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.
Replace the [PLACEHOLDERS] with your own details before you send it.
How to try it
- Open the document in Word (or reference it in Copilot) and ask a specific question.
- Check the quoted passage to make sure the answer is right.
- Edit the draft memo into your own voice before sending.
More work use cases
Write a tricky Excel formula with ChatGPT
One user had ChatGPT write an Excel formula for a billing file he fills in every month, saving him two to three hours of manual work each time.
In Excel, I have [DESCRIBE COLUMNS, E.G. COLUMN A: DATE, B: CLIENT, C: HOURS]. I want [WHAT YOU WANT, E.G. TOTAL HOURS PER CLIENT FOR LAST MONTH IN COLUMN F]. Write the formula, explain each part in plain English, and tell me how to copy it down safely.
Get answers from a huge spreadsheet with Copilot in Excel
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.
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: Hacker News