Looking for advice on leveraging AI for Excel in a price-sensitive, third-world country
I work for a training company in a price-sensitive, third-world country and have been conducting training in MS Excel for close to 2 decades. My company has asked me to design Excel training that teaches how to use AI to improve productivity. Ethical considerations aside, it’s something I have been thinking about for a while. The main roadblock I see is the average purchasing power of participants in our market. Right now the cheapest Copilot plan is USD 99.99/yr for MS 365 Personal. The cheapest plan for Business or Enterprise is USD 18/user/month for MS 365 Copilot business (billed at USD 216/user/year). I’ve been casually speaking with the participants in training sessions and most are happy with the free chatbot versions of Copilot/ChatGPT/Gemini that almost no one would upgrade to a paid subscription to integrate AI with Excel - they describe their problem to the AI, send screenshots or upload files and then try and implement the solution that’s returned. It’s similar in the business/enterprise context. Larger organisations may have paid for AI subscriptions for their employees but those are few in number. Most businesses in this market are classified as Small-Medium-Enterprises (SMEs) and feedback from participants is that their management would not likely approve of the cost. It’s worth mentioning that my training company does not provide computers instead requiring participants to bring their own laptops with valid Excel licences though we standardize things as much as possible e.g. Windows only, no tablets etc… This means if we design a training that requires a paid Copilot subscription, then it is up to the participants to buy it for themselves which I don’t think many of them will. After speaking with management, they are open to designing a training that uses the free AI chatbots. I’m fine with that but don’t know how much value that would add to what people are already doing. I’m quite sure this strategy is management trying to revive Excel training which used to be top-sellers (demand fell off ever since COVID) and they see other Excel training incorporating AI so want to follow suit. So right now the most viable option is to create training that teaching using free AI chatbots. But I’d like to hear the opinions of others - what other options do you see for a price-sensitive, third-world market? And yes, I did ask AI how Excel users can leverage AI without paying for expensive subscriptions and it basically said “use the free chatbots”.
Remove a comma from a number treated as text
Greetings! I'm new to this forum, and I don't know if this is the right place to ask. But, here it goes: I have a column of currency values which is a mess. I managed to clean it as much as possible using the functions SUBSTITUTE and TRIM. These functions transformed the unformated numbers into text, and now it looks something like this: 6,764,68 1,319 1,948 301,40 2848,08 The former is a sample from 165 entries. Is it possible to remove the first comma of the string, so the values look like this instead? 6764,68 1319,00 1948,00 301,40 2848,08 What I would like to do is to remove the second comma from right to left in each value, while keeping the first which marks the cents of the transaction. Can this be done? Thanks all in advance :D
GLSU Excel add-in fails to load after Office update from Version 2607 to 2608
Our Excel add-in, Process Runner GLSU , fails to load after Microsoft Office updates from Version 2607 to Version 2608. This started August 17, 2026 and is actively growing in scope. Error messages: Excel: Cannot run the macro 'onLoad' VBA: System Error &H80004005 (-2147467259). Unspecified error VBA: Compile error in hidden module: ThisWorkbook Has anyone encountered similar issue with their own custom add-on. If yes, any pointers to fix it. We are seeking help on priority. Thanks, Vrushali Pawale, Sr. Manager, Insightsoftware.Copilot Chat Adoption Feedback : Model Selection Governance and Prompt Library Reusability ?
Hello, As part of several Microsoft Copilot adoption projects that I am currently leading across different organizations, two questions frequently come up from both users and administrators. The first concerns the ability to lock or enforce a specific model in Copilot Chat for certain use cases. Several customers would like to guide users toward a particular model when working on specific scenarios (Opus for example) that require a certain level of reasoning, behavior, or response quality. To date, I have not found any official documentation or roadmap information indicating whether this capability is planned. The second concerns the Prompt Gallery / Prompt Library. Saved prompts are very useful for starting a conversation, but they do not appear to be reusable directly within an ongoing conversation. In several business scenarios, users would like to chain multiple approved prompts within the same conversation in order to preserve context while applying different working methods, analysis steps, or processes. Are there any planned developments regarding these two topics? The ability to lock or enforce a specific model in Copilot Chat. The ability to use prompts from the Prompt Gallery / Prompt Library during an already active conversation. I have not found any official information on these topics in Microsoft Learn documentation or in the Microsoft 365 roadmap. However, these capabilities seem likely to facilitate user adoption and help standardize usage patterns across organizations.Level Up Your Security Skills This August with the Microsoft Defender Challenge and Learn Live
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Scenario basic help please
Hi. I have a spreadsheet which calculates electricity usage and solar input etc. As the price keeps changing I am putting the new prices into the spreadsheet. I was thinking that I could use Scenarios or similar to be able to see what the bill would have been previously. I have looked at the Scenario instructions but I'm not quite sure how to use it (bit rusty in Excel recently). Is there a training video or similar I could watch. Any help gratefully received. Regards BlueyOffice Hours Follow-up: What does your event team look like?
We just wrapped up a MGCI Training and Office Hours session talking about this very topic. (Link to recording will be added when it's ready) How does your team break down roles and responsibilities for your event planning? Tell us in the comments!
