If you simply click in the text box at the top of the Ideas pane (ie, you don’t even type anything), a list of suggested descriptions and graphics regarding the data will be displayed: It’s a shame that explanation is not in a natural language, but it does mean Ideas is quite clever. Ideas is powered by an NLP model using the Azure Machine Learning (ML) service. All you need to do is type a question in the text box in the task pane. In addition to getting recommendations from Ideas, users may also ask questions about the data directly in the Ideas task pane. This makes it easy to modify the PivotChart fields in the task pane and try different combinations of fields to see what else may be gleaned regarding the selected data. This allows you to dig into the charts in more detail.įor example, if the graphic is a PivotChart, it will create a new spreadsheet tab showing the filtered data the PivotChart is based upon. The normal procedures of adjusting the formatting and data set may be adopted here. If you want to make changes to these charts, you just make the changes as if you had created the chart yourself. For this example, suppose we have a Table with Sales by Year, Category, and Brand:įrom the visualisations provided, you may select charts to insert with the titles and legends populated automatically. Let’s use an Excel Table to demonstrate Ideas at work.

You don’t have to have an Excel Table, though creating one does ensure that subtotals and totals are not treated as line items.

One requirement for Ideas is that the data be in a contiguous table, with headings in the first row. Supported by the technology known as natural language processing (NLP), Ideas aims to aid the interaction between computers and humans to understand natural language. You can also obtain suggestions and insights from Ideas by directly asking questions about the data in the task pane. Then, Ideas will analyse your data and return preview visualisations of insights in the task pane.īut it goes further than that. Simply click a cell in the given data range, and then click the Ideas button on the Home tab. But don’t let that put you off: This is a taste of the future of Excel.įor example, Ideas helps identify trends, patterns, and outliers in a data set, facilitating data analysis in seconds and empowering you to understand data through high-level summaries, PivotTables, PivotCharts, and other visualisations. It’s not in all versions of Excel, though presently, it is only available in Excel for Office 365, Excel for Office 365 for Mac, and Excel for the web. It is especially useful when you are overwhelmed with data and need to turn it into information, knowledge, and wisdom.

It helps users create professional documents, presentations, and spreadsheets in less time, providing customised suggestions for outliers and insights when called upon. Ideas is an artificial intelligence-powered insights service that facilitates data analysis in Excel.

Data analysis tab in excel mac