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ChatGPT for Excel

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Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#71

Post by p_ing »

com2kid wrote: post #67
strongpigeon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on the Excel Add-Ins platform at Microsoft, yes. By OM call I mean "Object Model" call, basically interacting with the Excel document. The reason those calls are expensive on Excel Web is that you're running your add-in in the browser, so every `.sync()` call has to go all the way to the server and back in order to see any changes. If you're doing those calls in a loop, you're looking at 500ms to 2-3s latenc…

Does Excel for Web still spin up an actual copy of Excel.exe on a machine somewhere? I heard that is how the initial version worked.

Never did this. WAC was the original version (integrated with SharePoint Server). Everything was server-side.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#72

Post by angadsg »

LuxBennu wrote: post #36
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 nati…

Would love for you to try both copilot and ChatGPT for Excel. Agreed on the limitations - but in our experience, ChatGPT for Excel does really well on complex sheets.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#73

Post by Avicebron »

angadsg wrote: post #68
Acmeon wrote: post #39

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 Ex…

Hi, engineer on this add-in. Fair concern but we never train on any of our business or enterprise user data, or if you have opted-out of training on your ChatGPT account.

Forgive my ignorance. How do you folks manage context retention? Say if someone had a sensitive excel document they wanted inference done over, how is that data actually sent to the model and then stored or deleted?

It seems one of the biggest barriers to people's adoption is concern over data leaving their ecosystem and then not being protected or being retained in some way.

Is this is an SLA that a small or medium sized company could get?

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#74

Post by p_ing »

keyle wrote: post #58
p_ing wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is recognized as low effort, but Copilot has been OAI models behind the scenes. For enterprise customers, quickly being replaced by Sonnet as a default.

Thank you for high effort response! I would never use Copilot for anything useful, but I do use OpenAI products. It doesn't matter when you use something else wholesale under the covers, if you botch the token spent...

Token expenditure isn't a concern for Copilot users. They don't see that form of cost model, just a flat monthly (or yearly) price for a user license.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#75

Post by p_ing »

Avicebron wrote: post #73
angadsg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, engineer on this add-in. Fair concern but we never train on any of our business or enterprise user data, or if you have opted-out of training on your ChatGPT account.

Forgive my ignorance. How do you folks manage context retention? Say if someone had a sensitive excel document they wanted inference done over, how is that data actually sent to the model and then stored or deleted? It seems one of the biggest barriers to people's adoption is concern over data leaving their ecosystem and then not being protected or being retained in some way. Is this is an SLA that a small or medium…

If you're concerned, you don't send it outside of the M365 boundary and presumably your admin has Purview Sensitivity Labels in place covering the document to prevent such activity.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#76

Post by angadsg »

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.

Engineer on ChatGPT for Excel here. Useful feedback. We have improved the latency inside the add-in a lot and a lot more to come. We also have the Fast, Standard and Heavy thinking modes, where you can adjust the thinking time depending on the task complexity. Curious to hear your feedback once you try this out!

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#77

Post by Avicebron »

p_ing wrote: post #75
Avicebron wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive my ignorance. How do you folks manage context retention? Say if someone had a sensitive excel document they wanted inference done over, how is that data actually sent to the model and then stored or deleted? It seems one of the biggest barriers to people's adoption is concern over data leaving their ecosystem and then not being protected or being retained in some way. Is this is an SLA that a small or medium…

If you're concerned, you don't send it outside of the M365 boundary and presumably your admin has Purview Sensitivity Labels in place covering the document to prevent such activity.

Doesn't that mean you can't actually use it for those sensitive documents?

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#78

Post by strongpigeon »

Acmeon wrote: post #55
strongpigeon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on the Excel Add-Ins platform at Microsoft, yes. By OM call I mean "Object Model" call, basically interacting with the Excel document. The reason those calls are expensive on Excel Web is that you're running your add-in in the browser, so every `.sync()` call has to go all the way to the server and back in order to see any changes. If you're doing those calls in a loop, you're looking at 500ms to 2-3s latenc…

Yeah, that makes sense. For some reason, I was under the impression that all calculations run locally in the browser, which would have been comparable to how Excel desktop works (i.e., local calculations). Is there a reason for why the Excel calculations run on the server (e.g., excessive workload of a browser implementation, proprietary code, difficult to implement in JavaScript, cross browser compatibility issues,…

I don’t think Excel web will ever be running the calc engine browser side, no. The only way I could see this happen would be via compiling the core to wasm, which I don’t think is worth the engineering effort.

Excel has this legacy (but extremely powerful) core with very few people left that knows all of it. It has legacy bugs preserved for compatibility reasons as whole businesses are ran on spreadsheet that break if the bug is fixed (I’m not exaggerating). The view code for xldesktop is not layered particularly well either leading to a lot of dependencies on Win32 in xlshared (at least back then).

Is it doable? I’m sure. But the benefits are probably not worth the cost.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#79

Post by Acmeon »

angadsg wrote: post #68
Acmeon wrote: post #39

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 Ex…

Hi, engineer on this add-in. Fair concern but we never train on any of our business or enterprise user data, or if you have opted-out of training on your ChatGPT account.

Yeah, I was expecting that you do not train on business or enterprise user data. However, I am not just worried about "training", but also about "sharing". Furthermore, I am worried about cases where an individual has chosen to integrate an add-in and then inadvertently leaks sensitive data.

However, it may be important to note that these security considerations are relevant for most Office Add-Ins (and not just the ChatGPT add-in).

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#80

Post by strongpigeon »

p_ing wrote: post #71
com2kid wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Excel for Web still spin up an actual copy of Excel.exe on a machine somewhere? I heard that is how the initial version worked.

Never did this. WAC was the original version (integrated with SharePoint Server). Everything was server-side.

> WAC

Now that’s an acronym that I had forgotten about.

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