AI for Excel: Beyond Copilot (Because Your Company Probably Doesn't Pay for It)

Every article about AI and spreadsheets assumes you have Microsoft Copilot. You probably don't.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 costs about £25 per user per month, and most companies haven't rolled it out to everyone. Some haven't rolled it out to anyone. If you work for a small business, a charity, or just a company that's cautious about new software costs, you're stuck watching demos of Copilot doing impressive things in Excel while your version of Excel looks exactly the same as it did three years ago.

I know the feeling. When i was working as a data scientist, we had enterprise licences for everything. After i got made redundant, suddenly i was on a personal licence wondering why everything costs a subscription now. But here's the thing: you don't need Copilot to use AI with Excel. You don't even need to spend money. Some of the most useful AI-for-spreadsheets tricks use tools you already have access to.

Let me show you.

The free method: ChatGPT as your formula assistant

This is the approach i use most often, and it costs nothing.

Writing formulas

You know that feeling when you need an INDEX MATCH or a nested IF statement and you spend twenty minutes on Google trying to find the right syntax? That's over now.

Open ChatGPT (free tier works fine), and type something like:

"I have an Excel spreadsheet. Column A has employee names, Column B has departments, Column C has quarterly sales figures. I need a formula that shows the total sales for each department. The department list is in cells F2:F10."

ChatGPT will give you the SUMIF formula. But more importantly, it'll explain why that formula works, which means you'll actually understand it next time.

This works for practically any formula scenario:

• VLOOKUP and its replacement XLOOKUP
• Nested IF statements
• Array formulas
• SUMIFS with multiple criteria
• TEXT and DATE manipulation
• Conditional formatting rules

The key is describing your data clearly. Tell it what's in which columns, what you want the output to be, and any constraints. The more specific you are, the better the formula you get back.

Writing VBA macros

This is where it gets genuinely powerful. VBA macros automate repetitive tasks in Excel, but writing them requires programming knowledge that most people don't have. ChatGPT writes VBA fluently.

Example prompt: "Write a VBA macro for Excel that goes through every row in Sheet1, checks if the value in Column D is 'Overdue', and highlights that entire row in red. Skip the header row."

You'll get a working macro. Copy it, open the VBA editor in Excel (Alt+F11), paste it into a new module, run it. Done.

I've used this approach to:

• Automatically format reports that come in messy every month
• Split a large spreadsheet into multiple files based on a category column
• Generate summary sheets from raw data
• Clean up data — removing duplicates, standardising formats, fixing date issues
• Create automated email drafts from spreadsheet data

Debugging existing formulas

Got a formula that's returning #REF! or #VALUE! and you can't figure out why? Paste it into ChatGPT with a description of your data layout. It'll usually identify the problem immediately and suggest a fix.

This alone has saved me hours. Debugging someone else's spreadsheet is one of the most frustrating tasks in office work, especially when the original creator has left the company and nobody knows why there's a nested INDIRECT referencing a named range on a hidden sheet.

Other AI tools for spreadsheets

SheetAI (Google Sheets)

If you use Google Sheets rather than Excel, SheetAI adds AI functions directly into the spreadsheet. You can write prompts in cells and get AI-generated results. Want to categorise a list of product descriptions? Summarise customer feedback? Generate email subject lines from data? SheetAI handles it as a formula.

It's like having ChatGPT embedded in your spreadsheet, which is genuinely useful for data processing tasks.

Cost: Free tier with limited uses per month. Paid plans from about £10/month.

Numerous.ai

Works with both Google Sheets and Excel. Similar concept — AI functions in your spreadsheet. The standout feature is batch processing: apply an AI prompt to hundreds of rows at once. Categorise, extract, summarise, translate, or transform data in bulk.

Cost: Free tier available. Paid plans from about £15/month.

Ajelix

Ajelix focuses specifically on Excel formula generation and explanation. You describe what you need in plain English, it generates the formula. You can also paste in an existing formula and it'll explain what it does in human language.

