What is Copilot in Excel?
Copilot in Excel helps you build and edit workbooks. 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. For more information, see Get started with Copilot in Excel.
What can Copilot in Excel do?
Copilot in Excel supports a growing set of capabilities, including editing worksheets, generating and transforming data, highlighting, sorting, and filtering your data, fetching information from the web, and searching your work files to provide context for responses.
Copilot in Excel offers three modes: edit, plan, or chat. In editing mode, Copilot in Excel edits your workbook directly based on your requests. Use plan mode to come up with a plan before editing your workbook. Use chat mode to keep Copilot responses contained within your chat.
For more information about capabilities, see Get started with Copilot in Excel. For information about data sources, see Copilot in Excel data sources.
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.
How does Copilot in Excel differ from Copilot Chat?
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 is grounded in data from the web and offers conversational assistance across Microsoft 365 apps. To learn more, see Overview of Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. To access agents such as Analyst or Researcher, use Copilot Chat.
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. If you need to revert your changes, you can undo changes or view prior versions.
- 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. To learn more about the evaluation process, see An Inside Look at Copilot in Excel.
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.
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.