Can Copilot Analyze Uploaded Spreadsheet Data?

Copilot examines spreadsheets either directly in Excel or through a web-chat upload.

The web uploader gives fast, read-only insights for files up to 50 MB, provided you’re online and subscribed to Copilot.

Inside Excel it creates PivotTables, charts, formulas, forecasts, and plain-language narratives in seconds.

Macros, offline use, and huge CSVs aren’t supported, but for everyday trend-hunting it turns raw rows into clear stories almost instantly.

Microsoft Copilot has already shown how effortlessly it can draft emails, polish documents, and design slides. But one of its most quietly transformative skills is the way it reads, reasons over, and explains spreadsheet data.

1 Where the Feature Lives –and What Each Flavor Can Do

Copilot surface	How you engage it	Typical output	Best-fit scenarios
Excel (desktop / web / iPad)	Click the multicoloured Copilot icon in the ribbon. A task pane opens at the right where you ask questions about the open workbook.	Copilot inserts new sheets, charts, PivotTables, forecasts, and explanatory text boxes directly into the file.	Deep, iterative exploration; building dashboards; cleaning data; adding calculated columns.
Copilot on the web (copilot.microsoft.com)	In a chat, hit the paper-clip (“+”) icon, upload an .xlsx, .csv, or .txt, then start asking questions.	Copilot answers in plain language or ASCII tables inside the chat thread; the source file itself never changes.	Quick “second opinion,” high-level summaries, lightweight ad-hoc analysis from any device.

2 Licensing, Version, and Connectivity Requirements

1. Subscription – An active Microsoft 365 Copilot (business) or Copilot Pro (consumer) plan is mandatory; free Microsoft accounts only support very small data uploads in preview regions.

2. Software build – Excel must be Version 2403 or later on desktop; the web version updates automatically.

3. Storage location – Workbooks must live in OneDrive or SharePoint for in-Excel analysis; uploads in chat are stored temporarily in your Microsoft tenant.

4. File-size limits – In-Excel Copilot inherits Excel’s native capacity (millions of rows); the web uploader accepts individual files up to 50 MB.

5. Internet connection – Copilot is cloud-hosted. If you lose connectivity, the pane greys out and falls back to local formulas only.

3 A Walk-Through Inside Excel: From Raw Sheet to Insight

1. Open the workbook and click the Copilot icon (far-right ribbon tab).

2. Pose a natural-language question, e.g. “Summarise revenue growth by quarter and highlight any negative months.”

3. Copilot reads every visible sheet, generates a new tab called Copilot Results, and writes:

   • a paragraph-length narrative of key movements,

   • a clustered column chart, and

   • a dynamic PivotTable feeding that chart.

4. Refine instantly with a follow-up prompt such as “Show a 6-period moving average on that chart” or “Add gross-margin % as a calculated column.”

5. Drill down by selecting a cell range first, then asking “Find outliers that sit 1.5 × IQR above the median” to limit the analysis to that slice only.

6. Forecast or what-if by typing “Forecast next 12 months using exponential smoothing” or “Create a scenario where costs rise 8 % and revenues rise 5 %.” Copilot creates additional sheets and notes its assumptions.

7. Undo safety net – Every insertion is a single step in Excel’s undo stack, so Ctrl + Z / Cmd + Z rolls back charts, formulas, and—even—new sheets.

4 Workflow in Copilot Web Chat: Ask, Clarify, Iterate

1. In a browser, open Copilot, attach the spreadsheet, and wait for the thumbnail to appear.

2. Ask broad questions first: “Give me the top three expense categories last year.” Copilot posts a concise paragraph with an inline table.

3. Narrow the scope: “Break those expenses down by month and show the month-on-month percentage change.”

4. Keep drilling: “Which month had the steepest spike and why?” Copilot scans for notes or outlier rows and answers contextually.

5. No changes are written back to the file—perfect for quick insights without risking accidental edits.

5 What Copilot Does Exceptionally Well with Data

• PivotTable Automation – It sets up multi-level rows, columns, and value fields faster than most power users can click.

• Formula Generation – Ask conversationally (“Add a column for compound annual growth rate”) and receive a fully written formula with an explanation.

• Anomaly Detection – Copilot flags spikes, negative dips, or missing data and explains their impact in straightforward English.

• Chart Narration – It pairs every auto-chart with a ready-to-paste caption that explains the trend in one or two sentences.

• Time-Series Forecasting – Seasonality and confidence intervals appear without you touching the Data Analysis ToolPak.

6 Current Limitations and Practical Work-arounds

Limitation	Why it happens	What you can do
Macros & VBA are ignored	Copilot does not execute code for security reasons.	Run the macro first, save results, reopen with Copilot.
Power Query connections remain static	Queries might point to inaccessible data gateways in the cloud service.	Refresh queries in Excel before launching Copilot.
Large CSV uploads > 50 MB fail in chat	Bandwidth and cost throttling in the web API.	Split the file or open it in Excel proper.
Highly formatted “report” sheets confuse layout detection	Merged cells and blank spacer rows break the inferred table structure.	Select the true data range first or convert to an official Excel Table.
Offline analysis isn’t available	The LLM runs in Microsoft’s data center.	Cache insights before traveling or enable mobile tethering.

7 Prompt Crafting Tips That Unlock Deeper Insight

1. Reference the sheet or table by name: “In Sales_2024, show YoY growth.”

2. Specify the visual: “Create a 100 % stacked area chart comparing market share.”

3. State a threshold: “Flag any SKU whose return rate exceeds 7 %.”

4. Chain requests: start with a summary, then ask Copilot to “turn that into a bullet-point slide.”

5. Ask for the formula, not just the answer: “Show the DAX measure you used.” Copilot reveals the calculation logic, perfect for audit trails.

8 Security, Privacy, and Governance

• Tenant-bound processing – Data stays inside your Microsoft 365 tenant; it is neither logged to public ChatGPT history nor used to retrain the base model.

• Retention window – Files uploaded in chat are purged automatically after 30 days (or instantly when the thread is deleted).

• Admin controls – IT can disable file-upload chat, restrict Copilot to specific groups, or require sensitivity-label compliance before analysis.

• Provenance metadata – Artifacts Copilot adds—charts, PivotTables, narrative text—are tagged so auditors know they originated from AI assistance.

9 Road-Map Glimpse

Microsoft has publicly teased upcoming features: natural-language column splitting, seamless Power Query transformations through chat, and the ability to schedule recurring Copilot “jobs” that email fresh analyses every Monday morning. High-granularity access control lists tied to sensitivity labels are also under development, allowing Copilot to redact or mask cell values automatically for viewers without clearance.