Does your business do much spreadsheet work? If so, you’ll want to know about changes that are beginning to roll out to Microsoft Excel users. Some longstanding challenges with using the app (especially in team environments) may soon be a thing of the past.
Here’s what to know.
The Problem: Excel Is (Was) Old, Boring, and Inconsistent
Most workers have at a minimum dabbled in Excel as a way to track certain types of business data. You might have some power users on your team too, and others anywhere in between.
And all of them run into some of the same problems.
Keyboard shortcuts they use all the time in other apps just magically don’t work in Excel.
There are a half a dozen different ways to do certain things.
And why, for the love of everything good in this world, can’t Excel make up its mind on how to present dates and currency?
Seriously: it just isn’t right that you can type “11/1/2026” into four different cells and get four different representations.
The decades-old spreadsheet application is embedded into the processes of millions of businesses, but it’d be a stretch to call it “well-loved.” And that’s what Microsoft is working hard to try and change.
Microsoft’s Solution: Make Excel Smarter with Copilot
One of the newest changes is in how Microsoft is infusing its AI assistant, Copilot, into Excel.
Now Excel can learn your preferences, then automatically apply them as you create and edit new sheets.
This includes things like currency formats, date formats, report structure preferences, and specific formatting rules for certain types of data.
In essence, if you keep making the same manual change over and over in Excel, chances are you can describe that change to Copilot. From there, Excel will start getting that detail right the first time, or reformatting your inputs to match what you want them to look like.
This is an interesting development because now Microsoft is seeking to get businesses to teach Copilot how their businesses work. That’s a big step up from drafting email replies or summarizing long documents. But if it rolls out smoothly, it could be a big deal.
Another Bonus: Shared Spreadsheet Rules
Many businesses work in shared spreadsheets that contain data everyone needs to access and modify. Everyone is supposed to follow the same rules in inputting data, but—well, we all know how that goes.
One person enters data one way, another does it slightly differently. Different team members have drastically differing opinions on what a good report looks like. And so forth.
Now, with Workbook Rules, you can specify how a spreadsheet or workbook is supposed to be used. Those rules travel with the spreadsheet and are available to anyone opening a cloud version of the file.
These Rules help Copilot and your team members alike see what you want in and with a workbook, which helps add greater consistency across teams and team members.
Does Unleashing AI on Spreadsheets Make You Nervous?
Truth be told, maybe it should.
Think about what’s in your business’s spreadsheets. Financial data, customer information, business reporting—all stuff that has to be right. Hallucinations here aren’t OK. And an AI that accidentally shares that data in the wrong places could create huge liabilities for you.
But as long as the guardrails are strong and effective, unleashing AI on repetitive everyday tasks (like reformatting data fields and producing reports that fit the company look and feel) can be a huge productivity booster.
Does your team need help implementing AI enhancements like this safely and confidently? We’re here when you need us. Call or email us today.