Microsoft Excel will use AI to solve the problem we all hate

Microsoft has released a feature that solves one of the most common problems faced by Excel users. The technology company has announced a feature that identifies inconsistencies in data in a table that could lead to errors in future calculations. To do this, Excel will rely on Copilot artificial intelligence.

The tech giant has unveiled Clean Data, a feature that can… detect data inconsistencies in an Excel spreadsheet. This feature can identify problems with number formatting, text inconsistencies, or extra spaces in cells. With the click of a button, Copilot’s AI will analyze and remove or correct information.

Function Clear data in Excel solves a common problem we see with worksheets. If you’ve ever been given a file where the contents of the cells were formatted incorrectly, or you’ve simply copied data from another table, it’s likely that you’ve encountered errors in your calculations.

Although there are functions for changing formatting or replacing additional characters, they require one or two additional steps. The benefit of Clean Data is that Excel’s artificial intelligence will automatically detect content and alerts you to possible discrepancies. The user will then have the option to delete or replace erroneous data with one click.

How Clean Data works in Excel

According to Microsoft, Clean Data can identify text inconsistencies in cells with the same value. For example, if you wrote one word in capital letters and another in lowercase or with punctuation. In this case, Excel will show a window in which we can select the incorrect data and replace it.

Clean data is also capable detect extra spaces in cell data. This error is quite common when you paste text and miss a space at the end of the word. In this case, Copilot will prompt you to remove unnecessary spaces at the beginning, end, or between values.

Perhaps most important of all is the number format mismatch. This feature can identify inconsistencies between text and numbers in a columnFor example, when someone adds a “$” symbol to a sum and ends up with an error in a mathematical operation. In this case, the AI ​​will ask if you want to convert all text cells to numbers and thus avoid problems.

The data clearing function is located available in Excel web versionalthough it will come to desktop apps later. Microsoft notes that this feature works best if the data is in table format, although it should not exceed 100 columns or 50,000 rows.

It goes without saying that this and other AI features require a Copilot subscription. Besides analyzing and cleaning data, Excel Wizard can also help you perform other tasks such as creating, explaining, and inserting Python code into your spreadsheets.