Microsoft today announced a significant expansion of Copilot in Excel, introducing reusable Skills, new finance data connectors, advanced planning controls, and clearer change attribution. Rolling out now for Excel on the web, Windows, and Mac, these features aim to transform how finance professionals and business analysts build and audit models.

The June 25, 2026 update, part of the Microsoft 365 monthly release cycle, delivers on long-standing user requests for repeatability and trust in AI-assisted spreadsheet work. Build numbers 16.0.18025.20000 and later include the new Copilot capabilities.

Reusable Skills: Save and Share Your Best Copilot Prompts

At the heart of today’s announcement is the concept of Copilot Skills—reusable, parameterized workflows that capture a sequence of AI-driven actions. Much like macros but powered by natural language, Skills let users save a prompt chain, assign input variables, and rerun it across different datasets.

For example, a financial analyst can create a “Monthly Variance Report” Skill that accepts a date range and department code, then generates a formatted summary complete with conditional formatting and charts. Once saved, that Skill appears in a personal or team library, accessible from the Copilot sidebar. Team leads can share Skills across a group, ensuring consistency in month-end closes.

Skills are built using familiar Copilot interactions. A user simply performs a task with Copilot—asking it to analyze data, create a pivot, and highlight anomalies—then clicks “Save as Skill.” The system automatically detects the steps and parameters, allowing manual refinement. Under the hood, Skills are stored as JSON manifests in the user’s OneDrive or SharePoint, making them versionable and auditable via standard compliance tools.

Early testers report dramatic time savings. “We’ve cut our monthly reporting prep from four hours to twenty minutes,” said Patricia Mendes, CFO of a mid-sized logistics firm. “The Skill captures exactly our formatting and logic, and I can hand it off to my junior analysts without extensive training.”

Finance Data Connectors: Direct Access to ERP and Accounting Systems

Copilot in Excel already supports external data sources, but the new Finance Data Connectors bring deep, native integration with leading ERP and accounting platforms. Microsoft announced connectors for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, SAP S/4HANA, Oracle NetSuite, and Workday Financial Management at launch, with more promised by year-end.

These connectors are not simple ODBC links. They leverage each platform’s APIs to surface metadata, such as chart of accounts, cost centers, and transaction types. When a user asks Copilot to “pull the Q2 trial balance from Dynamics,” the system retrieves not just raw numbers but the account hierarchy, allowing Copilot to understand relationships and suggest appropriate roll-ups.

Administrators configure connectors once in the Microsoft 365 admin center, specifying authentication via OAuth and data scoping rules. End users then see the connectors as native data sources in the Copilot dialogue. A new “Data Profile” panel shows lineage and freshness, so analysts know whether the numbers reflect last night’s batch or real-time updates.

Security is multilayer. All queries flow through the Microsoft 365 compliance boundary, respecting sensitivity labels and data loss prevention policies. For on-premises systems, a new Copilot Gateway proxies requests without storing credentials in the cloud.

Planning Controls: What-If Analysis Meets Machine Learning

Building on the existing Copilot capabilities for forecasting, the 2026 update introduces Planning Controls—a set of tools for scenario modeling and variance analysis. Users can define assumptions (e.g., revenue growth rate, headcount changes) as named parameters, then ask Copilot to “run a best-case scenario with 15% growth and show EBITDA impact.”

Behind the scenes, Copilot constructs a Monte Carlo simulation or sensitivity analysis, depending on the complexity, and presents results directly on the worksheet. A new “Scenario Manager” pane aggregates multiple runs, complete with tornado charts and probability distributions. All calculations happen client-side for performance, using WebAssembly on the web and native code on desktop.

Crucially, Planning Controls integrate with the new Skills framework. A single Skill can contain multiple scenarios and the logic to compare them. For instance, a “Budget Submission” Skill might generate three scenarios, apply conditional formatting based on corporate thresholds, and add commentary via Copilot’s generative text.

Microsoft demonstrated a 500,000-row model with 20 scenarios completing in under three seconds on a standard Windows laptop, a feat made possible by Excel’s revamped calculation engine that parallelizes across CPU and GPU cores.

Clearer Change Attribution: Who Did What, and Why

One of the most persistent pain points with AI-assisted work is trust: How do you know Copilot didn’t introduce an error? The new Copilot Audit Trail addresses this with a per-cell attribution panel. When Copilot modifies a formula or inserts data, a small blue indicator appears in the corner of the cell. Clicking it reveals the exact prompt that triggered the change, the timestamp, the user who ran it, and a before/after comparison.

For changes made by shared Skills, the audit trail also shows the Skill name and version. This level of detail satisfies SOC 2 and SOX requirements, according to Microsoft. The audit logs are exportable to Microsoft Purview for centralized compliance reporting.

“Attribution was the missing piece for regulated industries,” said Dr. Susan Lim, a risk consultant. “Now I can prove to auditors that Copilot only executed approved transformations, and I can review every change in context.”

Alongside the audit trail, Copilot now provides “Explainability Summaries” for complex formulas. Hovering over a LAMBDA function or dynamic array formula shows a natural-language description of what the formula does and why Copilot chose it. This feature leverages the same chain-of-thought reasoning used in the Skills creation process.

