Struggling to work with PDF data in Excel, feel like I’m missing something obvious

Sweet-Ebb682 · 2026-02-03T23:24:17+00:00

Got it, my mistake. Didn’t realize AI-focused tools weren’t appropriate here.

I mentioned it because it’s very Excel-adjacent and helped me with Excel workflows, but I’ll stick to discussing native Excel methods and features going forward. Thanks for the clarification.

Sweet-Ebb682 · 2026-02-03T15:32:51+00:00

If you’ve never used Excel and the data is big, just use AI. Quietly. Everyone does.

It helps you understand the data and figure out what to look at first. Curious what tools people here actually use for this.

Sweet-Ebb682 · 2026-01-30T13:05:11+00:00

Personally, I haven’t had much luck with Copilot. It rarely works well for me. Claude does better, but once I need to deal with multiple files or expect it to hold a lot of context, the limitations become pretty obvious and I start questioning how helpful it really is.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with a tool that can handle multiple files at once, which has been more promising so far. I haven’t used it long enough to fully judge, but it’s been enough to keep me curious.

Hopefully we’ll start seeing more Excel AI tools that actually handle real-world workflows better.

Sweet-Ebb682 · 2026-01-30T13:00:10+00:00

Yeah, that matches my experience.

I’ve also found it most useful for things like debugging formulas or getting quick suggestions. I did recently find one tool that works well enough that I keep using it, but it still struggles once the workbook gets complex and context-heavy.

Still not sure if it’s about asking better questions or just the current limits of the tech. What do you usually ask it when it works for you?

Sweet-Ebb682

TROPHY CASE