This tutorial covers the Microsoft 365 Copilot, accessed through a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. This is distinct from the consumer Copilot, which is a separate product with some overlapping features.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is powered by three key features.
First, Work IQ, which is the intelligence behind Microsoft 365 Copilot. It securely uses your work context, such as files, meetings, messages, and tasks, to deliver relevant help in the moment. So it knows about your specific organization, and your work.
Second, a consistent, easy-to-find entry point that opens Copilot right where you’re working, and changes its behavior depending on what you’re doing at the time.
Third, agentic capabilities. Copilot can work with you to plan, build, and edit directly in the app you’re working in. In Excel, this is the feature that matters most, and we’ll spend a good deal of this module on it.
I’ll assume you already know how to launch Excel, move around a worksheet with your screen reader, select ranges, enter formulas, and use the ribbon with the Alt key.
Throughout this tutorial I’ll be using Narrator. The keystrokes and behaviors I describe mostly also work with JAWS and NVDA, with only minor differences in how the screen reader phrases what it announces.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is continuously improving, and the experience you have today may not exactly match the screens, menu options, or screen reader announcements described in this tutorial. Microsoft regularly updates features in response to customer feedback, including feedback from people who use access technologies.
Although the interface may change, the fundamental skills remain the same: understanding data you did not create, asking Copilot to explain what it sees, planning a piece of analysis before it happens, building and editing a workbook by describing what you want, and verifying the result. The goal of this tutorial is to teach those skills and concepts so that you can confidently use Copilot even as the product continues to evolve.
Why this module matters
For many blind professionals, Excel has been the application where the gap between what we can do and what our sighted colleagues can do feels widest. Not because the grid is inaccessible. The grid is fine. The gap opens up around everything that surrounds the grid. Judging the shape of an unfamiliar dataset. Spotting the outlier. Building a chart and knowing whether it communicates anything. Constructing a PivotTable through a series of dialogs. These are tasks where sighted users glance and know, and where we navigate, and count, and reconstruct.
Copilot in Excel changes the economics of that work. You describe the outcome you want, in words, and Copilot builds it using native Excel features. The result is a normal worksheet, a normal table, a normal chart object, which you then verify with the keyboard skills you already have.
Copilot does not replace your Excel knowledge. It removes the mechanical labor between you and the result, and then hands you something you still have to check.
What you need
To use Copilot in Excel, several things need to line up.
First, licensing. You need one of the following: a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription with an AI credits plan, a Microsoft 365 Premium subscription, a commercial Microsoft Copilot subscription, or a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 business or enterprise subscription that is eligible for Copilot Chat. In business environments, an administrator assigns the license. Inside the product you may see your tier described as Microsoft 365 Copilot Premium, which gives priority access, or Microsoft 365 Copilot Basic.
Second, where the file lives. Copilot in Excel works with workbooks stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, in the modern formats: .xlsx, .xlsb, and .xlsm. If you save your file in the Strict Open XML format, Copilot will not work with it. Microsoft historically required AutoSave to be switched on. As of the July 2026 update, Copilot also supports cloud workbooks with AutoSave off. If you want the simplest possible starting point, save to OneDrive and leave AutoSave on.
Third, and this one catches people out, your calculation mode. Copilot cannot edit a workbook when Calculation Options are set to Manual. Press Alt, M, X to reach Calculation Options on the Formulas tab and confirm that Automatic is selected.
Fourth, connected experiences. Open File, then Account, then Account Privacy, then Manage Settings, and confirm that experiences analyzing your content, and all connected experiences, are switched on. Organizations that lock these down will find Copilot silently absent.
Fifth, your update channel and build. Copilot features arrive in Current Channel and Monthly Enterprise Channel. Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel does not support Copilot. To check, press Alt, F, D, and review your Office account information, where you’ll find both your version and your update options.
Where Copilot lives in Excel
Microsoft has consolidated the way you reach Copilot across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single control called the Dynamic Action Button. Sighted users see it as a button sitting in the lower right corner of the sheet area. It’s dynamic because what it offers changes depending on what you’re doing.
