Can you use Excel files with Microsoft Copilot Studio?

Can you use Excel workbooks with Microsoft Copilot Studio to ask and answer questions of your data? Yes, and no. In this video I explore use cases to show you what works and what doesn't work using generative answers with Excel files, and alternatives for the use cases that don't work here.

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[LisaCrosbie]

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[nashahan]

Nice work Lisa, these outcomes are all in line with my findings too, so I'm happy I didn't miss something!

[flatwhitewith]

Thanks Lisa. Most informative and helpful. Really appreciate the balanced view of what works. And you really did respond to previous suggestions, so thanks for listening to your audience 😊

[sulaimanadebayo]

Hi Lisa, what a great illustration, thank you for making this video.
I would like to know if you could share a video of how you called the excel file as a knowledge base, what parameters you supplied and all... after having added the excel file itself. Thank you.

[mrgiant]

I'm trying to use excel which has a mix of data in it, some unstructured text and some names similar to your file. It reads the unstructured text fairly well but when i ask it do something like show the data from company x it doesn't want to know...any ideas?

[tecnopadre]

For prod client. Copilot Studio or even any RAG, needs to improve a lot with Excel files.

[GuardiansFortress-rrtu]

Can this CoPilot be used within the Microsoft 365 CoPilot that you showed linked to your model driven app (6:00)? Feels like they are 2 different things that don't have the same datasources and I'd have to display both of them within my app. Am I missing something?

[GuardiansFortress-rrtu]

is the reason it didn't help rewrite because the tracking was off (08:00)?

[adubose]

do you have a walkthrough of how to build a copilot that uses an excel file for reference?

[adigazgurt]

Will it be different if the data was in a Table format?

[blackpearloyster]

Hi Lisa, have you tried to use a customized spreadsheet? - where the columns categories have colors and different cells sizes, including merged cells, etc. Thank you for sharing your knowledge! @lisacrosbie

[UMWDispatchHolidayJams]

Ahhhh this is so helpful but I cannot for the life of me figure out why our excel file isn't gathering accurate data through co pilot, I have it formatted almost exactly like yours. It's basic Site, Name, Contact, Address type data. Any ideas why Co-Pilot jumbles around the answers? I have it set to High Moderation as well.

[franckmarro]

hello and thank you for your videos very well done and easy to follow. I am starting to look into ""copiloting"" stuff for work.... One thing I want to see if it does is count specific symbols on a house construction plan on a pdf file format . this will help me count my different element without doing it manually which is long and often have errors
doable ?

[joyceevangeline]

Can we generate customized excel reports from the excel source data

[GordonSteepleBookReviews]

Can the co pilot connect to power automate? For example can you ask it to trigger a flow to complete a task?

[microsoftbizappsfico]

Hi Lisa, Many thanks for sharing. I wonder whether the ability to analyze structured data and doing calculations is something that that we can expect in the near future? I feel that this is necessary because most data I work with are a mix of text and tabular information (Ex: Invoices, corporate reports, etc.).

[bhargavmangavalli]

@Lisa, From copilot, can we read an excel placed in a shared drive ?

[hussain.mahfood]

Excellent explanation. Another example is when you put duration in years. If you asked about a year between, it will not answer you correctly

[jonr]

Top job on the vid. Lisa (intelligent human) 10 points!

Boo to MS Copilot, yet again muddled naming... But in 5 mins this channel does an excellent job of demonstrating its utter inability to function in any reliable way... dumb Copilot, nil points!!

[nishantsingh]

Hi Lisa, Amazing Video. Could you please help on how to complete the authentication with SharePoint