Change This One Copilot Setting for Better Excel Reports transcript

So, I have an empty Excel sheet, and I'm going to ask Copilot to build me a simple table. I'll just give it this prompt: Create a table on a new sheet with three columns, Date, Name, and Status. Fill the Date column with all weekdays only. So, I want to skip the weekends for Q1 2027. Leave the other columns empty, cuz I want to use it as a template. Add a title "At the Office" above the table, centered. Let's send this off and see what we get.

Okay. So, it's right here. It did the job well. But do you know what the first thing is that I do right now? Yeah. I would go to Table Design, and I would get rid of this ugly table formatting, and then I'll add my own formatting. I want to have thin light gray borders here. I would probably also remove the gridlines on the worksheet. And for dates, I prefer to have day first and then month and then year. So, I would change this around.

And did it use Merge & Center? Yeah, it did. This one drives me crazy sometimes. Guess what? Microsoft just added personalization to Copilot in Excel. You just tell it once how you like things, and then you get it how you like, hopefully. Let's test it out. Up here in the Copilot pane, I'll go to Settings. So, these are the three dots, and there it is. Personalization. Here, you can tell Copilot how you like things, not just for one task, but for everything you do from now on.

So, one thing I'm going to add is to use the date format DD-MMM-YYYY - Then I'm going to add how I want tables to be formatted. So, no background fill for headers and values. No borders except thin horizontal borders in light gray, and a bold header and a thick black bottom border. Next, I don't want gridlines, so remove gridlines on newly inserted sheets. And I prefer Center Across Selection instead of Merge & Center.

So, notice I'm setting the how, how I want things returned. A couple of things while we're here. So, this saves to your account, not to the file. So, it follows you to any workbook on any device that you're signed into. And it doesn't get baked into the file that you send your colleagues. So, they won't even see it. Let's save, and let's see if it kicks in on my next prompt. I'm just going to go ahead and ask it to do the same for Q1 2026.

Okay, let's see what we get. It's adding it in. I can see it's reapplying manual styling. The dates look right. The style looks right. It did get the date formatting correct, but not so great for the table formatting. So, somehow Excel wants me to use this ugly table format. It got part of it right, but not the headers, cuz I'm pretty sure I was specific there. In Personalization, I said no background fill for headers.

Now, I have to say that when I ran this test before I recorded, it did get it correctly, but for some reason, it's not doing it during recording. What about this bit here? It's not using Merge & Center. So, that's good. I hope it is using Center Across Selection. Let's go to Format Cells. And yeah, it's doing it right. Okay, so it mainly respected my choices. By the way, if you're wondering why I prefer Center Across Selection over Merge & Center, I cover it in a separate video.

I'm going to link it below as well. Although I do use Merge & Center on the top row. So, if I have a title of the worksheet, I usually use Merge & Center because I'm too lazy to get to Center Across Selection. I really hope Microsoft would add a button for it right here, but I avoid it in the middle of the sheet. So, these four are just some personalization examples of mine, but you should be able to fix almost anything Copilot does that annoys you.

So, here are a few ideas worth checking out. For example, when it comes to PivotTables, ask for proper headers. Instead of Sum of Sales, ask for clear, friendly names. When it comes to numbers, tell it to format percentages with one decimal place or round numbers to whole numbers unless I ask for decimals. Show negative numbers in red and in parentheses. Format currency with the euro symbol and two decimals. When it comes to formulas, prefer XLOOKUP over VLOOKUP when creating lookup formulas, or prefer SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, and AVERAGEIFS over older single-condition formulas.

When it comes to reporting, when comparing periods, include the absolute change and the percentage change. For charting, avoid pie charts unless there are maximum three categories and the comparison is simple. Okay, just some ideas that you might want to check out. Well, that's it. That's Copilot Personalization. Share your own personalization choices in the comments so we can all get some ideas from each other. Thank you for being here, and I'm going to catch you in the next video.