Learning Generative AI Tools for Excel

Chapter 1. Breaking the Ice: Introducing AI for Excel

If you have worked with Microsoft Excel, you’ve probably noticed how tiring and sometimes boring it is to perform repetitive operations such as formatting cells or doing calculations. By searching the web, you have probably found ways to navigate the jungle of data analysis, formulas, and formatting, but you keep encountering new problems that slow down your work. If you’re not that familiar with Excel, you may be intimidated by the challenges you’ll undoubtedly face when manipulating data. That has happened to me many times.

When I was 15, I started using Excel to catalog the books on my shelf. At the time, a quarter of a century ago, I was using Microsoft Excel 95. But later, even after I had been working with Excel for a long time, every time a new problem arose, I had to search the web or look at books for answers.

Today, everything has changed with the advent of generative AI, which has introduced new ways of working and speeding up tedious tasks. Generative AI is a potent tool that allows you to quickly manipulate and generate data. However, to make the best use of it, you need to know it, learn its limits, and see how far it can help you.

This chapter begins your journey to discovering how to integrate generative AI into Excel. This technology is evolving so fast that the AI models coming out today may seem old quickly. However, the principles described in this book are always valid, and you can apply them even if the ...