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Using Microsoft Copilot in Excel
Posted Sep 11, 2026 | Views 5
# Excel
# Skills
# Brandkit
# Data analysis
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Speaker
Makenna Bartow
LearnAIR Educational Content Designer @ LearnAIR
SUMMARY
Explore how Microsoft Copilot can help you work more effectively in Excel by analyzing data, editing spreadsheets, and referencing information across your Microsoft workspace. You’ll also learn how to personalize Copilot, activate specialized Skills, and use Brand Kit to transform spreadsheets into polished, brand-aligned deliverables.
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CONTENT & TRANSCRIPT
00:00 Welcome, everyone, to today’s video, where I’m going to be walking you through what is possible with Microsoft Copilot in Excel.
00:09 The data that we have to work with today is some dummy data on LearnAIR quarterly training metrics.
00:17 We’re going to do a lot with this spreadsheet by the end of today’s video. To start, in order to locate Copilot, you’re going to click on the Copilot icon in the bottom-right corner.
00:31 Once you click on that, Copilot will open up. There are some pretty cool features, including features that are unique to Copilot, which I’ll be going over.
00:42 But the first and most important feature is your chat box. This is where you can interact with Copilot by asking questions, analyzing the data that you see, looking for big-picture trends, or finding small details that you need.
00:49 It can also edit the spreadsheet directly if you have “Allow Editing” enabled. That’s pretty powerful.
01:02 So, I’m going to do a quick demo of some editing. I’m going to ask it to find our Quarter 3 data.
01:15 You can see that Quarter 3 is not filled in here, but I do have that data in another spreadsheet.
01:29 If you want to access other information from your Microsoft workspace, you can do that with the slash key.
01:34 When I press slash, my files, presentations, emails, and Teams meetings pop up here.
01:47 So, say you were talking in another meeting about the data here and you need to pull some information from that meeting. You can reference that meeting directly from Copilot in Excel using the slash key.
02:00 In my case, I’m going to have it reference this file because that’s what actually contains some of our Quarter 3 data.
02:08 So I’ll say, “Search for all data needed to complete the Q3 2026 column.”
02:29 Whenever I’m referencing something specifically in this document, I’m going to put it in quotation marks. So, let’s see how it does.
02:41 I love how you can see the thought process because it allows you to verify the files that it’s looking at and ensure that its logic is correct.
02:55 You can see that it just populated the data that we need.
03:06 Copilot started by looking at the workbook, then reading the Quarter 3 inputs, and finally completing the correct cells in order to complete this chart.
03:19 So, well done. The key takeaway here is that you can reference other files and information from your Microsoft workspace while working directly inside Excel.
03:34 The next useful feature within Copilot in Excel is personalization.
03:41 Unlike personalization in Word or Outlook, personalization in Excel is siloed to Excel.
03:49 That means that if you have specific instructions or ways that you like to work within Excel, put those instructions in the personalization settings because that personalization will only apply to your interactions within Excel.
03:59 Another helpful feature when working with Copilot in Excel is Manage Skills.
04:15 You can see that you have access to many skills across different categories. For example, there are several skills available within Finance.
04:24 Something that I’ve struggled with is actually understanding what some of these skills do. So, if you’re ever not sure, you can always ask the system.
04:32 I can say, “Explain what the Three-Statement skill enables.”
04:40 Just to back up a little bit, skills, if you don’t already know what they are, are specialized instruction sets that explain to your digital colleague exactly how to perform a task.
04:52 They can include the standard operating procedure, the thought processes it needs to go through, and what a correct output should look like, all captured in very specific instructions.
05:02 In this case, I just asked Copilot what the skill does.
05:08 You can see that it actually loaded the skill definition in order to explain it to me, and it states that the Three-Statement skill is currently disabled.
05:17 Okay. Well, that at least tells me that it’s correctly trying to pull from the skill. So, let me go ahead and enable it.
05:25 Again, I access skills by pressing the three dots and then selecting Manage Skills. I’m going to go ahead and turn it on.
05:34 Now I’ll say, “You should have access now.”
05:50 The fact that it’s now looking at that skill tells me that it is referencing those instructions in order to answer my question.
05:58 We can see that it says the Three-Statement skill enables me to complete an integrated financial model directly within Excel.
06:06 It can populate income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow templates. It also gives additional information about how it approaches those calculations.
06:17 I would definitely encourage you, if you think a skill might apply to your industry or role, to investigate what it does.
06:25 If you think it will be useful, toggle it on so that Copilot can pull from that skill as additional instructions whenever you ask it to complete a relevant task.
06:35 Now, one skill that I know I definitely need is the Brand Kit skill.
06:44 Again, we find the skills up here under Manage Skills, and you can see that, under Formatting, I have the Brand Kit skill enabled.
06:54 What the Brand Kit skill does is redesign the spreadsheet using your specific branding.
07:05 So, how does it know what your specific branding is? That’s something you set up within Microsoft Copilot.
07:14 I’ll quickly show you how to access that, and then we’ll come back here and ask it to use this skill to upgrade the spreadsheet you’re looking at.
07:26 In Copilot, the way that you access your brand kit is by clicking on this waffle button and then selecting Create.
07:37 Create is a feature that allows you to develop infographics, images, PowerPoints, posters, and other visual content.
07:46 You’ll see Brand and Color here, and this is where you can upload a new brand kit.
07:52 You can see that we have our LearnAIR brand kit, with our colors and logo already established.
08:00 This is where you establish the colors and logo that your brand is going to use. That same brand kit can then be applied through the Brand Kit skill here in Excel.
08:09 I’m going to say, “Using the Brand Kit skill, please redesign this spreadsheet with our colors and logo.”
08:30 And we’ll see how it does.
08:44 You can see that it has completely redone the coloring, added our LearnAIR logo, and really enhanced the overall look of the spreadsheet.
09:03 You can also see the exact changes it made here.
09:07 When I approve those changes, the rainbow lines go away and you can see the final product.
09:13 It looks very nice. It’s using our LearnAIR colors, and it also made these changes across all of the sheets that were present here.
09:21 That’s pretty powerful. You can use a skill that has access to your brand kit, including your logo, colors, and any brand images you choose to upload, and use it to completely enhance, clean up, and redesign a spreadsheet in a way that is brand aligned.
09:38 This is just one of the skills that you can access.
09:42 I encourage you to explore some of the other skills that could benefit your daily role. Hopefully, you now understand how to access skills and some of the helpful things that you can do with Microsoft Copilot in Excel.
09:57 Thank you so much for watching. If you have any questions or discover any useful skills, please let us know in the comments so that other people can learn from you.
10:10 This is how we all grow in our knowledge of AI. Thank you very much for watching, and don’t forget the human part.
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