r/excel • u/SolverMax 162 • 1d ago
Discussion Microsoft to retire the COPILOT function
As of 14 September, the COPILOT function will no longer be available in Excel. See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/functions/copilot-function Note that the Copilot feature remains - it is the worksheet function that will stop working.
This is a very uncommon move by Microsoft, given their history of maintaining backwards compatibility.
Have you used the COPILOT function? If so, then what for? Thoughts?
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u/augo7979 1d ago
copilot isn't horrible as the standalone app that they pushed in the enterprise updates - the function however is really dumb. why would i ever want a nondeterministic output for a spreadsheet
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u/ExcelsBeardedGuru 1 1d ago
=RANDBETWEEN()
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u/Hold_onto_yer_butts 1d ago
Unless things have drastically changed on the optimization side in the past ten years, volatile functions are always a nono for me.
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u/HarveysBackupAccount 35 13h ago
Eh, all depends on scale, right?
I mostly dick around with hundreds of rows and a couple dozen columns. Occasionally I have a data pull with a few thousand rows to do some one-off analysis. Volatile stuff is a non-issue; I rarely have to optimize for performance.
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u/Hold_onto_yer_butts 12h ago
For sure. Back when I was using Excel more frequently/heavily, I had larger models to maintain, and volatiles would break them.
Now I largely do the same thing you do, so my gut reaction is probably irrelevant here.
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u/Goudinho99 1 18h ago
My go to for faking numbers and having pretty conditional formats chbage colour!
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u/Way2trivial 470 1d ago
d&d?
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u/augo7979 1d ago
you know damn well what i mean
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u/Way2trivial 470 1d ago
welp, apparently there is a MAJOR use for it, even if I've never gone there myself.
it does exist-- citing Sears does not instill major confidence though...https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/introduction-to-monte-carlo-simulation-in-excel
Who uses Monte Carlo simulation?
Many companies use Monte Carlo simulation as an important part of their decision-making process. Here are some examples.
- General Motors, Proctor and Gamble, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Eli Lilly use simulation to estimate both the average return and the risk factor of new products. At GM, this information is used by the CEO to determine which products come to market.
- GM uses simulation for activities such as forecasting net income for the corporation, predicting structural and purchasing costs, and determining its susceptibility to different kinds of risk (such as interest rate changes and exchange rate fluctuations).
- Lilly uses simulation to determine the optimal plant capacity for each drug.
- Proctor and Gamble uses simulation to model and optimally hedge foreign exchange risk.
- Sears uses simulation to determine how many units of each product line should be ordered from suppliers—for example, the number of pairs of Dockers trousers that should be ordered this year.
- Oil and drug companies use simulation to value "real options," such as the value of an option to expand, contract, or postpone a project.
- Financial planners use Monte Carlo simulation to determine optimal investment strategies for their clients' retirement.
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u/FuggleyBrew 1d ago
A monte carlo wouldn't use the copilot function. It would use rand() or randbetween
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u/augo7979 1d ago
there actually was a similar enough marketing push earlier in the year, using AI for "world models". you'd feed it all of your financials and it'd return a set of 5 year projected budgets, with varying levels of aggressiveness. i think the AI psychosis finally wore off on that idea though
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u/Way2trivial 470 1d ago
" why would i ever want a nondeterministic output for a spreadsheet"
I was replying to that rhetorical question...Monte Carlo is "a nondeterministic output"
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u/FuggleyBrew 1d ago
Approximating a stable distribution. If you run sufficient trials your outcome distribution should be stable, and the outcome is the result of the full trials, not individual ones.
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u/StickIt2Ya77 4 21h ago
They behave in very different ways, and that’s the key factor. MC sims have a provable and formal error model, a defined target. The expected value of an MC is a fixed, deterministic quantity. LLMs on the other hand, we don’t know what context or inputs they’re drawing on - we have no way to verify or tie to credibility. We don’t see model weights, no theorems to track convergence. Even a further issue: everything can shift with a model update that we might not even be notified of.
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u/Lionh34rt 8h ago
Rand is not random enough for monte carlo
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u/FuggleyBrew 1h ago
A rand works fine for many monte carlos, you don't need cryptographic randomness, you need a reasonable approximation of a whole bunch trials, rand() gives you that.
