Amazing Results with AI-Powered Excel (Bootcamp + Certificate)

AI Tools used in the workshop:
- Claude add-on in Excel
- Microsoft 365 with Copilot

Across six hands-on sessions, you'll practice putting an AI assistant to work on realistic, Stanford-style data and explore how to weigh what it gives back.

This isn't a lecture about AI: it's your hands on the keyboard, working through real formulas, real cleanup, and real dashboards. You'll have the chance to practice on your own work between sessions, so the ideas have time to settle. The course is also built around modern Excel, so you'll explore the tools your Microsoft 365 subscription unlocks: dynamic array formulas, XLOOKUP, and AI assistance woven throughout.

Learners will have the opportunity to:

1. Practice talking to an AI tool in plain English and work on interpreting what it gives back
2. Work with modern formulas, including XLOOKUP and dynamic arrays, without memorizing syntax, and trace errors back to their source
3. Explore cleaning and reshaping messy data, with a first look at Power Query
4. Build PivotTables and explore what the data is telling you
5. Turn analysis into a clear, self-updating dashboard others can use
6. Practice verifying an AI tool's output and judging what's safe to share with it

Topics
- AI tools in Excel: capabilities, limits, and licensing basics
- Excel fundamentals: cell references, tables, and formulas
- Modern formulas: XLOOKUP and dynamic array functions (FILTER, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE)
- Data cleaning, reshaping, and a first look at Power Query
- PivotTables, slicers, timelines, and AI-assisted analysis
- Dashboard design and presentation
- Data privacy and safe use guidelines for AI tools
- Capstone project: raw data to finished dashboard

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The Six Sessions

Session 1: What Is an AI Tool in Excel? Fundamentals on Both Sides
Two foundations at once: what an AI tool inside Excel actually is and how to talk to it, and the Excel basics (cells, tables, and formulas) that everything else builds on. You'll use the AI tool to learn the fundamentals as you go.
- Explore what an AI tool in Excel can and can't do, including the license it requires (everyone in this class will need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license)
- Discover the difference between an AI tool built into Excel and pasting data into a separate AI chat assistant
- Practice prompting basics: how to ask in plain English so the AI tool can actually deliver on your request
- Work through Excel fundamentals with AI help: cell references, including relative vs. absolute ($A$1)
- Explore tables and structured table references, and why an AI tool works best when your data is a proper Table
- Write and explain your first formulas with AI assistance
- Start your own Excel cheat sheet of useful commands, to keep and build on
- Explore what's safe to put into an AI tool, and what Stanford data should stay out

Session 2: Modern Formulas Without Memorizing Syntax
Stop Googling "Excel VLOOKUP" for the fourth time this month. Describe what you want in plain English, let an AI tool write the modern formula, then practice reading and checking it.
- Describe a formula in plain English and have an AI tool write it, including XLOOKUP and IF logic
- Experiment with dynamic array formulas (FILTER, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE) that spill results across cells automatically, so one formula replaces a column of copy-paste
- Explore spill ranges and the # spill operator, the modern way results flow down a sheet
- See why XLOOKUP and dynamic arrays (Microsoft 365 only) make older VLOOKUP and helper-column tricks largely unnecessary
- Practice reading a formula you didn't write and working out what it's actually calculating
- Trace common errors (#REF!, #VALUE!, #SPILL!, and #DIV/0!) back to their root cause with AI help
- Watch for the subtle case: a formula that looks right but counts the wrong thing

Session 3: Managing and Cleaning Your Data
Most spreadsheets are messier than we'd like. Use an AI tool to plan the cleanup, fix the data itself, decide what new columns would actually help, and take your first step into Power Query.
- Ask an AI tool for ideas on how to clean up and structure a messy dataset before you touch a thing
- Practice cleaning data: handling duplicates, blanks, and inconsistent text and formatting
- Explore which custom columns would be useful, with AI suggestions, then build them
- Split, combine, and standardize columns so the data is ready to analyze
- Take a first look at Power Query: importing and reshaping data with repeatable steps that re-run when new data arrives
- See why a Power Query that cleans itself each month beats redoing the same fixes by hand

Session 4: Analyzing Your Data: PivotTables and Insights with an AI Tool
Your data is finally clean. Now make it talk. Use PivotTables and AI-assisted analysis together to find the story, then confirm the takeaways hold up.
- Use AI-assisted analysis to surface trends, outliers, and patterns (the "what's interesting here?" view)
- Have an AI tool suggest and build a PivotTable suited to your data, instead of dragging fields and hoping
- Summarize by totals, averages, counts, and percentages, and group by date (month, quarter, year) or category
- Experiment with slicers and timelines so a non-expert can filter the view themselves
- Turn a pivot into a quick chart to see the pattern at a glance
- Ask an AI tool "what's going on in this data" and get a plain-English narrative, then validate it against the numbers
- Sanity-check before you act: why AI analysis can vary run to run, and how to confirm it

Session 5: Dashboards and Presenting Your Data
Turn your analysis into something a stakeholder reads at a glance. Build an interactive dashboard on the data you've carried through the course, with an AI tool as your design consultant.
- Combine PivotTables, charts, and slicers into a single interactive dashboard on one sheet
- Choose the right chart for the story (trend, comparison, or composition) with AI advice
- Use an AI tool as a design consultant: cleaner labels, consistent colors, less clutter, so it reads at a glance
- Build a dashboard that updates itself when the underlying data changes
- Use a separate AI chat assistant as a sidekick to draft the written summary or talking points around the numbers
- Make a view someone else can understand and use without you in the room

Session 6: Capstone: Build It End to End
Put it all together. Work a fresh, messy dataset toward a finished dashboard, and step back with a clearer, honest picture of how to use an AI tool for real.
- Start from a raw, messy dataset and carry it toward a finished dashboard: cleaning, columns, formulas, PivotTables, and charts
- Use an AI tool as a real-time advisor throughout, the way you might back at your desk
- Work mostly on your own, with help on tap, so you can find your own footing
- Revisit the habits that keep you safe: verifying output, the privacy guardrails, knowing when to look twice
- Explore where AI tools are genuinely strong and where they're still limited (capable, not hyped)
- Take away your cheat sheet, your dashboard, and a plan for what to tackle next

Who this workshop is for
If you can find your way around a spreadsheet but an AI tool still feels like someone else's tool, you're exactly who this is for. No coding, no prior AI experience, no assumption you're "technical." Built for Stanford staff and others across the whole range, from quietly AI-anxious to confident Excel users who just haven't opened an AI tool yet.

Format
Six 3-hour sessions held on separate days (18 hours total), live and hands-on. Realistic sample datasets are provided; no need to bring your own, though you're welcome to. Optional practice between sessions. Completing the bootcamp counts toward a certificate.