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How to use Ideas in Excel
2 min. read
Updated onOctober 4, 2023
updated onOctober 4, 2023
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Key notes
Ideas in Excel helps you to understand your data through natural language queries that allow you to ask questions about your datawithoutwriting formulas that are, pretty complicated. Ideas also analyzes and provides high-level visual summaries, trends, and patterns.
How can I use Ideas for Excel?
Excelhas a pretty high learning curve because anybody can master its basic features pretty fast. Things get a little bit tricky when you get to formulas, right? And you have to become a littleExcelmaster to know them by heart.
In the Ideas tool, you can use Natural Language Queries which is self-explanatory. You are able to ask complicated information like data questions with formulas, charts, or pivot tables in a very easy and common way.
To put it even more lightly, it’s like the Google search inOffice.
Using theIdeas in Excel
Microsoft developers explain the exact process in therelease notes:
Simply click a cell in a data range, and then click the Ideas button. Enter a question in the query box at the top of the pane, and press Enter. Ideas will provide answers that you can insert into the workbook in the form of charts, tables, PivotTables, and formulas answers.
Try the suggested questions
If you click the text box at the top of the Ideas windows, you will see a list of suggestions based on your data.
You can ask your own question
You can also write a specific question about your data.
You can save time and narrow down your Ideas by selecting only the fields you want to see. When you choose fields and how to summarize them, Ideas analyze just that data – speeding up the process and presenting fewer, more targeted suggestions.
In this example, you might only want to see the sum of sales by year. Or you can ask Ideas to display average sales by year. It’s very simple to do that:
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Click onWhich fields interest you the most?
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Select the fields and how to summarize their data.
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Ideas now offers fewer, more focused suggestions.
We hope that this little guide will help you understand how to use Ideas in Excel.
If you have any questions or ideas, go ahead and leave us a line in the comments section below.
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Claudiu Andone
Windows Toubleshooting Expert
Oldtimer in the tech and science press, Claudiu is focused on whatever comes new from Microsoft.
His abrupt interest in computers started when he saw the first Home Computer as a kid. However, his passion for Windows and everything related became obvious when he became a sys admin in a computer science high school.
With 14 years of experience in writing about everything there is to know about science and technology, Claudiu also likes rock music, chilling in the garden, and Star Wars. May the force be with you, always!
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Claudiu Andone
Windows Toubleshooting Expert
Oldtimer in the tech and science press, with 14 years of experience in writing on everything there is to know about science, technology, and Microsoft
