Use Copilot in Excel to build your brackets
The matchups are finally set, and the annual question is back: how do you pick a bracket that’s fun and gives you a real shot at predicting the winner—whether you’re following the men’s tournament, the women’s tournament, or both? This year, you can use Copilot in Excel as your bracket sidekick—turning past tournament patterns into quick “what-if” scenarios, stress-testing upset paths, and sanity-checking your picks against historic data. Instead of manually building an analysis, copy/pasting data, and building multiple versions, you can ask in natural language and let Copilot build the analysis for you right inside an Excel workbook. Below are a few fast, practical ways to use Copilot in Excel to build a bracket workbook, explore upside picks (hello, Cinderella runs), and model “if this happens, then what?” outcomes so you can fill your bracket with more confidence than the rest of the group. 1) Set up a bracket workbook Open a new workbook, then open Copilot in Excel. Make sure “Edit with Copilot” is turned on. Start by asking Copilot to create a bracket template: “Create a 2026 [men’s or women’s] college basketball bracket including all the latest teams and seeds. Build dropdowns for each round so I can choose the winner of each matchup all the way to a champion, formatted like a standard bracket. For each dropdown, show only the 2 teams in the matchup based on the winners chose in previous rounds using helper columns." With that foundation in place, you’ve got a clean structure for picks and scenario assumptions. From here, you can make your picks and Copilot can help you add calculations, create “what-if” views, and summarize the implications of different upset paths. Bonus: Want to theme your brackets around your favorite team? First have Copilot generate a simple skills sheet and ask it to follow the instructions when creating brackets. “Create a skills sheet for my favorite team, [Team]. Include the official team colors (with hex codes), mascot/nickname, text colors, and conditional formatting rules for winners/losers.” 2) Stress-test your bracket with real-world scenarios Now for the part that can actually give you an edge: use Copilot to spin up scenario tabs and see how your bracket performs under outcomes that happen all the time in March—Cinderella runs, unexpected seed collapses, and “hot team” momentum that goes against conventional logic. Try some follow-up Copilot prompts like: Cinderella path: “Pick a 10–13 seed to reach the Sweet 16 based on past tournament frequency. Create a version to reflect that upset path, and show which higher-seeded teams I’m fading.” All the 1-seeds don’t make it: “Create a version of my bracket where at least two 1-seeds lose before the Elite Eight. Identify the earliest-round upsets needed and how my champion pick changes.” Favorite team: “Assume my favorite team is [Team]. Build two paths: (1) optimistic (reach the Final Four) and (2) realistic (based on projected path). For each path, show who they’d likely face by seed line and which matchup round matters most for them.” Momentum model: “Calculate a “momentum multiplier” using the conference tournament games and recent performance for each team and use that to fill out a version of my bracket weighted by momentum.” 3) Compare bracket variants and choose your entry Once you’ve built a few scenario versions, Copilot can help you compare them—so you’re not guessing which bracket is better, you’re choosing the one whose risk/reward matches your needs. Use a prompt like: “Create a comparison analysis for all my bracket scenarios in this workbook including charts. Include number of upset picks by round, and my top 5 most ‘contrarian’ picks across all my brackets. Give a recommendation for which to submit if I’m trying to win my bracket challenge or simply play it safe.” Copilot can generate the comparison table, highlight the key differences, and summarize the tradeoffs in plain language—so you can decide whether you want a safer entry, a balanced upset strategy, or a bold bracket designed to win big. Your turn: build your bracket with Copilot Ready to try it? Open Excel, start a new workbook, and use Edit with Copilot to create your brackets. Once you’ve got a bracket you like, share it with your league, your family, or your coworkers.What's New in Excel (February 2026)
Welcome to the February 2026 update. This month we are excited to announce expanded availability for Agent Mode in Excel, as well that you can now query modern Excel workbooks (like .xlsx, .xlsb, .xlsm, .ods) stored locally on your device using Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, on Windows and Mac. In addition, we've heard your feedback that working across multiple Copilot entry points can feel fragmented; and to address this, the editing capabilities that App Skills provided will be integrated into Copilot Chat and Agent Mode in Excel, which became generally available earlier this year. Click here to read more > Excel for Windows and Mac: - Agent Mode in Excel expanded availability - Query your local Excel files with Copilot Chat Excel for Windows and Mac Agent Mode in Excel expanded availability Agent Mode in Excel is now also available for Copilot in Excel users in the EU, including Current Channel and Monthly Enterprise Channel. Read more here > Query your local Excel files with Copilot Chat Copilot in Excel now works with locally stored modern workbooks. This gives users faster, more consistent assistance across all their files, improving productivity without requiring changes to how workbooks are stored. Previously, insights and analysis from Copilot Chat were limited to Excel workbooks stored in the cloud. With this new feature, analyzing your locally saved Excel workbooks with Copilot Chat makes it possible to stay productive even when you’re offline. This feature is currently rolling out on Windows and Mac. Read more here > Check if a specific feature is in your version of Excel Click here to open in a new browser tab Many of these features are the result of your feedback. THANK YOU! Your continued Feedback in Action (#FIA) helps improve Excel for everyone. Please let us know how you like a particular feature and what we can improve upon—"Give a compliment" or "Make a suggestion".. You can also submit new ideas or vote for other ideas via Microsoft Feedback. Subscribe to our Excel Blog and the Insiders Blog to get the latest updates. Stay connected with us and other Excel fans around the world – join our Excel Community and follow us on X, formerly Twitter. 