Welcome to the July 2026 update. New this month for Copilot in Excel: inline citations, synced connectors, Power BI grounding, brand and theme design skills, and support for workbooks with AutoSave turned off.
Also new this month, two frontier models are now available in Copilot in Excel: OpenAI's GPT-5.6 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 5. Optimized for knowledge work and stronger multi-step reasoning, GPT-5.6 helps Copilot work through more complex analysis and get from task to outcome with less manual assembly. Opus 5 helps work through complex analysis with higher-quality modeling and more polished workbooks. You can choose the model that best fits your work right from Copilot in Excel.
Excel for Windows, Mac, and web:
- Copilot in Excel: inline citations
- Copilot in Excel: synced connectors
- Copilot in Excel: Power BI grounding
- Copilot in Excel: brand kit skill
- Copilot in Excel: theme design skill
- Copilot in Excel support articles
Excel for Windows and Mac:
- Copilot in Excel support for AutoSave-off workbooks
Excel for Windows, Mac, and web
Copilot in Excel: inline citations
Citations in are getting smarter and more actionable. Users can now easily validate Copilot responses through richer citation experiences, including deeper links to the exact content behind a response, improved source attribution, and ongoing work to unify citation experiences across work, web, and data sources from Copilot connectors. This helps you verify information and gain trust in Copilot-generated insights.
Inline citations in Copilot in Excel
Copilot in Excel: synced connectors
Synced Copilot connectors are now generally available in Excel. Bring your organization’s connected content - work items, tickets, database rows, CRM records, and docs - straight into the grid, then put Excel’s full analytical engine to work on it in natural language. We previously brought Federated Copilot connectors to Excel, pulling live data from providers like LSEG and Moody’s into the grid - and are expanding Copilot's abilities to search and ground your work data. Connect once, and it’s available everywhere across Microsoft 365, including right inside your workbook. Read more here >
Copilot in Excel: Power BI grounding
Copilot in Excel can now ground analysis in governed Power BI data, bringing trusted business metrics directly into the Excel grid. Users can attach a Power BI report from the work content selector, then ask Copilot to analyze performance, identify trends, and build summaries or supporting calculations in Excel. Copilot works with the underlying report data while respecting existing row-level security, eliminating the need to export data, manually copy and reconcile figures, or switch between Power BI and Excel. This feature is currently rolling out to production for Windows, Mac, and web. Read more here >
Copilot in Excel: brand kit skill
The brand kit skill enables Copilot in Excel to format your workbook with your organization's brand kit from the Microsoft 365 Brand Center, automatically applying your approved colors, fonts, and logo to tables and charts so every report follows your company's branding guidelines. Just use the "@brand-kit" skill and ask Copilot to brand your sheet and get a polished, on-brand, presentation-ready report, without manual formatting. Read more here >
Copilot in Excel: theme design skill
With the theme design skill users can now apply a coordinated design theme to their data, choosing a harmonized color palette, styling charts, and structuring the layout so your key insights stand out. Use the @theme-design skill and ask Copilot to design or polish your sheet and it delivers; ready formatting with clear visual hierarchy, turning raw data into a clean, readable report and saving you the manual styling work. Read more here >
Copilot in Excel support articles
With significant investment in Copilot in Excel in the last few months, we refreshed all our Copilot in Excel support articles to reflect the new state of the feature. The support articles showcase new additions, like personalization, rules, skills, and formula suggestion management. They also highlight the many ways you can use Copilot in Excel in your daily work, such as visualizing your data or using data from your SharePoint or OneDrive. Read more here >
Excel for Windows and Mac
Copilot in Excel support for AutoSave-off workbooks
Copilot in Excel is now available in more cloud-saved workbooks, including files where AutoSave is turned off on Windows and Mac. Previously, Copilot required AutoSave to be on, which meant some users could not use Copilot in otherwise supported workbooks. When AutoSave is off and the workbook has unsaved changes, Excel reminds users to turn on AutoSave before Copilot starts making changes, helping protect unsaved work. Users can still choose to continue with Copilot without turning on AutoSave. This feature is currently rolling out to production for Windows and Mac users.
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Special thanks to our Excel MVPs David Benaim, Bill Jelen, Alan Murray, and John Michaloudis for their contribution to this month's What's New in Excel article. David publishes weekly YouTube videos and regular LinkedIn posts about the latest innovations in Excel and more. Bill is the founder and host of MrExcel.com and the author of several books about Excel. Alan is an Excel trainer, author and speaker, best known for his blog computergaga.com and YouTube channel with the same name. John is the Founder & Chief Inspirational Officer at MyExcelOnline.com where he passionately teaches thousands of professionals how to use Excel to stand out from the crowd.
