Launch Excel and open an existing spreadsheet with data to analyze. To open a file stored online, click the File menu, select Open, and choose OneDrive or SharePoint. Browse through the folders and files containing your spreadsheets and select the one you want to use.

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Alternatively, create or open a local file. To save it online, click the File menu, select Save as, and then save it to a folder in OneDrive or SharePoint.

Next, enable AutoSave if it's not already turned on. Click the File menu and choose Options. From the Options window, select Save and then check the box forAutoSave files stored in the Cloud by default in Excel. While there, ensure the file format points to .xlsx if it's a regular Excel spreadsheet. Click OK to close the Options window.

For Copilot to work with your data, you must convert it into a table. Select all the cells you want to include and click the Copilot button on the Ribbon. A message might appear and ask if you want to convert this data range into a table. Click the Convert button and the data will be formatted into a table with a header row at the top.

After converting the cells into a formatted table, Copilot will display its sidebar on the right and suggests several requests at the top. Let's say you have a table with numbers in each cell and want to add a column to total the numbers in each row. Select the suggestion forAdd formula columns. At the prompt, describe your request. For example, you might type: "Add the numbers in each row and create a column to show the totals."

Next, you might want to apply a specific format to cells that meet certain criteria. Click the suggestion for Highlight. Let's say you want to bold all cells containing a certain value. You might type: "Bold all cells with a value between$94 and$96." Enter that text at the prompt and then submit your request.

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Copilot carries out your action with an explanation of what it did. If your request was carried out successfully, great. If not, you can click the Undo button and try again.

You can ask Copilot to sort the data a certain way. Maybe you want to sort the values in a specific column in descending order? At the prompt, type: "Sort the data in column A in descending order." Copilot will then carry out your request.

Next, you might want to see only certain data in the table, which you can do by filtering. At the prompt, type something like: "Show items in column E with values of$40 or higher." Copilot will then filter the table to show only the values that meet your criteria.

Finally, you can analyze the data. Click the Analyze button on the Ribbon. Scroll down the sidebar to view different insights already offered by Copilot.