When the pane is closed, Alt+C moves focus to the button. When the pane is already open, use the F6 key to cycle back to the Copilot pane.
One thing to leave behind. For a while, Excel offered a worksheet function called COPILOT, which let you write a prompt directly into a cell. This function is no longer available. If you built anything on it, move that work into the Copilot pane.
Getting around the Copilot pane
Let me open the pane and walk you through what’s in it.
I press Alt+C.
PAUSE FOR NARRATOR. Copilot button.
I press Enter.
PAUSE FOR NARRATOR. Copilot pane, chat edit box.
Focus lands in the edit box at the bottom of the pane, which is where you type your requests. From there, Tab and Shift+Tab move you through the controls, and the arrow keys move you through content.
Working outward from that edit box, here’s what you’ll find.
The mode selector sits above the edit box. This is where you choose between allowing Copilot to edit your workbook, asking it to plan first, or restricting it to chat only. Reach it with Shift+Tab from the edit box, then use the arrow keys to change the setting. Get comfortable with this one, because in Excel your choice of mode changes what happens to your data.
There’s a control for adding work content and choosing skills, which lets you point Copilot at another file or invoke a specific skill. We’ll come to skills later in the module.
There’s a Stop button in the lower right of the input area, available while Copilot is working. Tab to it and press Enter if you’ve asked for the wrong thing. There’s the conversation itself, a list of your prompts and Copilot’s responses, which you navigate with the arrow keys.
There’s a menu icon at the top left of the pane which opens your previous conversations, so you can return to something you asked last week.
And there’s a settings menu at the top right, where personalization and skill management live.
A word about Narrator’s scan mode, because it makes a real difference here. Turn scan mode off, with Caps Lock plus Space, when you’re typing a prompt or tabbing between controls. Turn scan mode on when you want to read Copilot’s response with the arrow keys. Switching deliberately between the two is the single habit that makes the Copilot pane feel comfortable rather than fiddly.
To get from the pane back to your data, press F6, or Ctrl+F6, until Narrator announces a cell reference such as B2. Hearing a cell reference is how you know you’re back in the grid.
The three modes, and why they matter more in Excel
In Word, if Copilot does something you dislike, you read the paragraph and you fix it. In Excel, Copilot can add sheets, rewrite formulas, apply formatting, and restructure a table in a single turn. So choosing the right mode before you press Enter is a genuine safety habit, not bureaucracy.
There are three.
Allow editing is the default. Copilot changes the workbook directly, and you watch it work. Plan asks Copilot to write out the steps it intends to take and wait for your approval before it touches anything.
Chat only guarantees that nothing in your workbook changes. Copilot reads your data, analyzes it, and answers you in the pane.
In my own use of Copilot in Excel, I’ve found it helpful to start in Chat only when the workbook matters and you did not build it. Move to Plan when you want something built and you want to know what’s coming. Use Allow editing when the task is small, well understood, and easily undone.
Chat only: understanding a workbook you did not create
Let’s start here, because this is the mode that solves the problem I described at the top of the module.
A colleague sends you a workbook. You need to say something intelligent about it in a meeting in 20 minutes. Traditionally, you would arrow around, work out where the data starts and stops with Ctrl+Arrow keys, count the columns, and build a mental model. That process works, and it is slow.
I have a sales workbook open. I press F6 to reach to the Copilot button or ALT+C, then press Enter to open the pane.
I press Shift+Tab to reach the mode selector, and choose Chat only.
PAUSE FOR NARRATOR. Chat only.
Now I return to the edit box, and I type:
“Describe the structure of this workbook. Tell me how many sheets there are, what each one contains, which columns are in each table, and where the data starts and ends.”
I press Enter.
PAUSE FOR NARRATOR. Response generated.
That single prompt gives you, in prose, the orientation that would otherwise take several minutes of navigation. Read it with the arrow keys in scan mode.
Now I can go further:
“What are the three most significant trends in this data, and which specific cells or ranges support each one?”
Notice the second half of that prompt. Asking for the supporting ranges converts Copilot’s answer into something you can verify. When Copilot tells you that revenue in the Northeast fell sharply in the third quarter and points you to a range, you press Ctrl+G, type the range, and go and listen to the numbers yourself.
