Most people’s relationship with Excel is either total confidence or total avoidance, there’s rarely a middle ground. ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini close that gap without requiring you to actually memorise every formula. Here’s how to use Copilot in Excel, and ChatGPT or Gemini alongside it, from fixing messy data to building reports you’d normally dread starting.
Why This Is Worth Learning Now
AI is already becoming part of everyday office work. The shift is already happening. Microsoft 365 Copilot saw a 250% increase in licences from one quarter to the next in 2026, a sign that more businesses are bringing AI into their everyday work. showing how quickly businesses are adopting AI tools.
Spreadsheets are a good example of where AI can help. Tasks like cleaning data, formatting tables and cross-checking figures often follow the same pattern every week. AI can help speed up these repetitive tasks, leaving you more time to focus on what the numbers actually mean.
You’ve got a few real options here, and they’re not interchangeable. Copilot is built directly into Excel itself, so it can see and act on your actual spreadsheet. ChatGPT and Claude can’t touch your file directly, but you can describe your data or paste a sample and get formulas, explanations, and troubleshooting back. Gemini sits inside Google Sheets the same way Copilot sits inside Excel. Which one to reach for mostly depends on which spreadsheet tool you’re already using.
1. Clean Messy Data Without Doing It Row by Row
Inconsistent date formats, extra spaces, duplicate entries- this is the kind of cleanup that eats an afternoon. If you’re in Excel with Copilot enabled, ask it directly to identify and fix inconsistencies in a selected range. If you’re using ChatGPT or Claude instead, paste a sample of the messy data and ask for a formula or set of steps that standardises it, rather than trying to fix rows manually.
2. Write Formulas by Describing What You Want
You don’t need to remember whether it’s INDEX/MATCH, VLOOKUP, or XLOOKUP. Describe the outcome in plain language, “I want to pull the price from this table where the product name matches this cell”, and ask Copilot, ChatGPT, or Claude to write the formula and explain what each part does, so you’re not just copy-pasting something you don’t understand.
Prompt You Can Use
“I have a spreadsheet with columns for [describe columns]. I want a formula that [describe what you’re trying to calculate or look up]. Write the formula, tell me which cell to put it in, and explain what each part does in plain language.”
3. Turn Raw Data Into a Summary, Not Just a Bigger Table
Pivot tables are powerful and genuinely intimidating for a lot of people. Ask ChatGPT or Claude to describe, in plain steps, what pivot table setup would answer a specific question you have about your data (“which region had the highest sales growth month over month”), then follow the steps rather than guessing at the interface. If you’re on Google Sheets, Gemini can often build the pivot table for you directly when you describe what you’re trying to see.
4. Catch Errors Before They Become a Bigger Problem
Paste a formula that isn’t returning what you expect into ChatGPT or Claude and ask it to explain why. Broken references, mismatched data types, and off-by-one range errors are common and usually fast to fix once you know what’s actually wrong. This is often faster than searching forums for someone with a similar-sounding error.
5. Build the Report Structure First, Then Fill It In
Before diving into a monthly report, ask ChatGPT or Claude to help you outline what sections it should have and what each section needs to show, then build the spreadsheet to match that structure instead of improvising as you go. This matters more than it sounds like it should, reports built without a plan tend to sprawl and take longer to finish, not less.
6. Automate the Parts You Do Every Single Month
If you’re rebuilding the same report from scratch each month, that’s a strong candidate for a proper automated workflow rather than a one-off Excel trick. Once you’ve figured out the right formulas and structure with Copilot, ChatGPT, or Claude’s help, write the steps down so the next version takes minutes instead of hours.
A Few Things to Keep in Mind
- Always check a formula on a small sample before applying it to your whole dataset
- These tools can explain a formula, but you’re still responsible for the numbers being right, don’t skip your own sense-check
- Copilot can act directly on your file, ChatGPT and Claude need you to describe or paste your data. Know which you’re using and why
- Save formulas or approaches that worked well; you’ll reuse most of them
Using Copilot, ChatGPT, or Gemini in Excel isn’t about replacing spreadsheet skills, it’s about removing the parts that used to require memorising syntax or staring at a broken formula for twenty minutes. Once you’re comfortable describing what you want instead of hunting for the exact function, spreadsheet work stops being the part of your week you dread.
For more practical, everyday ways to put these tools to work, AI Bridge is where to start.