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.App Skills is evolving with Copilot in Excel
We are continuing to streamline the ways people engage with Copilot in Excel, and we've heard your feedback that working across multiple Copilot entry points can feel fragmented. To address this, Copilot in Excel is transitioning toward a more unified experience so users can easily choose between conversational assistance and direct editing capabilities. As part of this effort, the editing capabilities that App Skills provided will be integrated into Copilot Chat and Agent Mode in Excel, which became generally available earlier this year. This update is part of our broader work to simplify the Copilot entry points and make it clearer how to interact with Copilot depending on the task. We know that when you find a workflow that works, change can feel disruptive. That's why we want to give you a clear picture of what's evolving in how you use Copilot in Excel and how these changes provide an even better experience. Why this change matters We've heard your feedback about wanting a more capable experience when working with Copilot inside the spreadsheet. The enhanced editing experience that Agent Mode introduced was built specifically to address this. It's designed to handle more complex requests, work across multiple steps, and give you greater control over how Copilot edits your workbooks. Rather than maintaining separate experiences that can feel fragmented, we're bringing everything together so you have: More power: Copilot with Agent Mode can now handle complex, multi-step reasoning tasks that go beyond what App Skills could do. Better clarity: You'll know exactly where to go depending on what you need—direct editing happens with Agent Mode; quick answers and simple actions work best in Copilot Chat. Continued innovation: By focusing on improvements toward a unified experience, we can deliver new capabilities faster. As part of this, we also plan to better integrate Agent Mode’s editing capabilities into the Copilot Chat experience in the coming months. What’s changing? App Skills entry points in Excel are going away. You will no longer find an App Skills button in the ribbon or be able to use App Skills from the context menu. Existing skills are consolidating into Copilot Chat and Agent Mode. When you want Copilot to make changes directly in your workbook, Agent Mode is designed to support many core editing tasks, such as creating or updating tables, applying formatting, or generating charts and PivotTables. Copilot Chat remains available for tasks that don’t require modifying content, such as interpretation or exploration of your data and using agents like Analyst. If you can open the App Skills chat pane and submit a prompt, you may receive an error message instead of a response. During this transition, some users may still see App Skills entry points for a short time. In some cases, opening the App Skills pane may result in an error message indicating that App Skills is no longer available. If this happens, you can continue your workflow using Agent Mode or Copilot Chat based on the type of assistance you need. When is it happening? This update is rolling out now. Depending on your Excel version, you may see the App Skills entry point up until the end of February. App Skill scenarios not yet available Certain scenarios that previously used App Skills—specifically the Advanced Analysis mode that used Python in Excel and advanced text analysis capabilities—are not yet available within Copilot Chat or Agent Mode. We are continuing to expand support for these capabilities in Copilot Chat and Agent Mode—watch for updates as these become available over time. Note: this was originally communicated to commercial customers via the M365 Message Center (MC1184407) on November 10, 2025.Agent Mode in Excel is now generally available on desktop
Agent Mode in Excel, part of Microsoft 365 Copilot, is now generally available on Windows, with Mac rolling out over the coming days — extending access beyond Excel for the web, which launched in December. Since our initial public preview, we’ve expanded availability, added web-grounded search, and introduced a new multi-model reasoning system that allows customers to choose between OpenAI and Anthropic models. Under the hood, we’ve significantly improved task success, performance, and reliability across core Excel scenarios, including workbook creation, formula repair, and chart and PivotTable generation. Evolving Copilot to become an active collaborator Excel is where people think with data. It’s where budgets, forecasts, and operating plans take shape, and where decisions get made. Agent Mode turns Copilot into a true partner in that work, able to take your goals, plan next steps, act directly in your workbook, iterate, and validate outcomes. With today’s release, that