One user said Microsoft Copilot took a 400,000-line Excel file and a single ten-word prompt and saved him three hours.
In this data, [QUESTION, E.G. WHICH 10 CUSTOMERS HAD THE BIGGEST DROP IN ORDERS THIS YEAR VS LAST?]. Show the result as a table and explain how you worked it out.
Replace the [PLACEHOLDERS] with your own details before you send it.
How to try it
- Make sure your data is in a proper Excel table with clear column headings.
- Open Copilot in Excel and ask one specific question.
- Spot-check a few rows yourself before sharing the results.
More work use cases
Turn a week of rough notes into a weekly update with ChatGPT
On Hacker News, one worker said his company's weekly update format is a pain, so he keeps notes through the week and sends them to a custom GPT that writes the update in the required template. He spends about ten minutes tidying it, saving a couple of hours.
Turn these rough notes from my week into a weekly update using exactly this template: [PASTE TEMPLATE]. Notes: [PASTE NOTES]. Keep it factual, don't add anything that isn't in my notes, and flag any section where I haven't given you enough information.
Draft routine reports and find facts in long documents with Copilot
On Hacker News, a daily Copilot user said it takes the tedium out of routine office work: writing boring reports and memos to an acceptable standard and finding a single key fact in a long document without skim-reading it.
Using [DOCUMENT NAME], answer this: [SPECIFIC QUESTION]. Quote the relevant passage and give the page or section. Then draft a short memo to [AUDIENCE] summarising the answer in under 200 words.
Summarise a long Teams conversation with Copilot
One lawyer had Microsoft Copilot read and summarise a Teams conversation, pulled the drafting instructions out of the summary and, after 20 minutes of editing, reckoned it had saved at least five hours of drafting.
Summarise this Teams conversation: [CHAT OR CHANNEL NAME]. List the decisions made, the instructions given to me, any deadlines, and open questions. Then turn the instructions into a numbered checklist I can work from.
Reference: X @210Sooner