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ChatGPT for Excel

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Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#3
Several months ago, ChatGPT swore to me it had interoperability with both excel and Google Sheets. I spent 90 minutes thinking I was an idiot, trying to follow its guidance before asking the internet.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#4
This looks bad for Microsoft. They added a Copilot button to all their products but it doesn't do much more than open a chat side panel.

I recently tried Claude Cowork for PowerPoint and I was stunned by the content as well as design quality of the deck it produced. That's a threat for Microsoft because now you don't need the editing tools of PowerPoint, AI replaces it, so all you need is the presentation mode of PowerPoint.

Copilot for Excel is useless. Ask it what is in cell A1 and it can't answer. I am looking forward to trying ChatGPT for Excel.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#6
I've experimented with ChatGPT for spreadsheets the past 6 months, and while the results look nice now it has been excruciatingly slow for even the simplest spreadsheet. I'm talking 15-20 minutes to make some pretty basic calculator with graphs. IIRC, it used a lot of time purely on the styling.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#7

I've experimented with ChatGPT for spreadsheets the past 6 months, and while the results look nice now it has been excruciatingly slow for even the simplest spreadsheet. I'm talking 15-20 minutes to make some pretty basic calculator with graphs. IIRC, it used a lot of time purely on the styling.

Adding a tangential anecdote.

I asked GPT-5.4 High to draw up an architecture diagram in SVG and left it running. It took over an hour to generate something and had some spacing wrong, things overlapping, etc. I thought it was stuck, but it actually came back with the output.

Then I asked it to make it with HTML and CSS instead, and it made a better output in five seconds (no arrows/lines though).

SVG looks similar to the XML format of spreadsheets. I wonder if LLMs struggle with that?

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#8

This looks bad for Microsoft. They added a Copilot button to all their products but it doesn't do much more than open a chat side panel. I recently tried Claude Cowork for PowerPoint and I was stunned by the content as well as design quality of the deck it produced. That's a threat for Microsoft because now you don't need the editing tools of PowerPoint, AI replaces it, so all you need is the presentation mode of Pow…

If AI winning means that data center companies win out, then the wins for Azure will more than make up for the death of Office.

I am surprised that Microsoft's own copilot product is so far behind though.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#9

This looks bad for Microsoft. They added a Copilot button to all their products but it doesn't do much more than open a chat side panel. I recently tried Claude Cowork for PowerPoint and I was stunned by the content as well as design quality of the deck it produced. That's a threat for Microsoft because now you don't need the editing tools of PowerPoint, AI replaces it, so all you need is the presentation mode of Pow…

its baffling how badly microsoft has handled copilot, this is exactly what copilot in office should have been
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