it creates a pie chart.
Adds a new sheet.
But it's still saying “I can't create a pie chart from the last result because the visual type is not supported” However, and it offers the table again.
So click Add to a new sheet”and it comes back and says that it added it to Sheet4. And what do we have?
We have a chart. That to me, I would call this a pie chart.
I'm sorry, but apparently it's not a pie chart because Copilot is very adamant that it can't create pie charts. So I guess as a consolation prize, I get this.
I don't know what? A pizza chart?
A cake chart? A circle chart, circle graph?
It's clearly not a pie chart. Alright, so look, this is pretty new, right?
It's still technically in preview right now at the end of August, 2024.
It does a lot of amazing things. It can create some nice formulas.
But this whole conversation here just kind of cracks me up.
The surliness of, “Hey, I can't work at it from this pivot table, Go back to your original data”.
And then it does actually work from the pivot table.
And it does know how to create pie charts, even though it claims it doesn't know how to create pie chart. There you go.
I'm sure over the coming weeks as I get deeper and deeper into Copilot, I'll be revisiting this and come back and show you some more cool things.
I'm sure very, very cool things that we discovered.
The one great bit of news here though is it no longer has to work on tables. It works on just regular ranges, which is great.
Hey, just below the video, click this Store icon.
We have a whole bunch of new mugs and shirts professionally designed.
All kinds of great fun slogans for you or your favorite Exceller. I'm sure there'll be more videos on Copilot.
Again, their ability to create awesome formulas is amazing right now.
We'll definitely have to revisit that. I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
If you like these videos, please down below, Like, Subscribe and Ring the Bell.
Feel free to post any questions or comments down in the comments below.
that will make sure that YouTube shows this video to more people – thanks!
August 27th, 2024 - First look at Copilot in Excel.
There's starting to be a lot of buzz about this 50th season of Saturday Night Live that's starting.
And I don't know why this morning, but my mind is on Bobby Moynihan and those awesome characters that he would play.
Down in the YouTube comments below, let me know who your favorite Saturday Night Live character is.
Hey, some great experiments here with Copilot running in Excel.
This is in Windows, my first test with Copilot.
The first great thing that we have is that it now no longer requires your data to be formatted as a table.
It can be just a regular range.
So it understands a A1 to I564 is the data that'll work with. That's a nice improvement for me.
It still has to be saved to OneDrive or SharePoint Online and Auto Save has to be turned on.
There's four tools right now. Suggest a formula, and this is pretty amazing.
I've done a lot of experiments with this and I'll show you some over the next several videos about this. Show Data Insights.
Add conditional Formatting. And then ask questions.
So some chat history here of my first experiments with this.
I asked “who are the top three customers in sector manufacturing”?
So you see that we have a column, a heading called sector.
There's a value in there called manufacturing.
And I want to know who the top three customers are.
And it came back and it said, alright, I analyzed the data in A1 to I564.
That's good, it's telling me what it sees as the data.
And here's what I found the top three customer, oh, by quantity for sector manufacturing.
And it got it right, General Motors, Cummins and GE are the three large manufacturing customers in here.
But I'm kind of disappointed that it's giving me quantity instead of revenue.
You would think that they would understand that word revenue is more important than quantity.
It gives me a little paragraph here.
Top three customers in manufacturing are General Motors, Cummins, and GE. See the pivot table that's above for more details.
Now here's the beautiful thing.
So in my opinion it got it wrong, but you're allowed to give feedback. And so I said “Nice Try”.
“Run the same analysis based on revenue”.
So this means that they have to be able to go back and see the last thing I asked and kind of modify it.
And with that second question, wow, they get it right.
Top three in customer by revenue for sector manufacturing.
And then there was an option there to add that pivot table to the workbook right there.
So it's a regular pivot table. They've added Sector as the filters.
We have the three customers and right here in the customer filter you can see where they went to Value Filters and Top 10 and chose top three. [ Angela ] See, I wouldn’t know how to do that!
[ Bill ] I mean, it left me a nice pivot table that is accurate and working.
And wow, that's actually pretty good. But then here's the really weird thing.
They took me to Sheet2.
And the only thing on Sheet2 now is this pivot table.
But now they are telling me, Hey, currently I don't analyze pivot tables and charts and sheets.
Go back to your source table and try the question again. I don’t know.
This is, to me, just a little bit surly, right? Like, hey, they're showing me the answer.
Give me a chance. I'll go back to the original data.
Rather than kind of tell me that you can't. Alright, now this is cool.
So then I say, great pie chart showing revenue by sector for sales during 2023.
Now that's pretty tough because look at the data. The data has daily dates.
It spans from 2022, January 1st, 2022 down to December 31st, 2023.
They're going to have to create a pivot table by sector totaling revenue out of filter that filters this to just a year. And it looks pretty promising here.
They show me a pivot table. But then as I scroll down a little bit.
It says, oh, I can't create a pie chart, but here's an answer that may be helpful.
The total revenue by sector for sales during 2023 as follows.
And they kind of read me the table, at least the first few items from the table.
But this confuses me because I've seen an example elsewhere on YouTube where Copilot did in fact create a pie chart!
And remember back here where we were able to say, Hey, nice try, but analyze it.
So I decided if Copilot is going to be a little surly with me, I'm going to be a little surly with it.
And I said, “Why can't you create a pie chart from the last result”?
And at the time I'm still on Sheet3 where you're telling me, “Hey, I can't work on pivot table, let's go back to your original data”. Why can't you do this?
And you know what their answer is? I love their answer.
They do know how to create a pie chart.
Maybe they just didn't want me to create pie charts. Maybe they were pushing back.
“No, I don't know how to create pie charts”, because pie charts are oversed and maybe you should use something else!
And so much for their, “I can't deal with pivot tables and pivot charts”.
“I analyzed the data in C5 to D12, which is a freaking pivot table.
So you get them saying, “I can't create pie charts and I can't work with pivot tables”. And what does it do?
It works with the data in a pivot table. And it creates a pie chart.
Adds a new sheet.
But it's still saying “I can't create a pie chart from the last result because the visual type is not supported” However, and it offers the table again.
So click Add to a new sheet”and it comes back and says that it added it to Sheet4. And what do we have?
We have a chart. That to me, I would call this a pie chart.
I'm sorry, but apparently it's not a pie chart because Copilot is very adamant that it can't create pie charts. So I guess as a consolation prize, I get this.
I don't know what? A pizza chart?
A cake chart? A circle chart, circle graph?
It's clearly not a pie chart. Alright, so look, this is pretty new, right?
It's still technically in preview right now at the end of August, 2024.
It does a lot of amazing things. It can create some nice formulas.
But this whole conversation here just kind of cracks me up.
The surliness of, “Hey, I can't work at it from this pivot table, Go back to your original data”.
And then it does actually work from the pivot table.
And it does know how to create pie charts, even though it claims it doesn't know how to create pie chart. There you go.
I'm sure over the coming weeks as I get deeper and deeper into Copilot, I'll be revisiting this and come back and show you some more cool things.
I'm sure very, very cool things that we discovered.
The one great bit of news here though is it no longer has to work on tables. It works on just regular ranges, which is great.
Hey, just below the video, click this Store icon.
We have a whole bunch of new mugs and shirts professionally designed.
All kinds of great fun slogans for you or your favorite Exceller. I'm sure there'll be more videos on Copilot.
Again, their ability to create awesome formulas is amazing right now.
We'll definitely have to revisit that. I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
If you like these videos, please down below, Like, Subscribe and Ring the Bell.
Feel free to post any questions or comments down in the comments below.