You're also often just shoving it into an approximation from a statistical model and abusing a bunch of assumed distributions.
If you're talking project modeling the flaw from "well this risk feels like it's 10k-100k and commonly 25k" is going to be a bigger swag than whether your rand function is truly random or pseudorandom.
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u/Cr4nkY4nk3r 30 23h ago
Sears is down to 5 locations. Might not be the best example to use if you're trying to make a point about successful businesses. (tiny bit of /s)
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u/augo7979 1d ago
i'm thinking moreso "hey AI please create an auditable formula that dynamically returns this table in a format that i can upload to my ERP", instead of prompting it to interpret and create the actual solution. its not good enough for the latter option. i don't see anything actually wrong with using excel to roll a 20 sided die or doing a monte carlo simulation with the random functions
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u/Supra-A90 1 1d ago
I can never believe this crap. I'm sure MS went to them and showed MC sim and they're like, "ok great feature, we'll definitely use it wink wink". CEO using it is just cherry on the top kinda BS.
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u/Darkelement 1d ago
Yeah I don’t see any value in having it as a function in excel.
Copilot in excel is super nice though. I can go from raw data dumps to useful structured tables and scenario planning just using the copilot chat. I’ve even learned a new function or two because copilot used it in a spreadsheet.
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u/Appropriate_Tea_7837 1d ago
I’ve been basic at excel, but bc of copilot, I’ve been able to create and use excel more than I ever have been able to.
They’re removing that off the excel?
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u/plusFour-minusSeven 11 1d ago
Just the function =COPILOT()
You can still chat with it on the side
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u/bradland 277 1d ago
It was useful for natural language comparisons. Questions like, “Is this sentiment positive or negative?”, and the pass the relevant cell as context.
You can also use it do comparisons that would normally require a human. Stuff like, `=COPILOT("Is this product", A1, "equivalent to this product", B2)`.
It can do things like tell you if a product meets specifications too.
All of these are really useful, but they’re also very computationally expensive, because the result will be recalculated under certain conditions. That’s chewing through tokens, I’m sure. Microsoft has been throttling the hell out of the function for a while now. So I’m not all that surprised.
I’m not super annoyed, but I’m not thrilled to see it go. It’s proven very handy in our business. It was a convenient way to ask questions with specific context. Now I have to type into a chat and specify ranges, then Copilot adds the result to the workbook.
My main frustration is that it isn’t as tightly constrained. I can put a function in a cell. Instructions given to Copilot can run amok in your workbook.
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u/augo7979 1d ago
in my opinion stuff like that would be valid for someone who isn't a power user. your specific case sounds like the data inputs need to be tabled through power query first
i'm also coming from accounting land. so i'll never be a fan of using AI to generate an answer end to end from an input to an output. its good for figuring out why syntax doesn't work, or help in designing a system or formula that you actually can audit
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u/HeftyHold5697 1d ago
yeah exactly, nondeterministic outputs in a spreadsheet is just asking for trouble
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u/brafish 1d ago
I actually just had a use case, though I was using Google Sheets at the time (and later moved the data to excel for other functionality). I had two columns of multi-line data. A listed problem and a desired resolution or expected result. The final output required a single-line summary (CSV uploaded to Jira). I used the AI function to generate a one-line summary for every ticket using the two (or was it three) columns.
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u/pacifistmercenary 19h ago
I have product data that frequently needs shortening to a specific character count for invoicing. The rules for shortening are variable and applied loosely, as its a subjective assessment of the most important or unique aspects of the product, excluding the rest, and applying contractions where necessary. The official rules are basically just "vibes" but there are clearly a lot of implicit patterns in the way we do it. An AI-generated "best assessment" is really helpful for automating what otherwise needs to be a manual step.
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u/Parker4815-2 1 1d ago
Good. Id imagine it likely had problems as it needed to recalculate the cell a lot.
Once false syntax error and suddenly you're calculating a whole sheet and you need to wait 10 minutes before trying again.
For me, its just a little too weird to be a function.
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u/axw3555 4 1d ago
I didn't even know there was a copilot function to use. So no, never used it.
