Tip: Not yet a subscriber? Start your Microsoft 365 trial and experience Copilot today.
Editing with Copilot in Excel lets you build and edit workbooks side by side with Copilot. When you're updating budgets, creating financial models, or analyzing data, Copilot uses Excel's most powerful tools like tables, charts, PivotTables, and formulas to help you get the job done.
Copilot updates your workbook using Excel's built-in features, so your content stays editable and synced with the latest changes. You're in control of everything that's modified—at any time.
Note: Editing with Copilot was previously marketed as "Agent Mode". As Copilot’s agentic capabilities become more integrated into everyday workflows, we’re simplifying the language and focusing on the experience rather than a separate “mode.” The capability is still there — it’s just becoming a standard part of how Copilot works.
Editing with Copilot is great for complex, multi-step tasks like reshaping data, merging sheets, or building reports with multiple elements. Note that for complex requests, Copilot may take a few minutes to generate an initial response and refine it, while it's running, you’ll see its reasoning in the pane. For conversational help and tasks that won’t change your workbook, M365 Copilot Chat without editing may be a better choice. For simple, one-step tasks—like inserting a single chart or PivotTable—Excel’s Recommended Charts and Recommended PivotTables may be faster.
Before you edit with Copilot in Excel, please note the following:
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Editing with Copilot in Excel requires either a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription (with an AI credits plan), a Microsoft 365 Premium subscription, a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, or a Copilot Chat-eligible Microsoft 365 or Office 365 business or enterprise subscription.
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Copilot uses the latest and greatest models available to you by default. Premium subscribers can switch between Anthropic models and Open AI models using the model picker.
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For both Open AI and Anthropic models, editing with Copilot in Excel is currently supported in English (US), Spanish (Spain, Mexico), Japanese, French (France, Canada), German, Portuguese (Brazil), Italian and Chinese (Simplified). For the latest Open AI models, Korean, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Norwegian (Bokmål), Turkish, Danish, Finnish, Chinese Traditional, Thai, Czech, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Russian are also supported.
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Quality support for additional languages are coming soon.
How to edit with Copilot in Excel
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Create a new workbook in Excel for the web.
Tip: Use https://excel.new to quickly create new Excel workbooks.
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Select Home > Copilot to open the pane.
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When you open Copilot, editing is on by default. You’ll know Copilot is ready to edit if the Excel selector appears in the chat box.
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From Copilot Chat you can select the Tools menu and choose Edit with Copilot to allow direct edits to your workbook.
Prompts to try
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Create an annual financial close report for a bike shop business, including a breakdown of product lines across variance to budget (VTB) and year-over-year growth. Use dummy data for now, as well as standard financial formatting and best practices.
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Build a loan calculator that computes monthly payments based on user inputs for loan amount, annual interest rate, and term in years. Generate a schedule showing month, payment, principal, interest, and remaining balance. Present the results in a clear, formatted table.
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Create a monthly household budget tracker with categories like Rent, Groceries, Utilities, Entertainment, Transportation, and Savings. Apply conditional formatting and data bars for % Over/Under Budget. Add a summary section showing planned versus actual spending with a donut chart to visualize spending distribution.
What to expect
After you submit a prompt, Copilot analyzes your task and creates a step-by-step plan. It works directly in your document to carry out that plan, review the results, and evaluate whether the outcome matches your intent. To learn more about how editing with Copilot works, see the Building Agent Mode in Excel blog post.
You can watch Copilot's reasoning in the pane and see it make changes live in your workbook.
Copilot may take a few minutes before completing. While it's running, you’ll see its reasoning in the pane. To stop or pause at any time, press the Stop button in the chat input box.
Choose your model
Before submitting a prompt, you can select which model you prefer to use, Copilot in Excel supports the latest Anthropic and Open AI models available to you. To switch between models, use the model picker dropdown. You may also find the model picker collapsed into the settings menu.
If you have a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, your admin must allow access to Anthropic AI models by allowing "AI providers for other large language models" in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
Note: Using the model switcher to choose between models with Agent Mode in Excel requires a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription or a Microsoft 365 Premium subscription.
Learn more about using different models with Copilot in Excel.
Other notes and tips
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Be careful when editing with Copilot for sensitive or shared files. Copilot makes direct changes to your workbook. If you need to revert your changes, you can easily undo changes or view prior versions at any time.
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Editing with Copilot in Excel only works with the currently open workbook. It can't access other files, emails, or enterprise data.
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You can opt to disable Web Search for your session by selecting Sources > Web Search.
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Enterprise search, or integration with external tools are not yet supported.
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Editing with Copilot is only supported when Calculation Options are set to "Automatic".
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To send feedback, use the thumbs up/down buttons.
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For questions about licensing or access, enterprise users should contact their IT admin or Microsoft account representative.
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Performance and available features may change during early rollouts. You might notice some variability in response times as capacity evolves.
