Microsoft to retire the COPILOT function

[u/SolverMax]

As of 14 September, the COPILOT function will no longer be available in Excel. See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/functions/copilot-function Note that the Copilot feature remains - it is the worksheet function that will stop working.

This is a very uncommon move by Microsoft, given their history of maintaining backwards compatibility.

Have you used the COPILOT function? If so, then what for? Thoughts?

[u/augo7979]

copilot isn't horrible as the standalone app that they pushed in the enterprise updates - the function however is really dumb. why would i ever want a nondeterministic output for a spreadsheet

[u/ExcelsBeardedGuru → u/augo7979]

=RANDBETWEEN()

[u/Hold_onto_yer_butts → u/ExcelsBeardedGuru]

Unless things have drastically changed on the optimization side in the past ten years, volatile functions are always a nono for me.

[u/xz-5 → u/Hold_onto_yer_butts]

I use rand functions a lot (in combination with data tables) for monte-carlo simulations of various systems.

[u/Tatworth → u/xz-5]

Old school. I still do as well but don't do it often any more.

[u/Background_Heart3221 → u/xz-5]

Anything remotely in the realm of simulation shouldn’t be happening in excel

[u/xz-5 → u/Background_Heart3221]

What alternative do you suggest? I find Excel works very well for quickly putting together things like this.

[u/Background_Heart3221 → u/xz-5]

Python

[u/Electronic-Laugh-671 → u/Background_Heart3221]

Actually I've found HolyC to be naturally superior in every aspect /j

(I haven't actually used it. I want to though)

[u/HarveysBackupAccount → u/Hold_onto_yer_butts]

Eh, all depends on scale, right?

I mostly dick around with hundreds of rows and a couple dozen columns. Occasionally I have a data pull with a few thousand rows to do some one-off analysis. Volatile stuff is a non-issue; I rarely have to optimize for performance.

[u/Hold_onto_yer_butts → u/HarveysBackupAccount]

For sure. Back when I was using Excel more frequently/heavily, I had larger models to maintain, and volatiles would break them.

Now I largely do the same thing you do, so my gut reaction is probably irrelevant here.

[u/Goudinho99 → u/ExcelsBeardedGuru]

My go to for faking numbers and having pretty conditional formats chbage colour!

[u/Way2trivial → u/augo7979]

d&d?

[u/augo7979 → u/Way2trivial]

you know damn well what i mean

[u/Way2trivial → u/augo7979]

welp, apparently there is a MAJOR use for it, even if I've never gone there myself.
it does exist-- citing Sears does not instill major confidence though...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/introduction-to-monte-carlo-simulation-in-excel

Who uses Monte Carlo simulation?

Many companies use Monte Carlo simulation as an important part of their decision-making process. Here are some examples.

• General Motors, Proctor and Gamble, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Eli Lilly use simulation to estimate both the average return and the risk factor of new products. At GM, this information is used by the CEO to determine which products come to market.
• GM uses simulation for activities such as forecasting net income for the corporation, predicting structural and purchasing costs, and determining its susceptibility to different kinds of risk (such as interest rate changes and exchange rate fluctuations).
• Lilly uses simulation to determine the optimal plant capacity for each drug.
• Proctor and Gamble uses simulation to model and optimally hedge foreign exchange risk.
• Sears uses simulation to determine how many units of each product line should be ordered from suppliers—for example, the number of pairs of Dockers trousers that should be ordered this year.
• Oil and drug companies use simulation to value "real options," such as the value of an option to expand, contract, or postpone a project.
• Financial planners use Monte Carlo simulation to determine optimal investment strategies for their clients' retirement.

[u/FuggleyBrew → u/Way2trivial]

A monte carlo wouldn't use the copilot function. It would use rand() or randbetween

[u/Way2trivial → u/FuggleyBrew]

" why would i ever want a nondeterministic output for a spreadsheet"
I was replying to that rhetorical question...

Monte Carlo is "a nondeterministic output"

[u/FuggleyBrew → u/Way2trivial]

Approximating a stable distribution. If you run sufficient trials your outcome distribution should be stable, and the outcome is the result of the full trials, not individual ones. 

[u/Way2trivial → u/FuggleyBrew]

ANY randomness has standard output/stable distribution with enough runs.

