Learning Generative AI Tools for Excel

Foreword

Excel has been around for decades, and in that time it has become a core part of most workplaces. I’ve seen it evolve from a simple spreadsheet into a platform that underpins decision-making across finance, operations, research, government, and education, often in the hands of people who never thought of themselves as “technical.” Yet for all its power, Excel has always asked a lot of its users, with formulas to memorize, features to discover, and logic to debug.

Generative AI fundamentally changes that experience. Instead of spending time and energy writing complex formulas or searching for the right feature, users can describe their intent and let AI do the heavy lifting.

This shift to AI doesn’t remove the need for user skill and knowledge. Being able to guide, question, and verify AI output is now a core capability, and in this book Angelica Lo Duca shows how to develop exactly those skills. Rather than offer a list of prompts to copy, she teaches practical, transferable ways of structuring prompts that readers can adapt to their own work.

Throughout the book, Angelica draws on real-world examples to demonstrate how to work with AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Excel add-ins. She writes from genuine hands-on experience as a data expert, and her approach reflects a deep understanding of both Excel and the people who rely on it.

Whether you’re an experienced analyst looking to work faster, a professional trying to get more value from data, or a learner building ...