A sales list with thousands of rows says little at first glance – only as a pivot table with sums by month or category does it become readable. Building such an analysis used to take time and some practice with Excel. Copilot in Excel now takes over this work on request, with no prior pivot knowledge required.
Copilot builds a finished pivot table from marked raw data
According to the Microsoft help page on PivotTables with Copilot, Copilot opens via the Copilot icon in the bottom right corner of Excel. A single sentence such as “Create a pivot table with the sum of sales, month in rows and category in columns” is then enough to build a finished analysis from a marked table – without dragging the individual pivot fields by hand. If the result is not quite right yet, it can simply be requested again with more detail.
The process breaks down into a few steps:
- Mark the table with raw data including column headers
- Open the Copilot icon in the bottom right corner of Excel
- Describe the desired result in one sentence, such as the metric, rows, and columns
- Check Copilot’s suggestion in the preview
- Add more detail if needed and regenerate
- Take over the finished pivot table and spot-check the numbers
Anyone without a Copilot license can still use the classic pivot function for free via the ribbon under “Insert”. Copilot only replaces the manual clicks during setup, not the feature itself.
The function saves time in everyday office work
Before a team meeting, a summary by cost center can be built in seconds from a long expense list, instead of adding up sums with formulas one by one. Anyone who already has Copilot explain formulas can use the same conversation afterwards to build the matching pivot analysis.
Accounting and sales back-office teams in particular regularly deal with raw data lists that need summarizing for a report – working hours by project, orders by supplier, or travel expenses by department, for example. Anyone who wants to tidy up the finished table visually can use a dedicated Copilot shortcut for a uniform table design. That turns a messy raw data list into a presentable report within a few minutes.
Price, access, and requirements at a glance
Copilot in Excel runs, according to the Microsoft getting-started overview, in Excel for Windows, Mac, the browser, and iPad – editing is not yet fully available on smartphones, according to Microsoft. The feature is also available in Germany.
A paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required. According to the Microsoft pricing overview, the business add-on costs around 15.60 euros per user per month with annual billing (as of September 2026, discounted until the end of 2026), or 21.84 euros with monthly billing. Without a license, Excel still shows the Copilot icon, but the AI features stay locked.
If customer, personnel, or other confidential data flows into the analysis, it is worth checking the privacy settings of the relevant Microsoft 365 account beforehand. Company accounts usually contractually exclude use for AI training according to Microsoft, while private accounts may need to switch this off separately in the settings.
Copilot suggests a plausible structure but does not know which metric is actually correct for a given report. With ambiguous column names, discounts, or later cancellations, the AI sometimes makes incorrect assumptions in its totals. Anyone using a pivot table for an important report should therefore spot-check the numbers against the original data before passing it on – the feature speeds up the analysis but does not replace the professional review.
