Get started with Copilot in Excel

Applies To
Excel for Microsoft 365 Excel for Microsoft 365 for Mac Excel for iPad Excel Web App

Copilot in Excel is an AI-powered chat experience that helps you get insights from and make changes to your data. Type what you want to do in your own words, and Copilot can help you get it done.

Screenshot shows Copilot in Excel identifying insights from existing data.

Note

If you don’t see Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote, it might not be included with your Microsoft 365 subscription or available based on your organization’s settings. Learn which Copilot license you have.

Not yet a subscriber? Start your Microsoft 365 trial and experience Copilot today.

What you can do with Copilot in Excel

  • Import data: Copilot can help you import data from the web, saved files in OneDrive or SharePoint, or communications from within your organization.
  • Highlight, sort, and filter your data: Use Copilot to highlight data you're interested in or to create custom filters. For example, you can ask Copilot to show cells that contain numbers, or filter for numbers greater than five.
  • Generate and understand formulas: Create new columns and rows that perform calculations based on your existing data. Copilot can also explain how each formula works.
  • Identify insights: Ask Copilot questions about your data. Copilot shows insights as charts, PivotTables, summaries, trends, or outliers.
  • Make formatting changes: Apply conditional formatting, sort and filter, or adjust basic formatting like font size, wrap text, or autofit rows across your tables.

Open Copilot in Excel

Select the Copilot icon in the lower-right corner of Excel, or select Home > Copilot on the ribbon. You can also select a specific cell and select the Copilot sparkle icon that appears next to it.

Sample prompts

These prompts are starting points. Copy and modify them to match your own data and tasks.

Get insights from your data

Copilot can suggest insights based on your table data or a question you ask. It can help with summaries, trends, and outliers, and return insights as charts or PivotTable objects.

Plot sales by category over time.

Show total sales for each product.

Show the growth of advertising sales from last year.

Make changes to your data

Copilot can format and edit your tables to organize and highlight data. It supports conditional formatting, sorting and filtering, and adjusting basic formatting like font size, wrapping text, or autofitting rows.

Highlight the top 10 values in the Sales column in green.

Highlight rows where Priority is Critical in red.

Filter to only show products made in Canada.

Add formula columns and rows

Copilot provides formula suggestions with an explanation of how each formula works.

Calculate total cost per product in a new column.

Add a column that calculates the total profit for each marketing campaign in 2022.

Add a column that calculates the number of days after the product launch event.

Perform advanced analysis

Copilot in Excel uses Python in Excel to get insights from your data without requiring Python expertise. It supports forecasting, clustering, classification, causal models, statistical tests, optimization, text analytics, and more.

Analyze this data using Python.

Run advanced analysis using Python.

Licensing and availability

For licensing and availability information, see Frequently asked questions about Copilot in Excel: How do I know if I have an eligible license?.

If you have questions about licensing or access, contact your IT admin or Microsoft account representative.

Learn more