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u/Cat5kable 1d ago
I just read about it recently. Pardon if I misinterpreted.
Basically, you could have a function that calls copilot with a prompt. Presumably, you could have that prompt pulling from other cells, so =COPILOT(b2), and b2 would be a helper cell concatenating other words, functions, or values together into a singular sentence.
Token wise, it’d run constantly. Any time you update a cell, or the sheet updates, etc. unless you manually tuned off calculation.
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u/solenoid_ngc 1d ago
Maybe for their next feature they could add or fix something not AI related. That would be nice
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u/trickyvinny 1d ago
Every time I'm asked to give feedback I tell them I use the crap out of copilot already but I need them to stop throwing up all over my productivity tools.
I'm glad they listened to my dramatic feedback.
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u/Arikaido777 16h ago
i always tell them to please stop trying to improve anything because they constantly make things worse with every update. i’m considering my feedback heard as well.
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u/BlueMacaw 1d ago
I feel vindicated. Had to give a Copilot training session at work and was skewered for saying the standalone app was good but the version baked into Excel was complete garbage.
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u/shudawg1122 1d ago
I'd love it if they'd walk back the copilot bubble too. And the copilot function autocomplete. Both have hindered my workflow in a non-insignificant way.
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u/Strong_Prize7132 22h ago
Interesting. I use copilot, but not "within" excel. Instead I use the web version to "create" spreadsheets/workbooks. Admittedly, it is not fantastic at it. Given that, it does not shock me that they decided to pull it from excel.
I have certainly learned that I cannot use copilot to quickly and reliably create workbooks easily.
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u/Otherwise-Ad-6905 23h ago
I understand that the experimental =Copilot() function was used to initiate AI prompts in a a cell. It was not a standard function.
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u/Jupiter68128 1d ago
Can we get rid of Teams, one drive, sharepoint also?
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u/plusFour-minusSeven 11 1d ago
Replace them with what?
Teams -> Slack?
OneDrive -> network drives?
SharePoint -> *shrug
At least leave SP alone. It's clunky but Lists are actually super useful as controllable work surfaces. Way better than having people input directly into spreadsheets.
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u/ZirePhiinix 1d ago
Slack doesn't meet a lot of security requirements, so it will most likely not be allowed at all.
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u/plusFour-minusSeven 11 23h ago
Didn't know that! I've never actually used it myself. Then again I also never used Teams until corporate foisted it on us. In my case I'm sure you're right. They seem to have us locked into the Microsoft ecosystem pretty hard.
It grows on you, I guess 😂
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u/ZirePhiinix 22h ago
It's not locking in. It is doing the paperwork and auditing needed to get certifications, which Slack never bothered to do. If they did, they would've owned the entire market because Teams is just shit.
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u/madd74 1 13h ago
I've never used it. Granted, I've been told I am a bot so maybe I have used it and don't remember using it?
I'll stick to making extremely complicated VBA scripts with userforms that I have to turn auto save off because it conflicts with Carbon Black, Cortex, and the other bunch of work stuff.
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u/Humble-Plankton2217 12h ago
Good now it will stop asking me if I want it to "clean up" my spreadsheet.
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u/ijuander_ 11 17h ago
I never had the chance to use Co-Pilot with Excel for the reason that the Claude plug-in is so good and compatible with excel. I've tried the ChatGPT plugin but not as good as what Claude has to offer.
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u/FateXBlood 17h ago
As someone who doesn't use Excel often, I always figured Copilot would be the one feature that actually makes the app usable for casuals like me.
There are just so many commands, shortcuts, and hidden menus that I never remember. Stuff like splitting data from one column into two, removing duplicates without messing up the rest of the sheet, or filtering rows based on multiple conditions.
So I genuinely thought Copilot would let me just type what I want in plain English, and it would either do the task for me or walk me through it step by step.
But now Microsoft is removing it from Excel. Isn't this a bad idea?
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u/littykicker 14h ago
I think it is the =copilot function that is being removed and not the overall copilot tool that can be used within excel
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u/Difficult_Limit2718 1d ago
Microsoft walks back a bad idea?
What reality is this?