You can't judge a tool you've never driven
You can't judge a tool you've never driven, and right now the loudest opinions about Copilot are coming from people who've spent more time typing about it than into it.
The fastest route past both the hype and the dread is unglamorous: open the thing and click around for an afternoon. If you're starting from zero, that's the whole assignment - not the comment section, not the "17 prompts that will change your career" post, not somebody else's verdict on whether it "gets" Excel. Yours, formed in about ninety minutes, based on what actually happened when you tried it.
Reading first feels like the responsible move
It's not a dumb instinct. New tool, unfamiliar territory, no obvious first step - reading what other people found feels like due diligence before you commit any time. Nobody wants to look silly typing a prompt that goes nowhere.
The problem is that "due diligence" here mostly means absorbing someone else's frustration with a version of the product you haven't touched, in an app you may never open, solving a problem that isn't yours.
Secondhand opinions expire the moment you read them
Copilot ships changes monthly. A hot take from three months ago is describing a product that no longer exists in the form the writer experienced it. You're not getting a stable verdict, you're getting a snapshot with the expiry date sanded off.
Worse, opinion without hands-on time doesn't transfer into anything useful. You can memorise ten arguments about whether Copilot "understands" a spreadsheet and still not know what button opens it in Excel. All calibration, no muscle memory - and calibration you imported from a stranger, not one you built yourself.
Give it one real task, not a demo
Open Copilot in whichever M365 app you already live in. Feed it something from your actual work, not a textbook example - a real email to summarise, a real range to explain, a real first draft to rough out. Watch what it gets right, watch what it botches, and now you have an opinion with your name on it.
That's the whole exercise for today. For the guided version with an actual worksheet in front of you, Magic Monday walks through Copilot in Excel step by step. If ninety minutes still feels like a lot, your first Copilot prompt gets you there in about three.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a paid Copilot license to try this, or does the free version count?
The free version tied to your Microsoft account is enough for a first afternoon. You'll hit limits on context and app coverage before you hit a wall worth worrying about as a beginner - the paid tier matters once you already know what you're missing.
Which app should a total beginner start in?
Whichever one you already use daily. Copilot's value on day one comes from working with content you understand well enough to judge the output, not from picking the "best" app for a demo.
Is it safe to point Copilot at real work data?
Check your organisation's Copilot data policy before you paste anything sensitive in - most enterprise tenants have this locked down appropriately, but "most" isn't "yours." If you're unsure, use a real task with dummy data rather than a fake task with real data.
What if my first prompt doesn't work at all?
That's data, not failure. A prompt that produces nothing useful tells you more about how to phrase the next one than any listicle will. Rephrase it as if you were briefing a smart new hire with no context, and try again.
How long does it actually take to form a real opinion?
Less than you think. Most people know within twenty minutes whether Copilot is going to earn a place in their workflow or not. The other seventy minutes are just for confirming it.
Nobody has ever formed a good opinion about a tool from someone else's opinion of it. Open the thing - you'll have yours by lunch.