Overview
AI has been enhancing Excel for years, and today’s Excel users have access to a growing range of tools that can automate tasks, simplify data analysis, and make complex work easier. In this practical webinar, Excel expert and author David Ringstrom, CPA will demonstrate how to use AI-powered features in Excel, including Flash Fill, Analyze Data, Power Query’s Column From Example, and extracting information from pictures and PDF documents.
The session will also explore how AI tools can work alongside Excel to help create and understand formulas, solve spreadsheet challenges, and automate repetitive tasks—even for users with limited VBA experience.
David will demonstrate each technique step-by-step in Excel for Microsoft 365 for Windows, with notes on applicable differences in Excel 2024, 2021, and 2019. Attendees will also receive detailed handouts and an Excel workbook containing examples from the presentation, making it easy to follow along and apply the techniques after the webinar.
Learning Objectives
· State the functionality that the Flash Fill feature offers.
· Define the purpose of Excel’s Forecast feature.
· Recognize the color that dynamic array functions are displayed in within Excel's formula bar in all cells except the cell where the formulas was entered.
Areas Covered
· Clarifying how the former web apps now align under the Copilot identity.
· Showing how to pass a text prompt and a cell reference to COPILOT for automated transaction categorization.
· Extracting data from pictures by way of the From Picture command.
· Separating first/last names into two columns without using formulas or retyping.
· Converting a range to a table and using the Total Row to summarize data
· Merging text from two or more columns without using formulas or repetitive retyping with Flash Fill.
· Jump-starting PivotTables by way of the Recommended PivotTables feature.
· Defining the core capabilities of AI agents.
· Utilizing the COPILOT worksheet function for enhanced data analysis and automation.
· Distinguishing prompt-based assistance from goal-driven execution.
· Turning a COPILOT formula into a reusable custom function by defining it as a LAMBDA in Excel.
· How AI features quietly appear through ongoing Microsoft 365 updates