Excel's COPILOT Function Is Gone: What Replaces It

Microsoft announced it on 18 August 2025: a natural-language prompt inside a cell, written as =COPILOT(prompt_part1, [context1], ...). It launched for people with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence (the product is now called Microsoft Copilot, because of course it is) on the Beta Channel.

The charm was simple. The function lived inside Excel's calculation engine, so every time your data changed, the results updated too.

And it never left preview. Only people in the Microsoft 365 Insider and Frontier programs ever had it. In May 2026 it even got web search. 3 months later it was on its way out.

On 13 August 2026 Microsoft posted Message Center notice MC1454373, tagged Retirement. From 14 September 2026 the function is no longer available. According to The Register and TechRadar, general availability had been planned for 2027.

The reason Microsoft gave is one line: to "streamline the Copilot experience within Excel" through a supported interface. That's it. Anything else you read about cost or accuracy is somebody's guess (and I'm not adding mine to the pile).

Your old results are still there. Microsoft says they stay in the workbook as cached values. They stay visible until the cell recalculates. Edit a cell the formula references, or force a full recalculation, and it turns into #NAME? because Excel no longer recognises the function.

So the order matters. Here's what I'd do, before anyone touches the file:

Already seeing #NAME? errors? That cell's cached value is gone. If the file lives in OneDrive or SharePoint, an earlier version may still hold it, so check the version history before you rerun everything from scratch.

For IT: Microsoft says no admin action is required. It does recommend reviewing the workflows that depend on the function and moving people to the supported Copilot experiences.

Microsoft's support page points to one thing: the Copilot pane in Excel. It handles many of the same jobs the formula did, including summarising text, classifying data, generating content and looking things up on the web.

Open it with the Copilot icon in the lower-right corner of Excel. It moved there from the ribbon during 2026, which confuses almost everyone (if you can't find it at all, here's the fix list for Copilot not showing in Excel). F6 opens it everywhere, and Alt+C on Windows or Cmd+Control+I on Mac are rolling out as shortcuts.

It opens in edit mode, which changes the workbook directly. New to the pane? Start with my full guide to Copilot in Excel.

Here's the translation. The first 3 pairs are Microsoft's own, from the support page. The last 2 are mine, built the same way.

Notice the pattern. The formula took the range as an argument. The pane needs it in the sentence, together with where the result should land. Microsoft's own tip applies: naming the columns you want analysed gives more accurate results.

You lose live recalculation. That was the whole point of the formula: Microsoft's launch post said your results update automatically every time your data changes. A prompt in the pane is a one-off action. New rows next week? You ask again. (That's my reading of the 2 features side by side, not a line from Microsoft.)

My fix for recurring jobs is boring and it works: keep a tab called Prompts with the exact wording, so every rerun is copy and paste.

What you get back is a lot. The pane works on the whole workbook, builds with Excel's own features so the result stays editable, creates charts and PivotTables, and cites its sources when it searches the web.

And the accuracy warning didn't retire with the formula. Microsoft said at launch that its output should be reviewed, and it says the same about the pane today: review and verify anything Copilot creates, and don't use it for finance, legal or medical decisions without that check. Want prompts for the rest of your Excel work? Here are Copilot prompts for Excel, by job.

Not from Microsoft. As of 27 September 2026, Microsoft hasn't announced any new AI worksheet function. It doesn't name Python in Excel as the replacement either. The Copilot pane is the only official answer.

Third-party add-ins do sell their own formulas as replacements. That's a separate vendor, separate data terms and a separate bill. I have no commercial interest in any of them (or in Microsoft), and I wouldn't move a finance workbook onto one before IT has read the terms.