Use Excel's AI to Analyze Your Pipeline

What This Does

Excel Copilot lets you ask natural-language questions about your pipeline spreadsheet and get instant filtered views, summaries, and flags — without writing a single formula. You can find at-risk files, aging items, and closing-date bottlenecks in seconds.

Before You Start

• You have Microsoft 365 (Excel with Copilot enabled)
• Your pipeline is in an Excel spreadsheet with columns like borrower name, status, last contact date, closing date, outstanding items
• The Copilot button is visible in the ribbon (Home tab, right side)

Steps

1. Open your pipeline spreadsheet

Open your Excel pipeline file. Make sure your data is formatted as a table (click anywhere in your data → Insert → Table) — Copilot works best with structured tables.

2. Open Copilot

Click the Copilot button on the Home ribbon (looks like a small sparkle/star icon on the right side). A chat panel will open on the right side of your screen.

3. Ask your first question

Type a natural-language question about your data. Start with something simple to verify it's working.

4. Act on the results

Copilot will highlight rows, create a filtered view, or add a new column based on your question. You can ask follow-up questions in the same chat panel.

What you should see: Copilot highlights the relevant rows or generates a table of results in a new sheet. Troubleshooting: If Copilot says it can't read your data, convert your range to a Table first (Insert → Table).

Real Example

Scenario: You have 62 active files and need to know which ones haven't had a borrower contact in over 5 days and are closing within the next 21 days.

What you type: "Show me all files where the Last Contact Date column is more than 5 days before today AND the Closing Date column is within the next 21 days. Sort by Closing Date ascending."

What you get: A filtered view of your most urgent at-risk files, sorted so you can work down the list in priority order. Instead of manually sorting and filtering, you get the answer in 10 seconds.

Tips

• You can ask follow-up questions: "Now show me just the ones in underwriting status"
• Ask Copilot to add a new column: "Add a column called Priority Score that calculates days until closing minus days since last contact"
• Use it for weekly reporting: "Create a summary showing how many files are in each status" — instant pipeline report for your LO meeting

Tool interfaces change — if Copilot has moved, look for the sparkle icon or check View → Copilot in your Excel ribbon.