capability is now available in the desktop versions of Excel customers rely on every day. What’s improved during public preview We launched Agent Mode in public preview to validate the experience with real Excel customers working on real workloads. Our goal has always been to support the way Excel is actually used inside organizations — messy data, ambiguous goals, and multi-step workflows that need to be refreshable, auditable, and verifiable. Throughout the preview, we continued to invest in this by introducing: Expanded availability: Agent Mode now works across Excel for the web, Excel for Windows, and Excel for Mac, so you can leverage its power no matter where your access your work. It’s integrated directly into Copilot in Excel, and we’ll continue to improve the experience in the coming weeks and months. Integrated web search: Instantly get up-to-date information with source citations, perfect for “pull in the latest data” scenarios. Model choice: A new model switcher lets you choose between our OpenAI-powered experience and the latest Claude models from Anthropic, so you can try different AI approaches. Model choice We’ve learned — alongside our colleagues at GitHub — that different reasoning models excel at different kinds of work. Some are better suited for fast, structured problem-solving while others shine when tasks require explanation, iteration, or more open-ended reasoning. Our goal is to build an intelligent system that can make the right model choices on your behalf. At the same time, we believe customers should have visibility and control — so Agent Mode also gives you the ability to explicitly choose the model you’d like to apply to your task. new model switcher choices supported. When in the default Auto mode, Copilot will attempt to choose the best model for you. You can also choose one of the specific models before running a prompt. The latest models from OpenAI (GPT 5.2) and Anthropic (Claude Opus 4.5) are available today for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Premium licenses. Learn more here about using Claude with Agent Mode in Excel and Anthropic as a subprocessor. How to try it Open Excel on Web, Windows or Mac. Open Copilot and select Agent Mode from the Tools menu. Start with an outcome-based prompt, like “Build a loan calculator that computes monthly payments based on user inputs for loan amount, annual interest rate, and term in years. Generate a schedule showing month, payment, principal, interest, and remaining balance. Present the results in a clear, formatted table.” Availability Agent Mode in Excel is generally available today across Excel for web, Windows, and Mac for commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses and Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, and Premium subscribers. Note that Personal and Family subscriptions use an AI credit model and Agent Mode in Excel is not yet available to customers in the EU or UK. For more on availability and access, check out Agent Mode in Excel.New in Excel for the web: The full Power Query experience
We’ve reached yet another milestone in Excel for the web: The full Power Query user experience is now generally available, including the import wizard and Power Query Editor. After we released the ability to refresh Power Query data from authenticated data sources, we were able to unlock the ability to complete the full user journey of importing data and editing it using Power Query. Getting started Learn all about Power Query in Excel for the web here > See this support article for more information on Power Query data sources in Excel versions. Note: Viewing and refreshing queries is available to all Microsoft 365 Subscribers. The full Power Query experience is available to all Microsoft 365 Subscribers with Business or Enterprise plans. Importing data You can import data into Excel using Power Query from a wide variety of data sources, for example: Excel Workbook, Text/CSV, XML, JSON, SQL Server Database, SharePoint Online List, OData, Blank Table, and Blank Query. Select Data > Get Data: In the Choose data source dialog box, select one of the available data sources: Connect to the data source. After you select the source, the authentication kind will be auto-populated, according to the relevant source (you can still change it, if you like). Press Next, and choose the table you wish to import: Press Transform data to open the table in the Power Query editor, where you can perform many powerful transformations. Note: You can open the editor whenever you need it, by using Data > Get Data > Launch Power Query Editor. When you are done, load the table – press Close & Load to load to the Excel grid: Or Close & Load to - to either load to the Excel grid, or create a connection-only query: See the query was created in the Queries & Connections pane: If you loaded to a table, you can see it on the Excel grid: You can refresh the created query from the Queries & Connections pane, or by using Data > Refresh/Refresh All. You can also perform operations, such as editing the query (with the Power Query Editor), renaming it, and more: What’s next? Future plans include adding data sources and advanced features. Feedback We hope you like this new addition to Excel and we’d love to hear what you think about it! Let us know by using the Feedback button in the top right corner in Excel - add #PowerQuery in your feedback so that we can find it easily. Want to know more about Excel for the web? See What's new in Excel for the web and subscribe to our Excel Blog to get the latest updates. Stay connected with us and other Excel fans around the world – join our Excel Community and follow us on Twitter. Jonathan Kahati, Gal Horowitz ~ Excel Team
