Putting AI Inside the Spreadsheet People Already Use

AI Sharing #18 ran online on Wednesday, 6 May 2026, 9 to 10 in the evening, free for learning members.

The subject was AI inside Microsoft Excel, which is a more interesting place to put it than most people expect. Spreadsheets are where a great deal of real work already lives, and nobody has to be persuaded to open one.

We installed an AI add-in, generated sample data tables, and built dashboards with charts. Then we ran something real: a salary equity analysis using a school administrator’s own dataset. An HR professional in the group added context on how pay fairness checks are actually done, which made the exercise considerably better than the version we had planned.

The group also found that similar integrations work across other Office tools, and compared how different AI assistants handled the same request side by side.

The facilitator was learning alongside everyone else, and that is not false modesty. This was a session where the most useful contribution came from a participant rather than the front of the room.

Learning is richer when everyone teaches. AI Sharing sessions run regularly and are free for learning members - upcoming dates are on the events page.