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Copilot in Excel: Data Analysis for Beginners in 3 Hours (Udemy.com)

Use Microsoft Copilot in Excel to answer business questions, clean messy data and build reports in plain English

Created by: Ian Littlejohn

Last updated September 2026

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What you will learn

  • Ask Copilot in Excel plain-English questions about your data and get answers you can act on in seconds
  • Summarize, classify and extract information from unstructured text that Excel formulas cannot handle
  • Build running totals, rankings and percentage contributions without writing a single formula
  • Clean and transform messy data files that arrive in the wrong shape
  • Create charts, conditional formatting and table summaries straight from a question
  • Complete five guided projects using realistic Sales, Finance and HR data
  • Understand the structure of a new data set before you analyze it, so your answers hold up

How it compares

Against the other 1,182 rated Udemy courses in IT & Software on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.6 out of 5higher than 67% of them
  • Reviews379#644 of 1,183 by number of reviews
  • Length3.3 hoursshorter than 68% of them
  • Last updatedSeptember 2026more recently than 89% of them

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Course Description

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Every lesson in this course is written, created and recorded by me. AI is used only to help produce supporting images and written materials around the lessons.

Which products are actually driving our growth? Why did the North region drop last quarter? What are customers really saying in these 400 comments? Those are the questions a manager asks.

This course shows you how to answer them in Excel using Microsoft Copilot, by typing the question in plain English instead of building a formula. It is deliberately short. Three hours, start to finish, and you will be using Copilot on your own data on the same day.

COURSE CONTENT AND OUTCOMES

  • Setup and prepare data in Excel for Copilot

  • Use Copilot to create formulas and to explain formulas

  • Create Key Metrics, Table Summaries, Graphs, Highlight Data and Advanced Calculations

  • Analyze and understand the structure of data sets

  • Summarize, classify and extract information from free text - survey responses, comments, support tickets

  • Clean and Transform Messy data files

  • Five guided projects using realistic Sales, Finance and HR data


REQUIREMENTS:

A Microsoft 365 subscription that includes Copilot, on the account you sign in with. Note that only the subscription owner gets Copilot inside the Excel desktop app - if you are a member on someone else's Family plan, you will not see it.

  • Your files saved to OneDrive with AutoSave switched on. Copilot in Excel will not run on a file stored only on your local drive.

  • Excel for Microsoft 365 on Windows or Mac, or Excel for the web.

  • Basic familiarity with spreadsheets. You do not need to know any formulas - Copilot writes them for you.


ABOUT THE TRAINER

I have been training business people to work with data since 2008, and publishing on Udemy since 2013. I now have 16 live courses with more than 400,000 students and more than 139,000 reviews, at an average rating of 4.6. I teach Microsoft Excel, Copilot in Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Looker Studio and Amazon QuickSight.

What makes my courses different is that I teach the analysis, not just the tool - every lesson starts with a business question someone actually asks, and shows you how to answer it with software you already have.


WHAT STUDENTS ARE SAYING

  • I really enjoyed this short course! I had no idea that I could upload a data file and do this type of analysis. Very useful information that could be used daily at work

  • Great course on using Copilot for data analytics and integrating with excel.

  • I really enjoyed this short course! I had no idea that I could upload a data file and do this type of analysis. While the course is short, it walked us through many scenarios which can be applied to our own data sets. Very useful information that could be used daily at work. Copilot is great at explaining these concepts.

If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription with Copilot and you are not sure what it can actually do inside Excel, this is the fastest way to find out. Enrol now and start with your own spreadsheet this afternoon.


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Instructor Details

Ian Littlejohn

I specialise in training business users to learn powerful methods and techniques to transform data into useful information and intelligence as well as learning strong data analysis methodology.


I completed my university degree in economics and emerged keen and eager to change the world. I spent the first half of my career working for multinational companies, on projects of various sizes, in different sectors, all revolving around analysing data of some sort and working with different software products, including Microsoft Excel.


I found that so many Excel users had a very basic understanding of how Excel works, and instead of using Excel to do the work for them, were doing all the work themselves, using old spreadsheet technology like macros instead of embracing technology like Pivot Tables. Pivot Tables were actually introduced into Excel in 1994 but many Excel users have avoided using them because they seem complicated and difficult to use.


In 2008 I decided to start my own training company and this was borne out of the passion I had to teach Excel users how to work smarter, not harder. As technology evolved, and new systems developed, I continuously expanded my training to include Power BI, Amazon QuickSight, Looker Studio, and most recently Copilot in Excel and Microsoft 365 Copilot.


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Reviews

4.6

379 ratings on Udemy

Select a bar to show only those reviews.Select the bar again to show every rating.

By Caren Mhazo on 8/26/2026

I am learning a whole new aspects especially the connection between excel and co-pilot wow what an eye opener

By Shashank Kumar on 7/8/2026

this was course was good and really insightful espeacially with those activities conducted and with copilot and chat gpt the tradition excel analysis becomes better convinced totally

By Shelly Ives on 1/12/2026

This is a great, quick course to give you the basics of how to use ChatGPT with data. I appreciated the easy examples and it really helped me realize that stepping through is a big asset.

By Brian Sabin on 7/4/2025

Ian, well done. Your course was helpful, well-paced, and engaging throughout. I learned much from it. Thank you!

By Tanya Glover on 6/4/2024

Introduction an analyzing the data is very helpful for novice users using Chat GPT.

By Scott Davies on 5/28/2024

Ian is just so good at explaining complicated topics in an easy to understand way! His courses progress logically, building up as your abilities and confidence grow. The exercises are great to cement your learning as you progress. Couldn't ask for better.

By Andrew Brown on 5/20/2024

Great course on using chatgpt for data analytics and integrating with excel.

By Eric Tremblay on 1/25/2024

I always buy Ian Littlejohn courses. ChatGPT is a good easy course but I would have it to go a little further then what the coarse does. It’s very basic in my view. Maybe, using multiple data files together or data sources from the web ? Analyze stock prices or other data that can be found on the web. I expected more complex analysis. I totally enjoyed Section 9 Statistical Analysis. Nice to see how easy it is with ChatGPT. Having done all the Mr Littlejohn’s Power BI courses has made on Udemy I expected a little section on ChatGPT and Power BI ? A suggestion for Mr Littlejohn, add a bonus section for ChatGPT and Power BI. I know ChatGPT can generate DAX code etc. Again, thank you for this looking forward to your next coarse. Eric Montréal, Canada

By Elaine Sanchez on 1/3/2024

I really enjoyed this short course! I had no idea that I could upload a data file and do this type of analysis in ChatGPT4 Data Analysis. While the course is short, it walked us through many scenarios which can be applied to our own data sets. Very useful information that could be used daily at work. ChatGPT is great at explaining these concepts.

By Stefan Käs on 12/13/2023

None of it is really wrong - but on the other hand, nothing is really new either. All of what is shown can be found on YouTube with very little effort for free. Therefore, there is no reason to spend money on this content.

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Overall Score : 92 / 100