3 things we’re covering today:

• A huge Copilot update
• More Python news for Excel
• How to send animated stickers on WhatsApp

​🎬 6 Simple ChatGPT Tricks I Wish I’d Known Sooner​

​

My latest video is all about how to use ChatGPT in smarter, more efficient ways!

Here’s a quick overview of each tip.

1. Remember Me - Custom Instructions: Click on your profile picture inside ChatGPT and you’ll see an option for ‘custom instructions’. This lets you explain who you are, your preferences, and how you want ChatGPT to respond every time you ask a question in future. This saves you a lot of time in future interactions!
2. Write Like You - Custom Writing Style: There’s also an option inside ChatGPT’s Custom Instructions called “How would you like ChatGPT to respond?”. There you can let ChatGPT know your preferred writing style by providing examples - making sure it sticks with your preferred tone and style.
3. Self-Critique: Here’s a super-powerful tip. Ask ChatGPT to analyze and critique its own text output. This will almost always enhance the quality of responses. For example: “are there any logical flaws in your argument”, or “did you say this as concisely as possible?”
4. Self-Prompting: Instruct ChatGPT to generate suitable prompts for specific tasks. This can save a lot of time, as you don’t have to think of the right questions to ask.
5. Make it Crisp: Control the length of responses by setting word count limits, allowing for concise replies.
6. Different Output Formats: Specify the desired output format for ChatGPT responses, such as tables, CSV, HTML, JSON, or others, to meet your specific needs.

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🤓 Geeky News

✈️ Copilot - A Major Update from Microsoft

Microsoft made a series of announcements and outlined their vision for their AI companion tool Copilot on Thursday.

Copilot will begin rollout to Windows 11 starting September 26th 2023. It will be a part of every app (including paint, photos, etc), and will include over 150 new features!

Here are some of the key changes:

1. AI Enhancements for Apps: Paint and Photos apps now incorporate AI features like background removal, layers, and background blur in Photos to improve digital creation and photo editing.
2. Microsoft Shopping: Use pictures to find what you need, or use Bing chat to summarize reviews and best choices.
3. Bing Search: Bing now remembers earlier conversations, so it can give you more personalized answers.
4. Microsoft 365 Copilot: This will be your AI assistant at work and will be available for enterprise customers on November 1. It will help us with tasks across Microsoft 365 apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more. It will include 365 Chat which can answer questions by combining information from the web as well as work data and personal user activity.
5. New Outlook for Windows: The updated Outlook for Windows integrates multiple email accounts, including Gmail, Yahoo, and iCloud, into one app and offers intelligent tools for email composition and document attachment. “Sound like me”, for example, personalizes any email to your voice. You can use plugins to connect with different applications.
6. Copilot Lab: This helps you get better at prompts by giving AI suggestions, and even letting you share good prompts with co-workers.
7. Designer + Word: There’s now Designer app integration in Word, letting you bring AI-created images into your documents. Designer is powered by OpenAI’s DALL-E.
8. Copilot in Excel: Microsoft also introduced Copilot support for Python in Excel combining the most exciting features of Excel and powerful analytics of Python. With Copilot you get to explain what you need in simple words and it will write the code for you: Here’s the video.

📊 Excel - Introducing the Python Editor from Excel Labs
Excel Labs has a new addition - Python Editor! It’s a dedicated code editor that lets you write and edit Python formulas in Excel!

It provides a dedicated code editor (similar to Python notebook environments), offering benefits like:

• Viewing the flow of code execution
• Support for longer sections of code
• Standard Visual Studio Code features
• Flexibility for intermittent coding workflows.

To access it, update the Excel Labs add-in or install it from the Add-ins Store, and then launch the Python Editor.

💚 My Favorite Things

🤪 Create Animated Stickers From Live Photos on Your iPhone
​Want to torment your friends and family with animated stickers on WhatsApp?

Look no further than this fun Howtogeek article, which shows you how to take a Live Photo with your iPhone and send it as a sticker on WhatsApp:

• Open a WhatsApp chat
• Tap the plus sign (attachment button) in the bottom left
• Press and hold a Live Photo and Choose "Select as GIF"
• WhatsApp will preview the Live Photo as a GIF
• Send!

🚀 Power Stories

I’m thrilled to have Veronica be a part of our XelPlus community!

Congratulations on completing our Automate with Power Query course Veronica. Sounds like amazing things lie ahead in your career!

Got a success story about using your XelPlus skills? I’d love to hear it! Hit reply to share the details, and inspire other students 😇

See you next week,

Leila

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