Copilot also provides citations in its text answers, presented visually as small superscript numbers you can activate to see the source data. Treat the ranges Copilot names in its prose as your primary verification route, since that route works entirely from the keyboard.
Some other prompts worth keeping for this mode:
“Are there any blank cells, duplicated rows, or inconsistent data types in this table? Tell me exactly where.”
“Explain the formula in cell F14 in plain language, including what it depends on.”
“Which rows fall outside the normal range for this dataset, and by how much?”
That first one deserves a mention of its own. Data quality problems are visually obvious to sighted users and invisible to us. Asking Copilot to audit a table before you rely on it is one of the highest-value habits in this entire module.
Draft with Copilot: starting from a blank workbook
Now let’s build something.
Copilot in Excel does not require existing data. You can start from an empty workbook and describe what you want.
I have a new, empty workbook saved to my OneDrive. I press F6 and Enter to open the pane. Editing is enabled by default, so I can go straight to my prompt:
“Create a simple project tracker with columns for task name, owner, start date, due date, status, and percentage complete. Make it a formatted Excel table, add a dropdown for status with the values Not started, In progress, Blocked, and Complete, and add a summary row at the top showing how many tasks sit in each status.”
I press Enter.
PAUSE FOR NARRATOR. Copilot is working.
Copilot builds that structure using native Excel features. The table is a real Excel table. The dropdown is real data validation. The counts are real formulas. Everything it produces, you can edit, audit, and extend in the ordinary way.
When it finishes, review its work, and then accept it with the Done button, or reverse it. Copilot’s changes go through Excel’s normal undo stack, so Ctrl+Z works, and your file’s version history in OneDrive gives you a second line of defense.
Drafting with reference to your own files Copilot becomes considerably more useful when it can see the material you already have.
Use the add content control in the prompt area to reference another file. Tab to it from the edit box and press Enter, and you can browse your OneDrive and SharePoint, or bring in work content. In business environments, Copilot can also ground its answers in web content and in your organization’s information, and you control both from the sources menu.
Excel also offers a dedicated route for pulling data across from another workbook. You can ask Copilot to retrieve data from other Excel workbooks saved in your OneDrive or SharePoint, and it will bring the relevant range into your current file.
Typing a forward slash opens a picker for files, people, and meetings. You can also name the file in plain language in your prompt.
As always, Copilot only reaches files you already have permission to open, your data stays inside your organization’s Microsoft 365 boundary, and Microsoft does not use it to train public-facing models.
Plan mode: building a monthly budget tracker This is the section I would most like you to try for yourself, because Plan mode was, in my view, designed for people who cannot glance at a screen and see what just happened.
In Plan mode, Copilot writes out the steps it intends to take, in words, before it takes them. You read the plan. You change your mind, or you refine your request. Then you tell it to proceed. Nothing touches your workbook until you say so.
Let’s build a monthly budget tracker from nothing. I have a blank workbook saved to OneDrive. I press F6 and then Enter to open the Copilot pane.
I press Shift+Tab to reach the mode selector and choose Plan.
PAUSE FOR NARRATOR. Plan.
Now I return to the edit box and type a genuinely multi-step request:
“Build a monthly budget tracker for a household. Include an income section and an expense section with categories for housing, utilities, groceries, transport, insurance, health, savings, and discretionary spending. Give me one column for each month of the year and a totals column. Add a summary section at the top showing total income, total expenses, and the surplus or deficit for each month. Use a dropdown for the category column, format all money as currency, highlight any month where expenses exceed income, and add a chart comparing income and expenses across the year.”
I press Enter.
PAUSE FOR NARRATOR. Plan generated.
Copilot now presents a step-by-step plan describing the actions it proposes to take. This is ordinary text in the pane, so read it with the arrow keys in scan mode, exactly as you would read any response.
Read the plan carefully. If Copilot has misunderstood something, say so. You can refine your request, and Copilot will produce an updated plan. If a step is missing, ask for it now, because a plan is far easier to change than a workbook.
When the plan says what you want, activate the Proceed button to approve it.