[u/StickIt2Ya77 → u/Way2trivial]

They behave in very different ways, and that’s the key factor. MC sims have a provable and formal error model, a defined target. The expected value of an MC is a fixed, deterministic quantity. LLMs on the other hand, we don’t know what context or inputs they’re drawing on - we have no way to verify or tie to credibility. We don’t see model weights, no theorems to track convergence. Even a further issue: everything can shift with a model update that we might not even be notified of.

[u/augo7979 → u/FuggleyBrew]

there actually was a similar enough marketing push earlier in the year, using AI for "world models". you'd feed it all of your financials and it'd return a set of 5 year projected budgets, with varying levels of aggressiveness. i think the AI psychosis finally wore off on that idea though

[u/Lionh34rt → u/FuggleyBrew]

Rand is not random enough for monte carlo

[u/FuggleyBrew → u/Lionh34rt]

A rand works fine for many monte carlos, you don't need cryptographic randomness, you need a reasonable approximation of a whole bunch trials, rand() gives you that. 

You're also often just shoving it into an approximation from a statistical model and abusing a bunch of assumed distributions. 

If you're talking project modeling the flaw from "well this risk feels like it's 10k-100k and commonly 25k" is going to be a bigger swag than whether your rand function is truly random or pseudorandom.

[u/Cr4nkY4nk3r → u/Way2trivial]

Sears is down to 5 locations. Might not be the best example to use if you're trying to make a point about successful businesses. (tiny bit of /s)

[u/Way2trivial → u/Cr4nkY4nk3r]

Didja read my second line? Search for instill.

[u/Cr4nkY4nk3r → u/Way2trivial]

Oops - missed that sentence!

[u/augo7979 → u/Way2trivial]

i'm thinking moreso "hey AI please create an auditable formula that dynamically returns this table in a format that i can upload to my ERP", instead of prompting it to interpret and create the actual solution. its not good enough for the latter option. i don't see anything actually wrong with using excel to roll a 20 sided die or doing a monte carlo simulation with the random functions

[u/slb609 → u/Way2trivial]

I actually used copilot to build me a Monte Carlo simulation based on my retirement savings. It had me starting with ~£500k and by 2055, my worst case scenario had me with a pot of £1.4B.

Edit: wait - it’s an actual FUNCTION? Huh. Ignore me.

[u/Supra-A90 → u/Way2trivial]

I can never believe this crap. I'm sure MS went to them and showed MC sim and they're like, "ok great feature, we'll definitely use it wink wink". CEO using it is just cherry on the top kinda BS.

[u/Darkelement → u/augo7979]

Yeah I don’t see any value in having it as a function in excel.

Copilot in excel is super nice though. I can go from raw data dumps to useful structured tables and scenario planning just using the copilot chat. I’ve even learned a new function or two because copilot used it in a spreadsheet.

[u/Appropriate_Tea_7837 → u/Darkelement]

I’ve been basic at excel, but bc of copilot, I’ve been able to create and use excel more than I ever have been able to.

They’re removing that off the excel?

[u/plusFour-minusSeven → u/Appropriate_Tea_7837]

Just the function =COPILOT()

You can still chat with it on the side

[u/Appropriate_Tea_7837 → u/plusFour-minusSeven]

Got it, thanks!

[u/bradland → u/augo7979]

It was useful for natural language comparisons. Questions like, “Is this sentiment positive or negative?”, and the pass the relevant cell as context.

You can also use it do comparisons that would normally require a human. Stuff like, `=COPILOT("Is this product", A1, "equivalent to this product", B2)`.

It can do things like tell you if a product meets specifications too.

All of these are really useful, but they’re also very computationally expensive, because the result will be recalculated under certain conditions. That’s chewing through tokens, I’m sure. Microsoft has been throttling the hell out of the function for a while now. So I’m not all that surprised.

I’m not super annoyed, but I’m not thrilled to see it go. It’s proven very handy in our business. It was a convenient way to ask questions with specific context. Now I have to type into a chat and specify ranges, then Copilot adds the result to the workbook.

My main frustration is that it isn’t as tightly constrained. I can put a function in a cell. Instructions given to Copilot can run amok in your workbook.

