Claude in Copilot? Excel on Steriods!!

If you’ve been paying attention to Claude lately, you’ve probably noticed one thing.

It’s really good at Excel.

Not formulas.
Not basic charts.

I mean understanding structured data. Reasoning across multiple sheets. Spotting correlations. Pulling out insights. The kind of work that usually takes a data analyst or data scientist a lot of time.

Here’s the part most people miss.

You already get that capability inside Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Let me show you what that actually looks like in the real world.

 

 

The scenario: a very real executive ask

This is how the work showed up for me.

In this example scenario (all data is built using Copilot for demonstration purposes), an executive leader reached out and said:

“My CFO wants a Q2 financial summary of paramedic overtime across multiple counties.”

What I got back was raw data.

Messy.
Unstructured.
No story.

Normally, this turns into hours of work:

• Cleaning data
• Building formulas
• Creating pivot tables
• Designing dashboards
• Writing an executive summary

Instead, I used Copilot in Excel with Agent Mode.

Six prompts.

That’s it.

Why Agent Mode matters

Copilot in Excel with Agent Mode is where Copilot goes from “helpful assistant” to something much closer to a reasoning partner.

Under the hood, it’s doing things like:

• Reasoning across multiple sheets
• Writing and running Python
• Catching its own errors and fixing them
• Structuring data so it can be reused for dashboards and reports

This is also where you might notice model selection.

If your IT admin has enabled Anthropic, you’ll see Claude as an option. If you don’t, that’s an admin setting, not a missing feature.

And that matters, because this is exactly the type of work Claude has been getting attention for.

From raw data to executive‑ready in minutes

Here’s what I built using natural language.

Data framing

I asked Copilot to take raw overtime data and turn it into structured tables that could actually support dashboards and reporting.

Dashboard creation

Without telling it which charts to build or how to lay things out, Copilot created a working dashboard and an SBAR‑style report structure.

Storytelling

I prompted it to explain what was happening in the data. It called out overtime spikes in May and flagged operational risk.

Executive brief

I asked for CFO talking points.

Copilot generated:

• Key insights
• Questions a CFO should be asking
• Decisions that needed to be made

What‑if analysis

One prompt created an entirely new sheet to stress‑test scenarios.

All of this happened inside Excel.

No exporting.
No rework.
No separate AI tool.

Real Talk: The part people get wrong about AI and jobs

This is where the conversation usually goes sideways.

“Isn’t this replacing data scientists?”

No.

What it replaced was busy work.

AI is very good at:

• Processing structured data
• Generating insights
• Updating models
• Iterating quickly

Humans are very good at:

• Understanding context
• Knowing when something feels off
• Asking the right questions
• Applying judgment

In this sceanrio, I knew what the CFO cared about.
I knew the story that needed to be told.
I knew what to stress‑test.

Copilot didn’t replace that. It sped it up.

What used to take hours took about half an hour, including review.

That’s not a loss of skill. That’s leverage.

Copilot as a delegation tool

This is the mindset shift.

Stop thinking about Copilot as “AI that answers questions.”

Start thinking about it as delegation.

I delegated:

• Data cleanup
• Analysis
• Visualization
• First‑draft insights

Then I reviewed it, applied judgment, and refined.

When I handed this back to the CFO, I didn’t even use Agent Mode. I switched to standard Copilot and asked:

“Summarize this in one paragraph and give me three bullets a CFO would care about.”

That was it.

Copilot understood the entire workbook and produced executive‑ready talking points.

The real takeaway

Claude’s Excel capabilities are impressive.

What matters more is where you can actually use them.

Copilot brings that level of reasoning into the tools people already work in. Excel.
Teams.
Word.

AI isn’t here to think for you.

It’s here to handle the mechanics so you can focus on judgment, context, and decisions.

That’s the difference.

Go try it.
Have some fun.
And start delegating.