Quickly Transform Data into Charts Using Copilot

Discover how Microsoft 365 Copilot turns numbers into professional looking charts effortlessly, saving you time to enhance your communications

Well, I was delighted when I logged in after the break to see Copilot in Microsoft 365 suggesting to me I might like to create a chart! (Who wouldn’t be, right? 😁)

In a world of work where your message is competing with many others, being able to quickly and effectively communicate information is paramount. One of the most efficient ways to add excitement to some data is through the use of charts. Whether in a report or an email, turning numbers into an eye-catching  and simple format, makes it easier for the audience to grasp the main points at a glance.

I was previously a communications manager and the opportunities for using a graph were plentiful from adding simple data to a presentation, sharing feedback or using past information to shape plans.

While the outcome of charts was good, the trade off was the effort to create them, the challenges I often found were:

• the data was normally text, not in a table
• time would be spent creating a spreadsheet to create a table
• the specific touches to formatting I needed (brand colours etc) added precious minutes

The thought that I could explain to Copilot exactly what I was looking to achieve and it turns my words and numbers into an image that looks designed and considered in a matter of seconds really made me excited.

And the results were good!

My example

I’m using some attendance figures from a Project GreenSpace event that I simply copy and pasted from an email. Here is the prompt I used:

“Present these weekly visitor attendance figures as a bar graph.

Order the bars in week numbers starting at week 1.

Colour the first bar as hex#276221 and each following bar in a progressive 10% lighter shade.

Add a title "Project GreenSpace Exhibition Attendance"

Here is the result…

It’s almost perfect, but I realised it would be a bit more inclusive to include the numbers as a label, so I asked Copilot to do that:

“Add a total number for each bar. Use white text in bold and position 10 points from the top of the bar, centrally aligned”

Amazing, Copilot has delivered in 2 minutes what could have easily taken twenty previously (especially if I’d manually recoloured each bar!)

And finally, really just because Copilot was keenly suggesting I might like to turn my data into a pie chart, I did. It lost my colours in translation but that had be specified by bars in my original prompt anyway.

Overall, I was really impressed with this little peek into creating graphs and charts using Copilot, I can really see how this could save knowledge workers lots of time.

If you’re excited to learn more about Copilot, then why not add our free ebook “Master Microsoft 365 Copilot with Our Top 5 Prompts” next on your reading list? In our expertly curated guide we lift the lid on powerful automation capabilities in Outlook, Teams, and more.

Get the free eBook from our website now.

Matthew

Matthew Burrell is a Consultant with Your 365 Coach