PAUSE FOR NARRATOR. Copilot is working.
Copilot now executes each step, and the workbook fills in around you.
Now, before you do anything else, go and check the result. Press F6 until Narrator announces a cell reference, then work through what Copilot built.
Press Ctrl+Home to get to the top of the sheet. Arrow through the summary section and listen to what’s there. Press Ctrl+Down arrow to move by regions and find where each section starts and ends. Land on a totals cell and listen to the formula in the formula bar with F2, or read it with your screen reader. Land on a category cell and confirm the dropdown announces itself. Press Ctrl+Page Down to check whether Copilot created additional sheets.
For the chart, press F5 or Ctrl+G, then Tab to Special, choose Objects, and press Enter, which selects the chart objects on the sheet. You can also open the Selection Pane with Alt, H, F, D, P, which lists every object on the sheet by name and lets you move through them with the arrow keys.
If some part of it isn’t right, you don’t start again. Stay in the pane and refine:
“Move the savings row out of the expenses section and into its own section below the summary.”
“Add a second chart showing expenses by category as a percentage of the total.”
“The discretionary category should be the last row in the expense section, not the first.”
This is the workflow I want you to internalize. Plan, read, approve, verify, refine. Four steps, and the workbook you end up with is one you understand, because you read the plan that built it.
Edit mode: analyzing, charting, and tabulating an existing workbook
Now let’s work with data that already exists, and let Copilot edit directly.
I have a workbook containing a year of sales transactions. I press F6 and Enter to open the pane. Allow editing is the default mode, so I’m ready to go. Copilot can add and rename sheets, insert and change values, apply conditional formatting, borders, and font styles, add data validation, create structured tables and named ranges, write formulas that work across several sheets, and create charts, PivotTables, and dashboards. Its charts and PivotTables link back to your source data, so they refresh in the normal way.
Let me run through a realistic sequence.
First, structure:
“Convert the data on the Transactions sheet into a formatted Excel table named SalesData, and add a column calculating gross margin as a percentage of revenue.”
PAUSE FOR NARRATOR. Copilot is working.
Then, analysis:
“Create a PivotTable on a new sheet with the sum of revenue, with month in rows and product category in columns.”
Then, visualization:
“Add a clustered column chart based on that PivotTable, comparing revenue by category across the year. Give it a descriptive title.”
Then, attention:
“Highlight every row in SalesData where the gross margin falls below 15%.”
Then, explanation:
“Explain what the chart shows in three sentences, and tell me which two categories drive most of the variation.”
That last prompt matters more than it might appear. Asking Copilot to describe the object it just created gives you, in text, what a sighted colleague gets by looking at it. Build the chart, then ask what the chart says. Then verify the claim against the numbers.
Now, a word about reviewing Copilot’s edits, because there’s a real limitation here.
While Copilot works, you’ll hear it reason through what it’s doing, and you can stop it. When it finishes, activate the Done button to accept its changes, or Undo to reverse them.
Excel signals which cells Copilot changed by highlighting them on the grid, and marks modified sheets with a green dot on the sheet tab. Those cues are visual, and with screen readers we need to read Copilot’s chat responses manually, including its description of the changes it made. To review the corresponding changes in the grid, use the Speak Cells feature after the chat response identifies the affected areas. Microsoft is working to improve this experience so that grid changes can be read directly as part of a Review Changes feature.
Till then our verification workflow has to be a little different, and a little more deliberate.
Ask Copilot to tell you what it changed. A prompt such as “list every cell, range, and sheet you just modified, and what you changed in each one” produces exactly the audit trail the visual cues would have given you.
Work in a copy when the stakes are high. Version history in OneDrive gives you an escape route, but a duplicate file gives you a comparison.
Make changes in small batches, and verify after each one. A single-step change you can check in 30 seconds is much easier to trust than eight steps you have to unpick.
And use Plan mode for anything substantial. Reading the plan up front is currently the best substitute we have for seeing the highlighting afterwards.
Two limits worth knowing
Copilot works with Excel tables of up to 2 million cells. Some capabilities, including formula column suggestions, highlighting, sorting, and filtering, have no such limit.
