Microsoft Excel’s new Copilot feature is an AI-powered tool that helps users work faster and smarter by integrating advanced generative AI directly into Excel’s interface and formulas. Here are key points about the Excel Copilot feature:
- The Copilot function allows users to enter natural language commands in spreadsheet cells to perform tasks like categorizing data, summarizing feedback, generating tables, brainstorming ideas, and analyzing data trends.
- Users can invoke the feature using the formula syntax:
=COPILOT(prompt, optional data references)
, enabling AI-powered results that update dynamically as the data changes. - It works alongside existing Excel functions (e.g., IF, SWITCH, LAMBDA) and integrates into Excel’s calculation engine.
- Copilot can help import data from web sources, OneDrive, SharePoint, or organizational communications.
- It can highlight, filter, and sort data, create and explain formulas, and generate charts, pivot tables, and data insights like trends and outliers.
- The AI only works with data within the spreadsheet and cannot access external data sources unless imported explicitly.
- Excel Copilot is accessible via an icon in the ribbon or a sparkle icon in a cell, opening a chat interface for easy prompting.
- It requires files to be saved in Microsoft cloud services like OneDrive or SharePoint to function.
- Microsoft assures users that data processed by Copilot is never used to train AI models, maintaining user confidentiality.
- The feature is currently rolling out to Windows and Mac users on the Beta Channel with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, with web versions forthcoming.
- Microsoft warns against relying on Copilot in “high-stakes” scenarios due to potential inaccuracies and limits its use to 100 functions every 10 minutes.
Microsoft Excel Copilot aims to make complex data tasks simpler by allowing users to interact with their data using natural language and AI-driven assistance directly within their spreadsheets.