Debugging Excel formulas with Excel Copilot

- [Instructor] Whether you're debugging an old formula or crafting a new one, Copilot is here to guide you. You can follow this process using the exercise file named copilot debug formulas. In our first example, I'm tackling the task of calculating a running total in the sales column and hitting some snags. I suspect mixed referencing is necessary, but it's proving tricky to implement correctly. Here's my current formula. Let's open Copilot app skills and see if it can help. So my prompt here, I'm trying to get a running total in the running total sales column. It's not working. Can you help me fix this formula? So we do get an alternative here. In this case, it looks like Copilot is wanting us just to copy this and paste it on our own. Sometimes you will get an option to insert it automatically, but I'll just take this formula and insert it right over my broken formula. And that seems to be a much more sensible running total figure. If you're struggling with a specific formula like getting an AVERAGEIF function to operate correctly, you can also paste that directly into Copilot and ask for help. So I do have an example here over in the next worksheet. Let's just take that and I will go back to my data set and let's paste that into Copilot. So this is a specific formula that I'm just having a problem getting to run. I'm receiving an error. Let's see if Copilot can help us here. Okay, and we are getting a fixed formula here. I will paste that into my workbook just to double check. And that seems to be accurate. Keep in mind that this is not limited to just table calculations or aggregations on a table. The same principles could apply if you need help with VPA macros, for example. So I'll head back to my prompts worksheet. I have a longer prompt here. I'm going to paste this into Copilot app skills. One thing I'll mention here is that because we're kind of moving away from wanting Copilot to automate these tasks, we may be better off actually running something like this in chat. 'Cause we know that copilot doesn't really automate VBA tasks, chat's a better all around experience for just big picture troubleshooting and helping with ideas. So I'm going to go over to Copilot chat and we'll see what we get here. I have a macro, it's giving me a hard time. It's not working how I would expect it to. How do I fix this? And we will get some explanation here. And it looks like we do get a new macro here. We can copy and paste it and try it out. And I will leave you to do that if you'd like to try. So whether you're ironing out bugs or starting from scratch, Copilot provides the essential guidance to sharpen your Excel skills.