App Garden

Copilot Readiness Scanner

How to make a worksheet Copilot reads correctly

A step-by-step run through the add-in, from the first scan to a fix and back again. Ten minutes, and the scan and every explanation are free — only the fixes are paid.

What the problem actually is

Copilot does not fail on a messy sheet by saying it is confused. It answers, confidently, from whatever it managed to read — and a merged title, a blank column or a total row mixed into the data all change what it reads without changing what you see.

This add-in scores the active worksheet against the things known to do that, and attaches to each one a sentence saying why Copilot cares. The score is 100 minus 18 per blocker and 12 per degrader, floored at zero. It is blunt on purpose: it exists to be compared before and after a cleanup, not read as a grade. A sheet only reads Copilot-ready when nothing at all was found.

Before you start

Step 1 — Open the pane

Open the worksheet, then Home › Copilot readiness. The pane opens with one button and nothing else. It has not read anything yet.

The add-in pane, showing the Scan this sheet button, the free-tier note and the licence section.
Nothing happens until you press the button. The add-in never scans on its own.

Step 2 — Scan the sheet

Press Scan this sheet. It reads the used range once and reports a score, then the findings, worst first.

The score card reading 10, Copilot will get this wrong, Sales report A1:F9, 5 blockers of 5 findings, above the first finding card.
Ten out of a hundred, and five of the five findings are blockers. The line under the score names the sheet and the exact range that was read, so there is no doubt what was scored.

Everything here is free, on every sheet, forever: the scan, the score, and every explanation. This is one worksheet at a time — the active one. Whole-workbook scanning is not built, on any tier.

Step 3 — Read a finding

Each finding is one card, and each card says five things:

Two finding cards: merged cells in the data range, and title or banner rows above the header, each with an id, a severity, a location and a Why Copilot cares paragraph.
Show me selects the cells in Excel, so you can see the thing being described rather than take the pane's word for it.
  1. The check, named in plain words — “Merged cells in the data range”.
  2. An id and a severity, top right. STR-01 · BLOCKER. The id is stable, so it is the useful thing to quote in a support email.
  3. What was found, counted: “1 merged area sits inside the data.”
  4. Where — A1:F1, or a list of row or column numbers.
  5. Why Copilot cares. The paragraph in grey. Worth reading once per kind of finding; it is the part that tells you whether the finding matters in your workbook.

The colour down the left edge is severity. Red is a blocker — something that changes what Copilot reads. Amber is a degrader, which makes answers worse without breaking them. Grey is advisory, kept out of the score entirely.

Step 4 — Fix it Pro

On the free tier the fix button is still there, dashed and labelled with what it would do, so you can see the whole shape of the cleanup before paying for any of it.

The same two findings on the free tier, their Unmerge and Delete the banner rows buttons drawn dashed and suffixed Pro.
Dashed and suffixed Pro. Nothing is hidden on the free tier — the finding, the reason and the name of the fix are all there to act on by hand.

On a paid licence the button is live. Press it and, for a guided fix, the pane explains itself before it touches anything:

The Unmerge preview: what it will do, a before-and-after line for A1:F1, a note that a restore point is taken first, and Apply and Cancel buttons.
The preview is built from the same instruction Apply executes, so it cannot promise one thing and do another. Cancel costs nothing.

Press Apply and the pane writes the change, re-scans, and shows you the new score against the old one.

After the fix: the score has risen from 10 to 28, four blockers remain, and an Undo Unmerge bar has appeared at the top of the pane.
10 to 28, one blocker gone. The score moving is the point of it being blunt — the number is only meaningful next to the previous number.

Fixes are applied one at a time, deliberately. There is no “fix everything” button: several of these checks have more than one defensible answer, and a batch would hide which of them changed your sheet.

Step 5 — Restore, if you want it back

Restore is free on every tier, always. It does not lapse with a licence and it keeps working after one is cancelled — an add-in that can write to your workbook but charges to reverse it would be indefensible.

The restore bar: Undo Unmerge, with the time the restore point was taken and a note that it puts the whole sheet back.
The bar names the fix it will undo and the time the restore point was taken. It puts the whole sheet back, not just the cells the fix touched.

Use this rather than Ctrl+Z. What Excel's own undo does after an add-in writes to a sheet is not defined by Office and it varies by platform. This button is the reliable route.

Step 6 — Entering a licence key

Open Enter a licence key at the bottom of the pane, paste the key from the end of checkout, and press Activate. It takes effect immediately — no restart.

The licence section expanded, showing the key field, the Activate button and a link to prices.
Your key is shown on screen at the end of checkout rather than emailed. Lost it? Email support from the address you paid on.

If the pane ever says your licence is no longer active, it is almost always a card that expired. Scanning keeps working, and so does Restore.

What it checks, in full

Everything below is scored except the advisories, which are reported and left out of the number.

When it will not help

Exporting what it found Pro

The exports give you a row per finding for a spreadsheet or a ticket, and a Markdown summary to paste into a message. Both export the scan you are looking at, not a fresh one, so the file always agrees with the screen.

If something looks wrong

Email [email protected], and say which platform you are on and what the pane showed — the finding id is the useful thing to quote. If a scan reported something you believe is wrong, the workbook itself is the most useful thing you can send — but only send one you are content to share, and read the privacy notice first.