What is Copilot in Excel?
Copilot in Excel is an AI-powered chat experience that lets you interact with your spreadsheets using AI models. You can use it to get insights, generate formulas, create charts and PivotTables, apply formatting, and make direct changes to your workbook, all by describing what you want to do.
What can Copilot in Excel do?
Copilot in Excel supports a growing set of capabilities:
- Workbook changes: Add, rename, and delete sheets; insert and modify cell values and ranges; apply conditional formatting, borders, font styles, and data validation rules; create structured tables; and manage workbook layout.
- Data creation and transformation: Generate data based on your prompts, perform calculations and apply formulas across multiple sheets, summarize data, and create or transform tables.
- Charts, PivotTables, and shapes: Create and edit charts, PivotTables, and shapes with editable links to source data. Generate dashboards, planning tools, and templates from scratch.
- Formatting and presentation: Apply consistent styling across sheets, format cells and columns based on your rules or inferred patterns, and customize chart appearance.
- Contextual awareness: Understand workbook structure, your current selection, and what's visible on screen. Work with data across multiple sheets, and attach files or work content to provide more context.
- Web search: Fetch information from the web to ground responses, with citations to the sites used. You can turn this on or off in the sources menu, or your IT admin can manage it centrally.
- Work search: Fetch information from your work context—files, emails, and meetings—to ground responses. You can turn this on or off in the sources menu, or add specific files using Add content.
How do I get started?
- Copilot in Excel works with Excel files (.xlsx, .xlsb, or .xlsm) saved to OneDrive or SharePoint with AutoSave turned on.
- To open the Copilot pane, select the Copilot icon in the lower-right corner of Excel or select Home > Copilot on the ribbon.
- Select a cell within your table or data range before using Copilot.
- Use the prompt guide button for tips and to choose the type of question you want to ask.
- Be specific in your prompts. The more detail you provide, the better Copilot can help. Specify table names, data ranges, and column headers when relevant. For deeper insights, ask Copilot to use Python for advanced analysis.
For more prompting tips, see Cooking up a great prompt: Getting the most from Copilot.
Why don't I have the Copilot button?
Copilot has specific requirements for app version, license, network, and privacy settings. If the Copilot button is missing and you think you should have it, verify that you meet the Microsoft 365 Copilot requirements.
If you meet those requirements, see How to find and enable missing Copilot button in Microsoft 365 apps for more troubleshooting tips.
How do I know if I have an eligible license?
Copilot in Excel requires one of the following:
- A Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription with an AI credits plan.
- A Microsoft 365 Premium subscription.
- A commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription.
- A Copilot Chat-eligible Microsoft 365 or Office 365 business or enterprise subscription.
To check your license, go to your Microsoft 365 account settings.
Which AI models can I use?
Copilot in Excel supports Claude models from Anthropic and GPT models from OpenAI for editing your workbooks. You can switch models or choose Auto to let Copilot pick one for you. Your choice applies only to the active session. When you close Excel, Copilot reverts to the default model.
Using the model switcher requires a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription or a Microsoft 365 Premium subscription. For enterprise customers, your admin must enable Anthropic as a Microsoft sub-processor before you can use Claude. For steps and more tips, see Copilot in Excel tips.
What languages does Copilot in Excel support?
Copilot in Excel supports prompts in many languages. Copilot was trained on sources predominantly in English and may not perform as well when prompts or data are in other languages.
Supported languages include English (US), Spanish, Japanese, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Korean, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Norwegian (Bokmål), Turkish, Danish, Finnish, Arabic, Thai, Hebrew, Czech, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Russian, Catalan, Indonesian, Greek, Slovak, Vietnamese, Slovenian, Croatian, Romanian, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Latvian, Estonian, Malay, Filipino, Maltese, Albanian, Serbian (Cyrillic and Latin), Icelandic, and Welsh.
For the full list, see Microsoft Copilot supported languages.
Can I use voice commands?
Yes. Select the microphone button in the Copilot pane to interact using voice. You can ask questions, request summaries, or get suggestions. You can interrupt audio responses, and Copilot responds to your new input.