And Copilot works best with structured data: a table or range with a single header row, one kind of thing in each column, and no merged cells scattered through it. If Copilot struggles with a workbook, the shape of the data is very often the reason. Asking Copilot to tidy the structure first, in its own turn, frequently unblocks everything that follows.
Skills: teaching Copilot to do your repeatable tasks
If you do the same piece of work every month, you should not have to write the same paragraph-long prompt every month. Skills solve that.
A skill is a set of instructions Copilot follows when you invoke it. Microsoft supplies some, and you can write your own.
To use one, open the Copilot pane, Tab to the add work content control in the prompt area, and choose Choose skills. You can also invoke a skill directly by typing an at sign followed by its name, in the same way you would mention someone in a chat application. Microsoft’s own skills include at brandkit, which applies your organization’s brand colors and fonts, and at theme-design.
To manage them, open the settings menu at the top right of the pane, presented as three dots, and choose Manage skills. Switching a skill off there simply means Copilot won’t reach for it on its own. You can still call it explicitly with an at mention.
Now, custom skills, which is where this gets interesting for those of us who care about consistency.
From that same Manage skills area, choose Custom skills, then Create OneDrive folder, then Open skills folder. Inside that folder, each skill is a subfolder containing a file called SKILL.md. That file is plain text. It begins with a short block giving the skill a name and a description, marked off by three hyphens above and below, and then the rest of the file is simply your instructions, written in ordinary language.
That is genuinely good news for us. Authoring a skill means writing a text file, not navigating a dialog. If you can write an email, you can write a skill.
Here’s an example worth building. Create a skill called monthly-report that instructs Copilot to format every report the way your organization expects: currency with your preferred symbol and two decimal places, your date format, bold headers, banded rows, a totals row at the bottom, and a named summary sheet at the front. Then, every month, you type at monthly-report along with your request, and the output arrives in house style without you having to describe it again.
After you add or rename a skill folder, use Refresh in the skills area so Copilot picks it up.
Personalization: teaching Copilot how you like things done
Skills handle specific tasks. Personalization handles your standing preferences, everywhere, all the time.
Open the Copilot pane, open the settings menu at the top right, and choose Personalization. You’ll find an edit field where you write your preferences in plain language. Save them, and they take effect on your next prompt.
Microsoft’s own examples give you the flavor:
“Always format currency with a dollar prefix and two decimal places.”
“Use the date format DD-MMM-YYYY.”
“Apply banded rows and a bold header to every table you create.”
“Default to a clustered column chart unless I ask for something else.”
Let me suggest some additions that are worth their weight for screen reader users.
“Always put data in a formatted Excel table with a single header row.”
“Never merge cells.”
“Always place a chart on its own sheet, and always give charts and their axes descriptive titles.”
“After making changes, list every range you modified.” “Give each new sheet a descriptive name rather than Sheet1.”
Every one of those preferences makes the resulting workbook easier for us to navigate. Merged cells, unnamed sheets, and untitled chart objects are minor annoyances for a sighted user and significant obstacles for us. Personalization lets you rule them out once, permanently, instead of asking every time.
Your preferences are saved to your account, not to the file. They apply to all your workbooks and every Copilot in Excel session, on any device where you sign in, and nobody else sees them. If a particular prompt contradicts a saved preference, the prompt wins for that turn.
There’s a related feature worth mentioning. Where personalization follows you, rules follow the file. Copilot can store workbook-level guidance inside the workbook itself, on a sheet named dot Rules, which means a colleague who opens that file gets the same guidance you set. Use personalization for how you work, and rules for how a particular workbook should be treated.
Choosing your model
At the top right of the pane you’ll find a model picker, set to Auto by default, which lets Excel choose. Copilot in Excel supports current models from both OpenAI and Anthropic, and your choice applies only to the session you’re in.
You need a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription or a Microsoft 365 Premium subscription to switch models, and in an enterprise, your administrator must first enable Anthropic as a Microsoft sub-processor before Claude models appear.
For most work, leave it on Auto. If you have a piece of analysis that’s genuinely intricate, trying a different model is a reasonable thing to do before concluding that Copilot cannot handle it.
