I’ve had some fun trying to open old spreadsheet files. It’s not been that painful. (Mostly because people I had to help never discovered macros. In optimal case they didn’t even know about functions.) After all, you don’t have weird external data sources. The spreadsheet is a frozen pile of data with strict rules.
I would love to be a fly in the wall when in 10 years someone needs to open an Excel file with Copilot stuff and needs fully reproducible results.
I did some digging. Apparently people are already raising eyebrows at the fact that it produces non-reproducible results, so much so that the official documentation says this:
The COPILOT function’s model will evolve and improve in the future and formula results may change over time, even with the same arguments. Only use the COPILOT function where this is acceptable. If you don’t want results to recalculate, consider converting them into values with Copy, Paste Values (select values, Ctrl + C, Ctrl + Shift + V).
…This is a note buried in the official help file. Gee gosh ding dilly damn I hope the people who use this function read the docs thorougly, just like they have done through the entire history of computing.
“Consider converting th-” [beer through her nose] CONSIDER???!? THIS IS A PRETTY CRUCIAL STEP.
They should apply the Balatro Misprint joker’s visual effect on all of the cells affected by this function. To signal the users that they’ve entered the Undecidability Zone. Where Gödel only went in Thursdays and 8-10 Polynesian time in Tuesdays (subject to change).
Imagine doing 30000 requests to a server in a different continent just to open the file and then close it immediately “oops, it’s not what i was searching”
I’ve had some fun trying to open old spreadsheet files. It’s not been that painful. (Mostly because people I had to help never discovered macros. In optimal case they didn’t even know about functions.) After all, you don’t have weird external data sources. The spreadsheet is a frozen pile of data with strict rules.
I would love to be a fly in the wall when in 10 years someone needs to open an Excel file with Copilot stuff and needs fully reproducible results.
Wait, You’re telling me it redoes all of the prompts every time you open the document. That’s such a bad way of doing it this borderline criminal.
I did some digging. Apparently people are already raising eyebrows at the fact that it produces non-reproducible results, so much so that the official documentation says this:
…This is a note buried in the official help file. Gee gosh ding dilly damn I hope the people who use this function read the docs thorougly, just like they have done through the entire history of computing.
“Consider converting th-” [beer through her nose] CONSIDER???!? THIS IS A PRETTY CRUCIAL STEP.
They should apply the Balatro Misprint joker’s visual effect on all of the cells affected by this function. To signal the users that they’ve entered the Undecidability Zone. Where Gödel only went in Thursdays and 8-10 Polynesian time in Tuesdays (subject to change).
they can’t be THAT stupid, right? Right?
Imagine doing 30000 requests to a server in a different continent just to open the file and then close it immediately “oops, it’s not what i was searching”
At the very least, why doesn’t copilot just replace that prompt with the appropriate sum(A1:A3) command?
Then Microsoft can’t motivate you to keep paying for the subscription