Workbooks are Compound’s most powerful file type. The agent can build models from scratch, write and audit formulas, create charts, restructure sheets, and pull tables out of PDFs into clean Excel structures — all from natural-language prompts. Every edit is versioned and reviewable before you accept it.
Ask the agent to edit a workbook
Either upload an existing spreadsheet — Excel (.xlsx, .xlsm) or tabular data (.csv, .tsv) — or let the agent create a workbook for you. Then talk to it the way you would a junior analyst:
- “Pull the income statement from this 10-K into a clean three-statement template.”
- “Add a sensitivity table for revenue growth and EBITDA margin on the DCF sheet.”
- “Rewrite the COGS formulas to reference the assumptions block.”
The agent streams its plan, then makes the edits in place. When the edit involves formulas, it walks through the formula structure in the chat thread so you can sanity-check before clicking into the sheet.
Pointing the agent at specific cells
You don’t have to describe a range in words — you can select cells directly. With the workbook open in Canvas View, highlight a range and a ghost “Add to message” chip appears in the chat composer. Click it to commit the range; the chip changes to show the range with an × you can use to dismiss. When you send the message, the agent receives that range as the focused context.
A message can carry one committed selection at a time. To switch to a different range, dismiss the current chip with × and highlight the new range.
Review changes in Canvas View
Workbook edits appear in the chat as they happen, and Canvas View opens automatically — a full-width spreadsheet you can watch the agent work in. If you’ve closed Canvas, click the file card in the chat to reopen the workbook. From Canvas View you can:
- Review — enters diff mode to compare two versions. The initial display is an overlay showing what changed inline; flip the Split View toggle in the toolbar to see the two versions side by side. Click Exit review to return to the latest version. Review appears once there’s more than one version to compare.
- Full Screen — maximize the workbook; Exit Full Screen to return.
- Versions — jump to any prior version, preview it, and either restore it with Save this version as the latest or close the preview without changing anything.
Versions are created automatically for every agent edit and every manual save. You can always roll back.
Export a workbook
Open the workbook, then export to the format you need. The Export to Excel dialog includes two useful options:
- Include citation links as comments — attaches the agent’s source citations to the cells they came from, so a downstream reviewer can trace any number back to its source.
- Comment style — pick between Standard comments (Notes) and Threaded comments, depending on whether you want classic right-click notes or modern threaded discussions.
Work with large workbooks
Compound can handle multi-sheet workbooks with tens of thousands of rows. A few tips for getting the best results:
- Be specific about scope. “Recalculate revenue for the FY27 column” is easier to act on than “fix revenue.”
- Use selections instead of describing ranges. Highlighting
B5:F40is more reliable than typing “the second block on the Assumptions sheet.” - Break large tasks into multiple messages. “First build the structure, then we’ll populate it” beats a single 500-word prompt.
What to read next
- PDFs — extract tables from a PDF into a workbook.
- Drives and files — where workbooks live and how versions are tracked.
- Chats and the AI agent — how the conversation drives every workbook edit.