When Copilot isn’t there
If you press F6 and find no Copilot button, work through this list before concluding that something is broken.
Check that your license is assigned and active. Press Alt, F, D to review your account, and use Update License if it looks stale.
Check where your file lives. A local file, or a file in an unsupported format, will limit or disable Copilot.
Check whether the file is checked out in SharePoint, which produces an unsupported file state. Check it back in, or open the file in Excel for the web.
Check your update channel. Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel does not support Copilot.
Check your privacy settings, in File, Account, Account Privacy, Manage Settings.
In Excel for the web, check that your browser allows third-party cookies.
And check the corner. If you’re looking for a Copilot button on the ribbon and cannot find it, remember that it may have moved to the canvas as the Dynamic Action Button, where F6 will find it.
Verifying
Copilot makes mistakes. Not often, and less than it used to, but it does, and in Excel the consequences are different from a badly worded paragraph. A wrong formula propagates. A misread column heading produces a confident answer to a question you did not ask.
Microsoft’s own guidance is blunt on this point, and I agree with it: avoid relying on Copilot for decisions in sensitive areas such as finance, legal, or medical matters without checking the underlying work yourself. So build these habits.
Check the formulas, not the numbers. Land on a cell Copilot created and read the formula. A total that looks right can still be summing the wrong range.
Check the edges. Press Ctrl+Down arrow and Ctrl+Right arrow from the top of a range and confirm the data ends where Copilot said it does. Off-by-one ranges are the most common quiet failure.
Ask for the supporting ranges whenever Copilot makes a claim about your data, then go and listen to those ranges. Ask Copilot to list what it changed, since the visual highlighting is not available to us.
And remember that Copilot describes what is in your workbook, not what is true. If the source data is wrong, Copilot will analyze the wrong data beautifully.
Working effectively, lessons learned
Some hard-earned lessons from using Copilot in Excel as a screen reader user.
First, choose your mode before you type. Chat only when you’re exploring, Plan when you’re building, Allow editing when the task is small. In Excel, this single habit prevents most of the trouble you would otherwise get into.
Second, prompt with structure and with named columns. “Analyze this” gives you generalities. “Compare revenue by region for the last four quarters, tell me which region declined most, and give me the ranges that show it” gives you something you can act on and verify. Naming your columns and ranges explicitly is the biggest single improvement most people can make to their prompts.
Third, learn the three keystrokes that matter. F6 opens Copilot and moves you between the pane and the grid. Shift+Tab from the edit box reaches the mode selector. Ctrl+F6 gets you back to your data, and you know you’ve arrived when Narrator announces a cell reference.
Fourth, ask Copilot to describe what it built. Charts, PivotTables, and conditional formatting are visual by nature. A prompt asking what the chart shows converts an inaccessible object into readable text. Use it every time.
Fifth, invest an hour in personalization and one custom skill. That hour buys back structure, naming, and formatting decisions on every workbook you touch from then on. It is the highest-leverage hour in this module.
Sixth, verify in the grid, not in the pane. Copilot’s account of its own work is a starting point. Your keyboard is the check.
And finally, give Microsoft feedback. Use the feedback controls in the product, and be specific about what you needed and did not get. Over the past two years, feedback from blind users has played a key role in significantly improving the experience.
A final word
We’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve asked questions about a workbook without changing it, drafted new structures from nothing, referenced files we already had, planned an analysis before running it, built a monthly budget tracker end to end, edited and charted an existing dataset, taught Copilot our repeatable tasks with skills, and taught it our standing preferences with personalization.
For blind professionals, this is significant. Excel has always rewarded people who could see the shape of their data quickly. Copilot narrows that gap considerably. It does not close it entirely, and I’ve been direct with you about where it falls short. But the direction of travel is unmistakable, and the ground it has covered in the past two years is remarkable.
Start small. Open a workbook a colleague sent you, switch to Chat only, and ask Copilot to describe it. That one prompt, on that one file, will tell you more about the value of this tool than anything I can tell. Then build something in Plan mode, read the plan, and press Proceed.