How does Copilot in Excel differ from Copilot Chat and Analyst agent?
Copilot in Excel is the default experience when you open Copilot in Excel. It lets Copilot plan, run, and verify results directly in your workbook. It's best for complex, multi-step tasks that go beyond simple formulas, single PivotTables, or basic charts.
Copilot Chat offers conversational assistance across Microsoft 365 apps. It's suited for quick answers, drafting, and simple actions that don't require deep automation, multi-step reasoning, or direct workbook changes.
Analyst agent (if available in your organization) provides advanced, Python-powered data analysis across multiple files and formats. It's designed for data visualization and analysis in a chat-first experience.
Note
App Skills is no longer available for Copilot. Use Copilot in Excel or Analyst agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot instead. Advanced data analysis with Python and advanced text analysis previously available in App Skills don't currently have an equivalent capability.
What are the limitations of Copilot in Excel?
- AI-generated results: Copilot uses AI to generate suggestions and can sometimes make mistakes, misinterpret information, or produce inaccurate results. Avoid using Copilot for decisions in sensitive areas such as finance, legal, or medical topics.
- Direct workbook changes: When Copilot edits your workbook, changes are saved automatically. Anyone with access to the file can see those changes, including people in a coauthoring session.
- Version control: While you can roll back changes, it's recommended to work on a copy of critical or sensitive workbooks to protect your original data.
- Calculation settings: Copilot editing is only supported when Calculation Options are set to Automatic.
Can I trust Copilot's insights, formulas, and tables?
Copilot generates insights and formulas and explains them in fluent, grammatically correct language, but the content can be inaccurate or inappropriate. Review, edit, and verify anything Copilot creates before you rely on it. Report any objectionable content using the built-in feedback tools so we can continue to improve the feature.
Is the content original?
Copilot generates content based on language patterns from internet sources. Results may sometimes be similar to existing content, or Copilot may generate similar content for multiple people using the same prompt.
I got a message that says "Unsupported file state"
One possible cause is that the file is checked out in SharePoint. Check the file back in, then close and reopen it in Excel. If you can't check it back in, open the file in Excel for the web.
If your organization requires check-out for editing in SharePoint, Copilot in Excel on Windows or Mac won't work for files from that site. You can still use Excel for the web with those files.
Another possible cause is an unsupported file format, such as Strict Open XML Spreadsheet. Save the file in a modern format such as Excel Workbook (.xlsx).
How was Copilot in Excel evaluated?
Copilot in Excel was evaluated through extensive manual and automatic testing using Microsoft internal data and public sources, including custom datasets to check for offensive or malicious prompts and responses. User feedback is collected continuously to help improve the experience.
Performance is measured by:
- Response success rates.
- User satisfaction scores.
- Accuracy ratings based on benchmark tasks.
- Feedback from thumbs-up and thumbs-down interactions.
How can I use Copilot in Excel responsibly?
Copilot in Excel has been reviewed by Microsoft's Responsible AI team. We follow responsible AI principles to keep your experience safe and productive, and we use a responsible AI handling pipeline to reduce risks from harmful or inappropriate content.
Copilot in Excel can't currently be customized through the Microsoft 365 admin center. You choose what to ask Copilot based on your needs.
For more, see Microsoft's approach to responsible AI.
Where can I learn more about privacy?
Copilot and Microsoft 365 are built on Microsoft's comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy.
For more information about privacy, see the following information:
- If you're using Microsoft 365 Copilot in your organization (with your work or school account), see Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
- If you're using Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps for home (with your personal Microsoft account), see Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps for home: your data and privacy.
How do I provide feedback?
Select the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icons in the Copilot pane to share feedback. The product team reviews all feedback to help improve Copilot and prioritize future updates.
If you're a system administrator, you can also report issues or send feedback through Microsoft support channels or your account team.
How do IT administrators manage access?
Copilot in Excel is a Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat tool and can't be turned off independently. All admin settings for controlling access to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat apply.
How do I turn Copilot off in Excel?
If you have a Microsoft 365 Family or Personal subscription and want to turn Copilot off in Excel, see How to turn off Copilot in Microsoft 365 Family and Personal subscriptions.