Exercise: Create a financial analysis report using Copilot in Word
Copilot in Word can help Finance professionals create documents more efficiently. It can help them write content, research topics, and transform existing content into a document they can be proud of. Copilot can also save them time and thought by rewriting and editing documents.
For example, if you're a financial analyst and need to write a report on the performance of a company, you can use Copilot in Word to draft the report. You can tell Copilot to “Write a report on the financial performance of XYZ company” and it will generate a draft that you can refine. You can ask Copilot Chat questions to research, ideate, or iterate on for possible content to add.
If you’re working on an existing document, Copilot can help you rewrite and edit the document, saving you time and thought. In this exercise, you instruct Copilot in Word to write a new report based on the data from the Fabrikam Q1 Marketing Campaign spreadsheet that you analyzed and updated in the prior exercise. However, instead of using the Excel spreadsheet, you'll instead use a Word document that contains all the spreadsheet data.
Note
Copilot in Word can create a report based on a spreadsheet. However, you can't directly reference an Excel file from within Word. Instead, you must copy and paste the data from the Excel file into a Word document. Once the data is in a Word document, you can use Copilot to generate a report based on that data. In this exercise, the data from spreadsheet that was used in the prior exercise was copied and pasted into a Word document titled Fabrikam Q1 marketing campaign data.
Tip
When working in Copilot, if it returns an error message of any kind, then resubmit your prompt again. Doing so often fixes the problem. Similarly, data isn't presented properly (such as table data being displayed in HTML code rather than a Word table), then enter a prompt asking Copilot to fix the data and present it properly (for example: The pivot tables all appear in HTML code. Convert these tables to a table format in Word).
Exercise
As Fabrikam's Director of Finance, you used Copilot in Excel to analyze the effectiveness of the company's Q1 marketing campaigns in the prior exercise. In this exercise, you plan to use Copilot in Word to generate a report that summarizes the analysis of that data. The spreadsheet was copied and pasted for you into a Word document, which you’ll download in the first step.
Select the following link to download the Fabrikam Q1 marketing campaign data.
After the download completes, move the file to your OneDrive account, and then open and close the file to get it in your Most Recently Used (MRU) file list.
If you have a Microsoft 365 tab open in your Microsoft Edge browser, then select it now; otherwise, open a new tab and enter the following URL: https://www.office.com
In Microsoft 365, open Microsoft Word and then open a blank document.
In the Draft with Copilot window that appears at the top of the blank document, enter the following prompt, but don't select the Generate button until after you link the file to the prompt in the next step:
I'm the Director of Finance for Fabrikam. Please create a Q1 Marketing Campaign Analysis report based on the attached file, which provides data on our Q1 marketing campaigns. Include the following sections in the report: Executive Summary, Data Analysis, and Recommendations.
You now must attach to the prompt the Fabrikam Q1 marketing campaign data.docx file that you downloaded. In the Draft with Copilot window, select the Reference your content button. In the drop-down menu that appears, if the Fabrikam Q1 marketing campaigns data.docx file appears in the list of files, select it. Otherwise, select Browse files from cloud, select the file from the Recent file list, and then select the Attach button. If the file doesn't appear in the Recent file list, select My files at the top of the navigation pane in the Pick a file window, navigate to the folder where you stored the file, select the file and then select Attach. Note how the file is displayed in the prompt.
Select Generate. Upon doing so, Copilot extracts the pertinent information from the file and drafts a report that analyzes the data.
Review the results. If the data in the Executive Summary section is presented in a bulleted list, then enter following prompt and replace {table or bulleted list} with table. If the Executive Summary data isn't in a bulleted list format, then enter following prompt and replace {table or bulleted list} with bulleted list:
Please convert the information in the Executive Summary section into a {table or bulleted list} format.
If the Data Analysis section is already in a table format, then proceed to the next step. Otherwise, enter the following prompt to place the data into a table so that it's easier to read:
Please convert the information in the Data Analysis section into a table format.
Examine the table of data in the Data Analysis section. Let's see if Copilot can remove a column of data from a table. Enter the following prompt and replace {heading} with the name of a column that you want to remove:
In the table of data in the Data Analysis section, please remove the {heading} column.
You like the Recommendations, but you feel they would be more valuable if Copilot displayed the data in order of importance. Enter the following prompt to have Copilot make this change:
In the Recommendations section, display the items in order of importance, starting with the most important item.
After reviewing this latest draft, you're satisfied with the report and you're ready to save it. In the Copilot window at the bottom of the document, select the Keep it button to convert it from a Copilot draft to a Word document.
Review the document. Once you're satisfied with it, you can either discard the document or save it to your OneDrive for future reference.
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