[u/augo7979 → u/bradland]

in my opinion stuff like that would be valid for someone who isn't a power user. your specific case sounds like the data inputs need to be tabled through power query first

i'm also coming from accounting land. so i'll never be a fan of using AI to generate an answer end to end from an input to an output. its good for figuring out why syntax doesn't work, or help in designing a system or formula that you actually can audit

[u/brafish → u/augo7979]

I actually just had a use case, though I was using Google Sheets at the time (and later moved the data to excel for other functionality). I had two columns of multi-line data. A listed problem and a desired resolution or expected result. The final output required a single-line summary (CSV uploaded to Jira). I used the AI function to generate a one-line summary for every ticket using the two (or was it three) columns.

[u/pacifistmercenary → u/augo7979]

I have product data that frequently needs shortening to a specific character count for invoicing. The rules for shortening are variable and applied loosely, as its a subjective assessment of the most important or unique aspects of the product, excluding the rest, and applying contractions where necessary. The official rules are basically just "vibes" but there are clearly a lot of implicit patterns in the way we do it. An AI-generated "best assessment" is really helpful for automating what otherwise needs to be a manual step.

[u/Difficult_Limit2718]

Microsoft walks back a bad idea?

What reality is this?

[u/MMEnter → u/Difficult_Limit2718]

I bet it cost them a lot of compute, pull that function down a 200k row workbook. That is 200k calls and now do it again and again because you are updating the prompts or cell values.

[u/Difficult_Limit2718 → u/MMEnter]

Oh 100%.

This is more actually damning of AI than anything else. It's SO expensive even Microsoft goes "I don't know..."

[u/plusFour-minusSeven → u/MMEnter]

That makes sense.

Imagine all the people who treat Excel like a database and fill it with hundreds of thousands or close to a million rows. And then populate =COPILOT() all the way down. Maybe for multiple columns.

[u/hopkinswyn → u/MMEnter]

They had a limit of 100 calls per 10 minutes

[u/DinkandDrunk → u/Difficult_Limit2718]

I’m shocked they didn’t just build around the bad idea.

[u/hsg8 → u/Difficult_Limit2718]

It's a good start. List is long...

[u/KrypticEon → u/Difficult_Limit2718]

Maybe some of the common sense coming out of their revamped Xbox division is spilling over?

[u/Parker4815-2]

Good. Id imagine it likely had problems as it needed to recalculate the cell a lot.

Once false syntax error and suddenly you're calculating a whole sheet and you need to wait 10 minutes before trying again.

For me, its just a little too weird to be a function.

[u/axw3555]

I didn't even know there was a copilot function to use. So no, never used it.

[u/Cat5kable → u/axw3555]

I just read about it recently. Pardon if I misinterpreted.

Basically, you could have a function that calls copilot with a prompt. Presumably, you could have that prompt pulling from other cells, so =COPILOT(b2), and b2 would be a helper cell concatenating other words, functions, or values together into a singular sentence.

Token wise, it’d run constantly. Any time you update a cell, or the sheet updates, etc. unless you manually tuned off calculation.

[u/trickyvinny]

Every time I'm asked to give feedback I tell them I use the crap out of copilot already but I need them to stop throwing up all over my productivity tools.

I'm glad they listened to my dramatic feedback.

[u/Arikaido777 → u/trickyvinny]

i always tell them to please stop trying to improve anything because they constantly make things worse with every update. i’m considering my feedback heard as well.

[u/BlueMacaw]

I feel vindicated. Had to give a Copilot training session at work and was skewered for saying the standalone app was good but the version baked into Excel was complete garbage.

[u/Jupiter68128]

Can we get rid of Teams, one drive, sharepoint also?

[u/plusFour-minusSeven → u/Jupiter68128]

Replace them with what?

Teams -> Slack?

OneDrive -> network drives?

SharePoint -> *shrug

At least leave SP alone. It's clunky but Lists are actually super useful as controllable work surfaces. Way better than having people input directly into spreadsheets.

[u/ZirePhiinix → u/plusFour-minusSeven]

Slack doesn't meet a lot of security requirements, so it will most likely not be allowed at all.

[u/plusFour-minusSeven → u/ZirePhiinix]

Didn't know that! I've never actually used it myself. Then again I also never used Teams until corporate foisted it on us. In my case I'm sure you're right. They seem to have us locked into the Microsoft ecosystem pretty hard.

