Microsoft has announced in its Microsoft 365 Insider blog that Copilot in Excel can now reference documents in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF formats.
With this new feature, you can ask Copilot to display to-do items in a table or organize emails with columns for the sender and subject line. It also comes in handy when you need to combine data from different sources, such as public stats from the web, internal documents, organizational details, or tables from another Excel file.
To try this feature, you'll need Windows (Build 17729.20000 or later) or Mac (Build 24053110 or later), a Copilot license, web search enabled, and a stable internet connection. Using the new feature is as simple as the following:
- On the Home tab in Excel, select Copilot.
- Ask Copilot a question about the data you are looking for.
- Ask follow-up questions until you're satisfied with the results.
Note: For results from external data, make sure you see reference(s) at the end of the response.
Microsoft says this update to Copilot in Excel will be coming to the web soon. There are some limitations, such as refreshable data imports only working for Excel files with tables stored on SharePoint or OneDrive and limited support for handling workbook and external data simultaneously.
Copilot in Excel has received several updates in recent months. For example, there's now a Clean Data feature that fixes issues like text/number inconsistencies.
In March last year, Microsoft added an update that allowed users to speak with Copilot directly instead of typing manually. In November, Copilot was integrated into the Excel start experience, enabling users to explain what they want to create and receive improvement suggestions.
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