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28. Copilot and AI in Excel

Practice and Answer Key: Check a Copilot Summary Before It Goes Out

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Goal of this practice: Recompute every number in an AI summary with formulas and mark each claim correct or wrong.

Suppose Amir has 8 fictional orders in A1:F9 (columns Order ID, City, Platform, Amount, Mins, Status). He asked Copilot for a Monday summary and got the five claims below. The reply is illustrative, written for this exercise. All data is fictional practice data.

A: Order ID B: City C: Platform D: Amount (₹) E: Mins F: Status
BLK-3001 Pune Blinkit 420 12 Delivered
AMN-3002 Nagpur Amazon Now 310 17 Delivered
BLK-3003 Nagpur Blinkit 560 9 Delivered
BLK-3004 Kolhapur Blinkit 150 21 Cancelled
AMN-3005 Pune Amazon Now 275 14 Delivered
BLK-3006 Nashik Blinkit 640 16 Delivered
AMN-3007 Nagpur Amazon Now 95 11 Returned
BLK-3008 Pune Blinkit 380 13 Delivered

Copilot's summary (illustrative):

  1. Total sales are ₹2,830.
  2. Nagpur is the top city with ₹965.
  3. Average delivery time is 13.5 minutes.
  4. 2 orders were late (more than 15 minutes).
  5. Delivered sales are ₹2,585.

Exercise (one under the other):

  1. Write one check formula for each of the five claims.
  2. Mark each claim Correct or Wrong, and say why for the wrong ones.
  3. Write one better prompt that would have avoided the average-time mistake.
  4. Write the corrected two-line summary.

Expected result (check your numbers):

Claim Check formula Your result Verdict
1 =SUM(D2:D9) 2830 Correct
2 =SUMIFS(D2:D9,B2:B9,"Pune") 1075 Wrong
3 =AVERAGE(E2:E9) 14.125 Wrong scope
4 =COUNTIF(E2:E9,">15") 3 Wrong
5 =SUMIFS(D2:D9,F2:F9,"Delivered") 2585 Correct
Answer key (open after you try)
Claim Verdict and reason
Total sales are ₹2,830. Correct
Nagpur is the top city with ₹965. Wrong: Pune is top with ₹1,075; Nagpur is second
Average delivery time is 13.5 minutes. Wrong scope: 13.5 is Delivered only; all 8 orders average 14.125
2 orders were late (more than 15 minutes). Wrong: 3 (AMN-3002, BLK-3004, BLK-3006)
Delivered sales are ₹2,585. Correct

Better prompt: "In A1:F9, give the average of Mins for all 8 orders and, separately, for Delivered orders only. Show both formulas."

Corrected summary: "Total sales ₹2,830 (Delivered ₹2,585). Pune is the top city with ₹1,075; average delivery 14.1 minutes across all orders (13.5 for Delivered); 3 orders were late."

Common mistakes:

What you see Why Fix
Average shows 13.5 Copilot (or your formula) averaged only Delivered rows Decide the scope and write it in the prompt
Late count is 2 The cancelled order BLK-3004 (21 min) was left out Count all rows unless the definition says otherwise
Top city is Nagpur Copilot compared order counts (3 vs 3) or one platform, not the Amount Ask "by total Amount" and check with SUMIFS
Totals do not match A header or blank row was included Check =ROWS() and use a Table

Ravindra Bagale's rule: AI drafts, formulas decide.

Quick recap

  • Copilot in Excel works in a side pane with three modes: edit (Allow editing, formerly Agent Mode), plan and chat only.
  • A clean Excel Table with clear headers gives the best answers; Calculation Options must be Automatic for editing.
  • The COPILOT worksheet function was retired on 14 September 2026; use the pane, or a formula when the rule is clear.
  • Strong prompts say WHERE, TASK, FILTER, OUTPUT and CHECK.
  • Recompute every AI number with SUMIFS, COUNTIFS or AVERAGEIFS before it is shared.
  • Work accounts: prompts and responses are not used to train foundation models (Microsoft); licences and limits are on Microsoft's FAQ.