Using Copilot in Excel

This course is for business professionals across marketing, sales, operations, HR, customer support, and office administration who use Excel regularly for reporting, tracking, and planning. Students should be comfortable with core Excel skills -- data entry, basic formulas, and simple formatting -- but need no prior experience with Copilot, AI tools, or scripting.

• Understand what Copilot in Excel can and can't do, and tell it apart from Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot more broadly
• Write clear, specific prompts that name the table, the task, and the format they want an answer in
• Explore and summarize an unfamiliar dataset conversationally, without building a single filter or sort by hand
• Generate, explain, and debug formulas -- including common errors like #REF!, #DIV/0!, #VALUE!, and #N/A -- using plain language
• Detect trends and outliers, and build and reshape PivotTables, by describing what they want instead of dragging fields
• Draft written summaries and reframe the same finding for different audiences, from a one-line update to a detailed peer review
• Track budgets, narrate what-if scenarios, and sanity-check everyday lists like rosters and sign-up sheets
• Build charts by describing the comparison they want to show, and know when a chart helps versus when a table is clearer

Foundations of Copilot in Excel

What Copilot in Excel does and doesn't do - Copilot in Excel vs. Copilot Chat vs. Microsoft 365 Copilot - Confirming your license and activating Copilot - Preparing a worksheet as an Excel Table so Copilot can read it well - Grounded vs. general answers

Hands-on exercise: Students activate Copilot, convert a raw office expense log into a properly structured Excel Table, compare a Table answer to a plain-range answer, and clean up a messy range before re-prompting Copilot.

Asking Excel Questions in Plain Language

The anatomy of a strong prompt -- context, task, and format - Being specific about scope - Exploring and summarizing a dataset conversationally - Refining prompts through follow-up - Recognizing when a prompt needs more specificity

Hands-on exercise: Students explore a department budget table, ask directional questions to find the largest variances, and practice scoping a deliberately vague prompt down to a useful one.

Copilot-Assisted Formula Writing

Generating formulas from a plain-language description - Formulas every business user should recognize (SUMIFS, IF, INDEX/MATCH, IFERROR) - Explaining an inherited formula step by step - Diagnosing common formula errors - Knowing when to trust a generated formula

Hands-on exercise: Students build a rolling 3-month average formula, debug four intentionally broken formulas -- one of each common error type -- and write a lookup formula against a vendor cost table.

From Raw Data to Everyday Insights

Detecting trends and outliers - Building and reshaping PivotTables by prompt - Drafting written summaries for colleagues and managers - Tailoring the same finding to different audiences - Combining several findings into one update

Hands-on exercise: Students build a PivotTable summarizing sales transactions by region and product line, draft a variance narrative for a department head, and reframe one finding for three different audiences.

Using Copilot for Everyday Business Tasks

Budget vs. actual tracking - Lightweight trend tracking and its limits - Scenario ("what-if") narratives - Sanity-checking lists, sign-ups, and inventories - Building a repeatable weekly or monthly routine

Hands-on exercise: Students walk a budget variance story end to end, model the impact of a vendor cost increase, and clean up an unreviewed event sign-up roster for duplicates and formatting issues.

Visual Storytelling with Copilot

Getting chart recommendations by prompt - Iterating on chart design conversationally - Choosing when a chart helps and when a table is clearer - Common chart mistakes to avoid

Hands-on exercise: Students build and refine a quarterly revenue chart across product lines, then compare a chart view to a table view of the same data to decide which one actually serves their audience.

Using Copilot Responsibly

Data sensitivity and permissions - Known limitations - Building a personal verification habit - Prompting best practices recap

Hands-on exercise: Students audit and rewrite one of their own earlier prompts, then commit to a single personal verification habit to carry forward.

Students should be comfortable with core Excel skills -- data entry, basic formulas, and simple formatting. No prior experience with Copilot, AI tools, or scripting is required. Students' organizations must be licensed for Microsoft 365 Business Basic or Business Premium with the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on activated for Excel.

Copilot's biggest learning curve isn't any single feature -- it's knowing what to ask, and knowing when to trust what comes back. In this course, an instructor is right there to answer those judgment-call questions as they come up, so "is this a good prompt?" or "should I trust this formula?" gets answered in the moment instead of guessed at later.

Students also retain up to one year of access to a recording of the class and six months of post-class instructor support. That matters most for a course like this one, because the real test isn't the four hours in class -- it's the first time you open your own recurring report and try prompting Copilot on it yourself.