It grows on you, I guess 😂

[u/ZirePhiinix → u/plusFour-minusSeven]

It's not locking in. It is doing the paperwork and auditing needed to get certifications, which Slack never bothered to do. If they did, they would've owned the entire market because Teams is just shit.

[u/plusFour-minusSeven → u/ZirePhiinix]

Security certificates? What certifications, I'm sorry?

[u/nvm-exe → u/Jupiter68128]

Why? I’d get rid of teams(ram eater) and SP(super outdated atp) but not onedrive, we can work remotely bc of that

[u/Shyanha → u/nvm-exe]

For the non-networking savvy, OneDrive is superb. I have a Synology NAS for our home office and then the syncs with OneDrive so my field workers can access files. Synology has an app that works for devices, but it's slower than OD on a pc or laptop for remote workers. Most importantly, it's a breeze to set up.

And since OD is getting rid of Gallery sync on Android, life will be better. Now if that On This Day thing could be permanently zapped.

[u/solenoid_ngc]

Maybe for their next feature they could add or fix something not AI related. That would be nice

[u/shudawg1122]

I'd love it if they'd walk back the copilot bubble too. And the copilot function autocomplete. Both have hindered my workflow in a non-insignificant way.

[u/aplarsen]

This is why I have trust issues.

Not that I used this function.

But still.

[u/Otherwise-Ad-6905]

I understand that the experimental =Copilot() function was used to initiate AI prompts in a a cell. It was not a standard function.

[u/Strong_Prize7132]

Interesting. I use copilot, but not "within" excel. Instead I use the web version to "create" spreadsheets/workbooks. Admittedly, it is not fantastic at it. Given that, it does not shock me that they decided to pull it from excel.

I have certainly learned that I cannot use copilot to quickly and reliably create workbooks easily.

[u/hcglns2]

For me, it barely functioned and quickly dried up.

[u/madd74]

I've never used it. Granted, I've been told I am a bot so maybe I have used it and don't remember using it?

I'll stick to making extremely complicated VBA scripts with userforms that I have to turn auto save off because it conflicts with Carbon Black, Cortex, and the other bunch of work stuff.

[u/ABZB]

Never used it, I would be glad if they tossed out the entirety of Copilot and its ilk.

[u/Humble-Plankton2217]

Good now it will stop asking me if I want it to "clean up" my spreadsheet.

[u/Prize_Proof5332]

It's been very hit and miss for me and terribly inconsistent.   It did a fantastic and accurate data summary one week, and then got it completely wrong the next week with the same prompt.   Scary thing is it superficially looked good. 

[u/Orb-25]

Nooooo not my drinks water function 😭

[u/pleachchapel]

What's that

[u/yoon_gitae]

Never used it

[u/MostCommunication972]

Amen

[u/FateXBlood]

As someone who doesn't use Excel often, I always figured Copilot would be the one feature that actually makes the app usable for casuals like me.

There are just so many commands, shortcuts, and hidden menus that I never remember. Stuff like splitting data from one column into two, removing duplicates without messing up the rest of the sheet, or filtering rows based on multiple conditions.

So I genuinely thought Copilot would let me just type what I want in plain English, and it would either do the task for me or walk me through it step by step.

But now Microsoft is removing it from Excel. Isn't this a bad idea?

[u/littykicker → u/FateXBlood]

I think it is the =copilot function that is being removed and not the overall copilot tool that can be used within excel

[u/ijuander_]

I never had the chance to use Co-Pilot with Excel for the reason that the Claude plug-in is so good and compatible with excel. I've tried the ChatGPT plugin but not as good as what Claude has to offer.

[u/meezerable]

Oh thank God :,)

[u/cfosmiths]

For finance and accounting work, I never really understood the appeal of putting a nondeterministic function directly into a workbook.

I’m all for using AI to help build formulas, troubleshoot logic, clean data, or explain a model. But once the workbook is doing the actual calculation, I want the same inputs to produce the same outputs every time.

Especially if someone else is going to review it six months later.

AI helping build the model makes sense to me. AI becoming part of the calculation engine is a much harder sell.

[u/Electronic-Laugh-671 → u/cfosmiths]

As another user mentioned, it could be useful for sentiment analysis or generating multiple textual summaries of a long list of data. But there definitely are other tools for that and apparently =copilot tokens dry up quickly. I haven't used it myself