Business Central loves Copilot in Excel đź’š
When we bring AI tools and system together - we can really boost our efficiency
More and more Copilot tools are becoming available across the Microsoft platform. And this gives us users great benefits when we can combine different software and let AI help us across systems. The new Excel feature "Edit with Copilot" is one of the features I think can become very handy for many Business Central users.Â
Meet your new friend in Excel - "Edit with Copilot" F/K/A Agentic Excel
When first introduced, Microsoft called this feature agentic Excel. But it is now rebranded to "Edit with Copilot". When launched, it was not available for users in EU/EEA but recently, it has been made available even for the European market.
Some weeks ago, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to watch Kennie Nybo Pontoppidan and Evgenij Korovin from Microsoft demo this feature, and I was excited to see what opportunities this can bring to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central users. I think "Edit with Copilot in Excel" can become a really handy tool both during implementation of Business Central and for the daily use.
What is really "Edit with Copilot"?
Edit with Copilot in Excel lets you create and edit workbooks side by side with Copilot. When you are updating data, creating new financial reports or doing other kinds of data analysis. Edit with Copilot in Excel can use all the good tools you know from Excel like tables, charts, Pivot tables and formulas to help you create the worksheet you need. And the best part is that it will save you a lot of time getting the job done.
Edit with Copilot is especially good when you want to do complex operations that require multiple steps to complete. This could be reshaping data, merging sheets or building complex reports. You should be aware that for complex operations, Copilot may take a few minutes to generate an initial response and refine it. While Copilot is operating on your worksheet, you can see it's reasoning in the Copilot pane.Â
When should you use "Edit with Copilot in Excel" vs Copilot chat in Excel?
Like with all agentic features we are getting these days, agents works best when we want them to do actual work for us with editing or updating our data. For more conventional help and tasks that will not change your workbook, Copilot chat without editing might be a better option to use.
What are the licence requirements for using "Edit with Copilot in Excel" ?
Editing with Copilot in Excel requires either a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription (with an AI credits plan), a Microsoft 365 Premium subscription, a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, or a Copilot Chat-eligible Microsoft 365 or Office 365 business or enterprise subscription.
How to get started with "Edit with Copilot in Excel"
Create a new workbook or open an existing workbook. If you want to do that in Excel for the web, you can do this by using https://excel.new
Select Home > Copilot to open the Copilot pane
When you open Copilot, editing is on by default. You will know Copilot is ready to edit your Excel workbook with you if the Excel selector appears in the chat box.
From Copilot chat, you can select the Tools menu and choose Edit with Copilot to allow direct edits in your workbook.
What can you expect Edit in Excel with Copilot to do?
After you submit a prompt, Copilot will analyse your request and create a step-by-step plan for how it is going to solve the task. Copilot will work directly in your document to carry out the plan. Copilot will review the results of its own work and evaluate if your intent is matched. You can follow the reasoning in the Copilot chat pane and see live changes happening in your workbook.
Chose your AI-model
Before submitting a prompt, you can select which model you prefer to use, Copilot in Excel supports the latest Anthropic and Open AI models available to you. To switch between models, use the model picker dropdown. You may also find the model picker collapsed into the settings menu.
If you have a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, your admin must allow access to Anthropic AI models by allowing "AI providers for other large language models" in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.Â
Using the model switcher to choose between models with Agent Mode in Excel requires a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription or a Microsoft 365 Premium subscription.
Learn more about using different models with Copilot in Excel.
How can we use this together with Business Central?
I see many use-cases for this in Business Central. One of the more obvious ones is to improve data quality during migration. But there are also many things around data analysis where this tool will be very useful.
In the video below, you can see an example where I use this to improve the data quality for the Currency table in business Central.
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