Copilot in Excel helps you make sense of your data. Ask a question in your own words to surface summaries, trends, and outliers; generate formulas that calculate new values; and add summary rows, without building everything by hand. Use the prompt ideas in this article as starting points.
To open Copilot, select the Copilot icon in the lower-right corner of Excel, or select Home > Copilot on the ribbon. If you're new to Copilot in Excel, see Get started with Copilot in Excel.
Note
As with any AI-generated content, review, edit, and verify anything Copilot creates for you.
Find insights in your data
Ask Copilot about your data, and it returns insights as charts, PivotTables, summaries, trends, or outliers. The more specific your question, the more useful the answer. To get a result in a particular format, such as a PivotTable, say so in your prompt.
How many people in this list are still alive?
Which region had the highest and lowest sales?
Are there any outliers or anomalies in this data?
Tip
Be specific. Naming the columns you want Copilot to analyze produces more accurate results.
Get insights from text
When you have large sets of text—survey results, reviews, or feedback, Copilot can summarize it, identify key themes and sentiment, and add the results to your workbook as a new column. To verify a result, hover over the superscript number in the analysis to see the source data Copilot referenced.
Review the customer feedback on this sheet and identify major themes.
Summarize the comments.
Describe the bug reports in a professional tone using bullet points.
Generate formula columns and rows
Copilot can create new columns or rows that calculate values from your existing data, and explain how each formula works. It's useful for totals, profits, durations, and summary rows.
Add a column that calculates the profit margin for each product.
Add a column that shows each region's percentage of total sales.
Add a row that calculates the average revenue, ROI, and sales.
Generate single-cell formulas
For a precise calculation in one cell, Copilot can suggest a formula and explain how it works.
Calculate the percentage increase from cell A1 to cell B1.
Extract the first name from a full name in cell C1.
Calculate the difference between the values in cell D1 and E1.
Create lookups
Copilot can build cells that look up values from elsewhere in your workbook and return the matching data. For example, if you have a sheet with item stock quantities, Copilot can retrieve those values and display them in your inventory sheet. It recommends a formula such as XLOOKUP and adds a new column for the results.
Create a column that looks up the quantity in stock for each item from the inventory sheet.
Understand existing formulas
Formulas in large or inherited workbooks can be hard to read. Copilot can explain what a formula does and how. Select a cell with a formula, select the Copilot sparkle icon that appears next to it, and choose Explain this formula.