The power user who posted this question has put their finger on a real tension. They have Copilot in Excel, yet they still write formulas by hand because typing is faster. That is not a failure of the user. It is a signal that the tool, in its current form, has not yet earned a place in their muscle memory.
We think this is exactly where the conversation about AI in spreadsheets should live, not in abstract promises about replacing human effort, but in the honest gap between what a tool can do and what a skilled person actually needs. The user is not skeptical of AI. They are a power user who knows their own workflow. When you have spent years building the reflexes to type `=VLOOKUP` or `=INDEX/MATCH` in under two seconds, a chatbot that requires you to describe the problem, wait for a response, and then verify the output will feel like a detour. For that user, speed is authority. And right now, manual formulas still win on speed.
That does not mean AI is a novelty. It means the novelty is wearing off, and the real work of integration has begun. The tools that will succeed are not the ones that promise to think for you. They are the ones that learn when to get out of your way. A power user does not need a formula written for them. They need a formula suggested at the exact moment their cursor hesitates. They need a natural-language query that understands the context of the last ten columns they edited. They need assistance that feels less like a copilot and more like an extension of their own hands.
For the user who posted this, and for every other power user quietly testing the limits of AI in their spreadsheets, here is the practical takeaway: keep using the manual formulas. Keep testing the AI. The goal is not to replace your expertise with a prompt. The goal is to find the few, specific moments where AI can shave seconds off a repetitive task, or surface a pattern you would have missed. That is where the value lives. Not in the headline, but in the margin.