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ChatGPT for Excel

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Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#31

Post by bob1029 »

jannyfer wrote: post #7
TrackerFF wrote: post #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.

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 t…

The LLMs seem to struggle at anything that isn't relatively well anchored in whatever space. HTML documents have a lot of foundation to them in the training data, so they seem to perform well by comparison to other things.

I just spent a few hours trying to get GPT5.4 to write strict, git compatible patches and concluded this is a huge waste of time. It's a lot easier and more stable to do simple find/replace or overwrite the whole file each time. Same story in places like Unity or Blender. The ability to coordinate things in 3d is really bad still. You can get clean output using parametric scenes, but that's about it.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#32

Post by [deleted] »

lateforwork wrote: post #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 Pow…

[deleted]

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#34

Post by w2df »

z3c0 wrote: post #24
w2df wrote: post #16

As someone that knows a high-flying portfolio manager who works at a very well known firm that I wont name... I can confidently state these tools are DOA. Ive spoken to them at length about the nature of what these people actually do day-to-day. If you think its just about using excel then you're already way off. They (OAI+Anthropic) very much do not get exactly what these people are doing in the job (accounting+corp…

This might be the first time I've seen a HN comment in a GPT thread that actually reflects what the average business user sees in GPT products. They don't do the job, reliably or well. No amount of wishful thinking or extra tokens will change that.

No surprise really.

Remember when Steve said 'The computers for the rest of us'?

I suppose it isn't a surprise. Are researchers/generally geeky people meant to be able to relate to the average person's day-to-day beyond their sphere? Lmao.

You can't produce stuff for people you don't understand. Understand being a very key term.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#35

Post by esafak »

w2df wrote: post #16

As someone that knows a high-flying portfolio manager who works at a very well known firm that I wont name... I can confidently state these tools are DOA. Ive spoken to them at length about the nature of what these people actually do day-to-day. If you think its just about using excel then you're already way off. They (OAI+Anthropic) very much do not get exactly what these people are doing in the job (accounting+corp…

Why are they irrelevant? You do not say anything.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#36

Post by LuxBennu »

lateforwork wrote: post #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 Pow…

Chatgpt for Excel is still an office add-in running in the same sandbox though. strongpigeon described the exact bottleneck upthread, process boundary crossings, context.sync() roundtrips that take seconds on web. That's a platform limitation, not a model limitation. Swapping AI behind the add-in doesn't fix the fundamental constraint that third-party add-ins can't deeply integrate with Excel's runtime the way a native feature can. If copilot is bad despite having more access to excel internals(I don't like how Copilot is designed or implemented tho), an add-in with less access is likely not be better.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#37

Post by mohamedkoubaa »

evanjrowley wrote: post #18
lateforwork wrote: post #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 Pow…

There is a significant difference in experience between Copilot Basic for a M365 user whose IT admins have blocked integration capabilities with Sharepoint content vs Copilot Premium for a M365 user whose IT admins have allowed integration capabilities with Sharepoint content.

Microsoft is better off not allowing copilot basic because of the reputational harm it will do. Not that they are thinking through copilot rationally

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#38

Post by w2df »

esafak wrote: post #35
w2df wrote: post #16

As someone that knows a high-flying portfolio manager who works at a very well known firm that I wont name... I can confidently state these tools are DOA. Ive spoken to them at length about the nature of what these people actually do day-to-day. If you think its just about using excel then you're already way off. They (OAI+Anthropic) very much do not get exactly what these people are doing in the job (accounting+corp…

Why are they irrelevant? You do not say anything.

I care not to. I hope Anthropic and OAI keep burning money on stuff that's DOA.

I know there are employees of those firms here that would love to know. But nah lmao.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#39

Post by Acmeon »

In principle, I find it valuable to integrate tools. However, in this case I would be somewhat cautious, especially as "your chats, attachments, and workbook content — may be shared with OpenAI" (as per the Microsoft Marketplace description: https://marketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/product/WA200010215?...).

This seems like a security nightmare, which is especially relevant because sensitive data is often stored in Excel files.

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