Companion videos

AI for spreadsheets: cleaning, analyzing, and charting data — companion videos

The article walks through the three things AI is genuinely good at inside spreadsheets — cleaning messy text, drafting formulas you'd otherwise google, and pulling structure out of free-form notes — and the things you should still do yourself. Both picks are from Leila Gharani, who has spent the last decade teaching Excel to professionals; she puts AI through the same lens.

Primary pick

12:28

Excel's New AI Function is Absolutely Insane (Copilot Function)

Leila Gharani

Live demo of the new `=COPILOT()` function on the kinds of messy real data the article describes — shift handover notes turned into a structured action table, free-text reviews tagged for sentiment, and inconsistent job titles normalized against a master list. Also calls out the limits clearly: don't use it for anything that has to be exact, freeze results as values when you're done.

What you should get from this: See how spreadsheet AI can structure messy text and classify data, then check formulas and labels carefully.

Watch or know first: Microsoft 365 Excel with Copilot, plus comfort with ordinary formulas.

AI Expert note: Watch for the limits as much as the demo: her own caveats — nothing that has to be exact, freeze results as values — are the same boundaries the article draws.

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Also worth watching

17:35

How to Improve Your Excel Skills with ChatGPT

Leila Gharani

Older (early 2023) but still the cleanest worked example of pasting a real Excel question into ChatGPT, getting a SUMPRODUCT-or-conditional-formatting answer back, and then iterating with the model when the first formula doesn't quite fit. The model has improved a lot; the prompting workflow she shows is the same one you'll use today.

What you should get from this: Use ChatGPT to explain formulas and iterate on spreadsheet logic while verifying every result in Excel.

Watch or know first: Basic Excel comfort; no AI experience needed.

AI Expert note: From early 2023, so the ChatGPT screens look dated — the paste-question, iterate-on-formula workflow she demonstrates is unchanged, which is why it stays.

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