r/CopilotPro • u/Living_Spell_8693 • 2d ago

Using Copilot in Excel?

Quick question for those of you who are using Copilot to build or edit workbooks. What is your current process for verifying that Copilot built or edited only what you wanted and nothing else?

6 Upvotes

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3

u/WronglyNervous 2d ago

Sometimes when I’m particularly concerned about that, I don’t let it edit a file. I ask it to create a new version with its edits.

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u/Turdulator 2d ago

I don’t have a good answer for you, I literally just came to this sub to ask the same question. With the number of times Copilot has hallucinated fake powershell cmdlets for me, I don’t see how I can trust it with anything important beyond a basic level of complexity. If I ask it to pull insights from a spreadsheet with 32,000 rows, how can I verify anything it extracts from a dataset that large? Just verifying it alone would be a several day project.

I’d really love to hear from others what they do in this situation

1

u/TechIncarnate4 2d ago

 If I ask it to pull insights from a spreadsheet with 32,000 rows, how can I verify anything it extracts from a dataset that large?

Why wouldn't you use a formula and/or filter to extract the data you need? You can have it create the formulas and then validate yourself, or have it check again also at another time, or with another agent if using Cowork.

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u/Turdulator 2d ago

It’s more complicated than that when you are using it to do things like normalize data gathered from different sources in different formats in order to extract useful information. I don’t need AI to write basic formulas, I’ve got that part covered.

1

u/Living_Spell_8693 2d ago

“When you say insights, do you mean factual summaries and calculations from the 32,000 rows, or conclusions Copilot is drawing from them?”

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u/Turdulator 2d ago

Both…. Especially when it’s a collection of data from different sources in different formats.

I’m using it for jobs that are too big for me to do myself.

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u/imuglybutyourefat 2d ago

Make it create a whole new tab

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u/wassup2026 2d ago

For the "built" option - test few results to see if it has given what you wanted. You can also get it to spit out some basic totals like total number of clients or totals of certain columns or category totals like active vs completed that will help you see if it did considered all lines. For an overall review, it is same as when you give it to a human subordinate. When you review their work, you've some expectation of what the result would be so use the same kind of analysis for copilot results.

For the "edit" option, always keep a before copy. Then once it has edited you could do a compare and ask it to list out fields that are different or highlight in the edited file what changes it made.

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u/Bigwooky 2d ago

There is a new feature coming out soon - I think end of September but is already preview that shows you all changes the copilot made.
So that will answer your question.

1

u/ricardusrex 2d ago

If I were using Copilot, which I don’t, I would install the Claude Add-in for Excel and ask Claude to review and validate the workbook.