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Marco87's avatar
Marco87
Copper Contributor
May 03, 2024

VBA functionality with Copilot

Hi,

 

I am wondering if there is a way for Copilot to simulate VBA-like functionalities? What I want to do is extract certain data from an Excel sheet and place them in a Word template. More specifically, I have a financial forecast per year consisting of income, expenditures, assets, and debt in Excel. Now, I want to be able to tell Word to generate the template I made in Word, based on a prompt. For instance,

Create a page like page one from this template, and use the data from column x in Excel, and so on and so on. 

 

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  • Sajjad's avatar
    Sajjad
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 09, 2024
    Copilot can definitely be helpful with achieving your goal of automating data transfer from Excel to a Word template using VBA-like functionality. Here's how you can approach it:

    Current Copilot Capabilities:

    VBA Code Assist: While Copilot can't directly write complex VBA macros, it can assist you in writing the code if you start with the basic structure.
    Data Manipulation in Excel: Copilot can help write formulas and scripts to extract and manipulate data in Excel.
    Steps to achieve your goal:

    Prepare your Excel data: Ensure your financial forecast data is well organized in a clear table format.

    Write a basic VBA macro (with Copilot's help):

    Start by opening the VBA editor in Excel.
    Use Copilot to suggest code snippets for common VBA tasks like:
    Looping through data rows
    Accessing specific cells based on column names (e.g., "Income")
    Building strings with the extracted data
    Connect to Word and the template:

    Use Copilot to help write VBA code to:
    Open a specific Word template file
    Find specific elements in the template (e.g., placeholders for data)
    Insert data into the template:

    Use Copilot to suggest code to:
    Replace placeholders in the Word template with the extracted data from Excel.

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