It's simpler than using ChatGPT but more focused. If formulas are your main pain point, it's worth a look.

Cost: Free tier for basic use. Premium from about £8/month.

Julius AI

Julius lets you upload a spreadsheet and then chat with your data. Ask questions in plain English — "what were total sales by region last quarter?" — and it generates the analysis, charts, and insights. No formulas required.

This is closer to what Copilot does, and for data analysis specifically, it's impressive. You upload a file, ask questions, get answers with visualisations.

Cost: Free tier with limits. Paid from about £15/month.

Practical workflows that actually save time

Monthly report formatting

If you receive raw data every month and need to format it into a standard report, here's the workflow:

1. Ask ChatGPT to write a VBA macro that does all your formatting: column widths, headers, conditional formatting, number formats, totals rows
2. Save the macro in your Personal Macro Workbook (so it's available in every file)
3. Next month, open the raw data file, run the macro, done

What used to take 30 minutes of clicking and formatting now takes 10 seconds.

Data cleaning

Dirty data is the curse of every spreadsheet user. Inconsistent date formats, extra spaces, mixed capitalisation, duplicates, merged cells. ChatGPT can write you a VBA macro that cleans all of this in one go.

My standard data cleaning prompt: "Write a VBA macro that: removes leading and trailing spaces from all cells in the used range, converts all text in Column A to proper case, standardises dates in Column E to DD/MM/YYYY format, highlights duplicate values in Column B, and deletes any completely empty rows."

Run it once. Data cleaned. Move on with your life.

Creating dashboards without knowing pivot tables

If pivot tables make your eyes glaze over, upload your spreadsheet to Julius AI or a similar tool and ask it to create the summary you need. It'll generate the analysis and often suggest visualisations you hadn't considered.

You can then recreate those visualisations in Excel if needed, or just export them directly. Either way, you've got your dashboard without spending an hour fighting with pivot table layouts.

Tips for getting better results

Include sample data in your prompts. Don't just say "i have sales data." Say "Column A has dates (like 15/03/2026), Column B has product names (like 'Widget A'), Column C has quantities (integers), Column D has revenue (currency, two decimal places)."

Specify your Excel version. Some formulas work in newer versions but not older ones. XLOOKUP, for instance, doesn't exist in Excel 2016. Mention your version and ChatGPT will adjust accordingly.

Ask for error handling. Add "include error handling so the formula returns a blank cell instead of an error if there's no match" to your prompts. This prevents those ugly #N/A errors from littering your spreadsheet.

Test with small data first. Before running a VBA macro on your 50,000-row production spreadsheet, test it on a copy with 10 rows. Trust me on this one.

Save your macros. Build a library of useful macros you've generated. Create a text file or a OneNote page with your best ones, labelled clearly. You'll use them again.

The Copilot question

Is it worth pushing your company to get Copilot? Maybe. It depends on how much spreadsheet work you do and how integrated you want the AI experience to be.

Copilot's advantage is seamless integration — it's right there in Excel, it can see your data, and you don't need to switch between tabs. That's genuinely more convenient than copying data into ChatGPT.

But the gap between "Copilot in Excel" and "ChatGPT in another tab" is smaller than Microsoft would like you to think. For formula help and VBA macros, ChatGPT is essentially equivalent. For data analysis, dedicated tools like Julius are arguably better. The main thing you miss without Copilot is the convenience of not switching windows.

And convenience is worth something, but probably not £25/month/user if your company is watching costs. Especially when the free alternatives are this good.

Getting started today

Open ChatGPT right now. Think of the last Excel task that annoyed you. Describe it in plain English. See what comes back.

That's the entire onboarding process. No installation, no subscription, no IT approval required. Just a conversation with a chatbot that happens to be very good at spreadsheet formulas.

If you're spending more than a few minutes a day on Excel, AI assistance isn't optional anymore. It's like having a colleague who's brilliant at spreadsheets, always available, never judges you for not knowing VLOOKUP, and works for free.

The only question is why you haven't started asking it yet.