Cross-Platform Availability and Rollout

Microsoft is taking a cloud-first approach but with immediate desktop parity. The new Copilot features are available today on Excel for the web, and will reach Windows and Mac users via the Current Channel by July 15, 2026. Monthly Enterprise Channel customers will see them in the August security update. Mobile (iOS, Android) will gain read-only access to Skills and audit trails, with editing support planned for Q4.

Copilot in Excel requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, which remains $30 per user per month on top of eligible E3 or E5 plans. Education and frontline worker SKUs are excluded. For the Finance Data Connectors, specific ERP licenses may also be required; for example, embedding SAP data requires an SAP Business Technology Platform subscription and a user with appropriate S/4HANA authorizations.

Microsoft also announced a new Copilot Skills Gallery within the Microsoft AppSource marketplace, where ISVs and community members can publish free or paid Skills. A revenue-sharing model akin to the Teams app store will let creators monetize popular automations, with Microsoft taking a 15% cut.

Community Reaction and Analyst Take

On Windows Forum and Reddit’s r/excel, early adopters praised the Skills feature but raised questions about governance. “How do I prevent my team from creating a hundred poorly-named Skills that nobody can navigate?” asked user ExCelMaster99. Microsoft responded that the Skills library supports folders, tags, and an admin-approved “featured” section, with mandatory naming conventions configurable in Group Policy.

Industry analysts see this as a direct response to Google Sheets’ Duet AI and independent AI spreadsheet tools. “Microsoft is leveraging its enterprise install base to make Copilot the default analysis layer, not just a chat interface,” said Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. “The connector play is particularly sticky—once finance teams pipe their ERP data through Copilot, switching costs rise dramatically.”

Some users noted that the change attribution, while welcome, could be overwhelming for models with thousands of AI-generated cells. In the current build, the audit indicators can be toggled off globally or filtered by date range. A future release will add AI-powered anomaly grouping to cluster related changes.

Real-World Use Case: FP&A at a Fortune 500

To illustrate the power of the new features, consider a typical financial planning and analysis (FP&A) team at a large corporation. Every month, the team must:

  • Pull actuals from SAP into Excel
  • Compare against forecast and prior year
  • Identify variances above $50,000
  • Generate commentary for the CFO
  • Distribute a formatted report to 50 budget owners

With the new Copilot, an analyst creates a Skill called “Monthly Package.” It includes steps to:
1. Connect to the SAP Finance Data Connector and retrieve P&L data for the current month.
2. Load the latest forecast from a SharePoint-based Skill that uses a separate connector for Anaplan.
3. Merge the datasets using Power Query transformations automatically scripted by Copilot.
4. Run the Planning Controls to generate a variance analysis, highlighting items exceeding the threshold.
5. Apply the company’s standard formatting from a template.
6. Generate a narrative summary using the Explainability Summaries and the analyst’s custom tone settings.
7. Email the final report to the distribution list via Outlook integration.

The entire process takes under ten minutes, down from six hours of manual work. When the CFO asks a follow-up question—“What drove the marketing variance in EMEA?”—the analyst can re-run the Skill with a filter for region and cost center, with full traceability showing that only SAP-sourced numbers were used.

Getting Started and Best Practices

For organizations eager to adopt these features, Microsoft recommends a phased rollout. Start by identifying five to ten high-value, repetitive analytical tasks. Have experienced Copilot users build initial Skills, then review them in a center of excellence before wider distribution. Use the audit trail to validate accuracy on a small dataset before scaling.

Training resources are available at the Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption hub, including video walkthroughs and sample Skills for common finance functions such as cash flow forecasting and intercompany eliminations. Partners like EY and PwC have already developed industry-specific Skill libraries for sectors like retail, healthcare, and manufacturing.

A note on performance: Skills that pull large datasets via Finance Data Connectors should leverage Excel’s Power Query and Data Model to avoid hitting worksheet row limits. Copilot will suggest such optimizations when you save a Skill, but manual review is prudent.

Looking Ahead

Microsoft’s roadmap indicates that by late 2026, Skills will gain the ability to call Power Automate flows directly, enabling actions like posting adjustments back to an ERP or triggering an approval process. Additionally, the company is exploring Copilot-generated Python scripts for advanced statistical analysis, with a private preview expected in Q3.

Competition is intensifying. Google is rumored to be integrating Gemini directly into Sheets with similar goal-seek and attribution features, while startups like Numerous.ai and Ajelix are gaining traction with vertical offerings. Yet, Excel’s billion-strong user base and deep integration with the Microsoft graph give Copilot a formidable data moat.

For Windows users, this update underscores Microsoft’s commitment to making Windows the premier platform for AI-augmented productivity. The native performance optimizations—GPU acceleration for scenario simulations, offline model training for Skills suggestions—leverage Windows 11 hardware and are not available on rival operating systems.

Conclusion

The June 2026 Copilot in Excel release marks a turning point from AI as a novelty to AI as a foundational tool for serious financial work. Reusable Skills, enterprise-grade data connectors, planning controls, and ironclad change attribution collectively address the trust, repeatability, and integration demands of finance teams. As one early tester put it, “Copilot just grew up.”

Organizations that invest time in building and curating Skills libraries stand to gain disproportionate productivity advantages. The coming months will test whether Microsoft’s vision of an AI-powered spreadsheet is secure enough for the C-suite and auditable enough for the regulators—but the initial signals are strong.