By Hiran de Silva
There’s a LinkedIn post doing the rounds by Dimple Saini, a chartered accountant promoting Copilot. She’s excited about it — who wouldn’t be? It’s the shiny new toy from Microsoft, tailor-made for those “five-minute eye-catching videos” that keep influencers in the algorithm’s good books.
Mark Proctor, to his credit, jumps in and points out the obvious: Microsoft’s own documentation explicitly says that Copilot is not suitable for IF logic, lookup formulas, or numerical calculations. It also says you should not use it for anything with legal, regulatory, or compliance implications.
Let’s pause on that. FP&A? Compliance? Finance processes? That’s the bulk of what many Excel professionals actually do. And Microsoft itself says Copilot is not suitable for that.
So why the breathless promotions?
Because here’s the game:
- Microsoft wants noise, hype, and momentum.
- Influencers want attention, engagement, and proximity to the mothership.
- Five-minute “new toy” videos don’t have space for caveats, context, or enterprise risk management.
And so the cycle continues: promotion first, caveats buried in the documentation nobody reads.
The Rome Visa Problem
Let me explain it this way.
Imagine you’re flying to Rome. Italy requires a visa, and the rules clearly say: “You need a visa for Italy.”
You arrive in Rome without a visa and try to argue: “But you didn’t specifically say Rome. You only said Italy.”
Good luck with that.
Common sense dictates that Rome is in Italy. Just as common sense dictates that if Microsoft says Copilot isn’t suitable for financial logic, it isn’t suitable for FP&A. You can’t hide behind technicalities just because the caveat wasn’t spelled out with the exact word you’d like to see.
The Literal vs. Lateral Problem
This is where literal thinking trips people up.
- Literal thinking: “The documentation only said X, it didn’t say Y.”
- Lateral thinking: “If X is true, then Y is implied. The risk is obvious.”
Mark Proctor, like many, gets stuck in the literal. He wants to play word games: if Microsoft hasn’t specifically written “don’t use Copilot for enterprise finance,” then maybe that loophole exists.
It doesn’t.
By the same logic, if the UK Highway Code says “Drive on the left,” you don’t get away with saying “Well, it didn’t explicitly ban driving on the right.” Try that with the police and see how far it gets you.
Why Microsoft Doesn’t Spell It Out
So why doesn’t Microsoft just put this in flashing lights?
Because they already have the technologies for enterprise processes. SQL Server, Azure, Power BI, Access. The “grown-up” stack. That’s where governance, compliance, and process resilience belong.
Excel and Copilot are not those tools. Excel can scale into enterprise territory — when designed properly, using its client-server, hub-and-spoke architecture — but that’s professional Excel. The kind that most influencers neither teach nor acknowledge.
And Microsoft? They don’t need to say “don’t use Copilot for enterprise.” It’s common sense, like visas for Rome.
The Ranty Bottom Line
Influencers will keep making glossy videos. Microsoft will keep feeding them shiny toys. Caveats will stay buried in footnotes and documentation.
But professionals — people actually responsible for compliance, finance, and enterprise processes — don’t get to plead ignorance.
If the documentation says “not suitable for financial logic” and you still use it in FP&A, that’s not Microsoft’s fault. That’s on you.
And if you think professional Excel doesn’t exist because the influencers don’t talk about it? That’s like saying you don’t need a visa for Rome because no one on Instagram mentioned it.
It’s time to stop playing literal word games and start applying lateral common sense.
👉 My challenge to you: Are you following the hype merchants down the Copilot rabbit hole? Or are you willing to stop, read the caveats, and think about what really belongs in enterprise-grade Excel?
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