The COPILOT function in Excel is going away on September 14, 2026. Microsoft's position is that Copilot in Excel already does everything the function did, so there is no reason to keep both. I will be honest with you: I loved that function, and I know I was in the minority on that. It was very good at reading text and handing back a result right in the grid.

Copilot in Excel is officially called the Copilot Dynamic Action Button.

So rather than take Microsoft's word for it, I ran three real data tasks side by side — once with the COPILOT function while I still have it, and once with Copilot in Excel — and compared speed, accuracy, and what you actually end up with in the workbook.

Example 1: Rate survey feedback as positive or negative

Column A holds 40 comments from a cafeteria feedback survey — things like "The salad bar is always fresh, but I'd love to see more protein options" and "Portion sizes on the hot line feel inconsistent." I want a Positive or Negative rating for each one starting in column B.

The COPILOT function version

Here is the formula I put in B2:

=COPILOT("look at the feedback and give me a positive or negative rating",A2:A41)

The prompt goes inside double quotes, then a comma, then the range. As soon as you press Enter you get #BUSY! in the cell while the function calls out and thinks.

About 30 seconds later the results spilled down the column. Spot-checking a few: A2 reads positive to me, A5 is positive, and A4 — the complaint about inconsistent portion sizes — came back negative. That all tracks.

The Copilot in Excel version

Now clear column B and open Copilot in Excel. Mine floats over the grid, but yours may be pinned to the ribbon depending on where you put it. The one thing to check before you type anything: make sure the pane is set to Allow editing. If it is not, Copilot will describe what it would do instead of writing into your worksheet.

You do not need =COPILOT here, because you are already in Copilot. The prompt is just:

look at the feedback and give me a positive or negative rating from A2:A41

It finished fast — if not faster than the function, then at least a little bit faster. And here is the first real advantage: Copilot handed back a summary I never asked for. It reasoned in two steps, confirmed it rated all 40 comments in B2:B41, and gave me the totals: 26 positive and 14 negative. With the COPILOT function you would have to go build those counts yourself.

Click Done to keep the results. If you want to go further with this kind of text analysis, I have a separate walkthrough on summarizing a text column into categories with Copilot.

The one thing the function does better

Because =COPILOT() is a real function, it stays live. Change A2 to something negative and B2 flips to negative on its own. Copilot in Excel wrote static values, so it will not.

That live behavior cuts both ways, though. Editing one cell does not just recalculate that one row — it recalculates every single one of them. On a 40-row list that is a shrug. On a few thousand rows, it is not.

Example 2: Pull ZIP codes out of inconsistent addresses

Second task, and this one is messier. Column A has fictitious customer names, column B has customer numbers, and column C has customer addresses. The problem with column C is that the ZIP code is all over the place — sometimes at the end where it belongs, sometimes shoved to the front of the street address:

• 38412 908 Pine Ridge Dr, Fairfax, VA — ZIP at the front
• 59 14th St NW, Dayton, OH 45410 — ZIP at the end
• 31 Forest Hill Dr, Newark, NJ 07112 — ZIP at the end, with a leading zero

The COPILOT function version

=COPILOT("pull out the zip code from the addresses listed here. They should be five consecutive digits",C2:C27)

That one worked quickly — about 20 seconds — and pulled clean five-digit ZIPs into column D for all 26 rows.

One gotcha worth flagging: it can get confused when a cell contains both a five-digit street address and a five-digit ZIP. There is no way for the formula to know which five digits you meant. In this data set it was fine, but that is exactly the kind of thing you need to check on your own file.

The Copilot in Excel version

Here is where I could be smarter about the prompt, because Copilot can ask me a question back:

Give me the zip codes starting in D2 for the addresses in Customer Address. If you see two five digits in one cell, ask me to chose.

That was very fast, and this time Copilot did something the function cannot. Instead of writing static text, it wrote a real formula into column D:

=REGEXEXTRACT(C2,"\d{5}",0,0)

So the ZIP codes are now live. Change an address in column C and column D updates with it. Copilot also reported back that it filled all 26 ZIP codes, that no address contained two five-digit choices, and — the detail I appreciated most — that the leading zero in 07112 was preserved. If you want the manual version of this, I have a full walkthrough on extracting ZIP codes from text with REGEXEXTRACT.

Example 3: Standardize the whole address

Last one. I want every address rewritten into the normal order — street number, street, city, state, ZIP — in a new Correct Address column starting at E2. With the COPILOT function this would be another =COPILOT("...", C2:C27) formula asking it to fix the addresses. Let's give the task pane a turn instead:

The addresses in column C are all out of whack compared to the normal address, which is the street number, the street, the city, state, and ZIP. Can you fix all these and give me the correct addresses starting in cell E2?

About 15 seconds later, column E was filled. C2 was definitely wrong and is now 908 Pine Ridge Dr, Fairfax, VA 38412. C3 was wrong and is now 77 Hillcrest Ave, Summerville, SC 29483. In real life I would check far more than a couple of rows, but on a spot check this held up well.

Bonus: let Copilot check its own work

This is the part that sold me. After hitting Done, I asked Copilot to audit the column it had just written:

Do a quick check of column E and just verify that the zip code is always at the very end and is at least five digits.

It came back verifying all 26 addresses in E2:E27: every ZIP is at the very end, every ZIP contains exactly five digits, no exceptions found. I do have 26 rows, so the count matched. Using Copilot as a data validator on top of a data cleaner is something the function was never going to do for me.

So which one wins?

As much as I loved the COPILOT function, I have to admit Microsoft is right on this one. There was no need for the redundancy. Here is how the three tasks shook out:

• Speed: Copilot in Excel was as fast or faster on all three tasks.
• Extras you did not ask for: Copilot gave me totals, counts, and confirmations. The function gives you exactly what you asked for and nothing else.
• Live results: This used to be the function's edge, but Copilot can write real formulas like REGEXEXTRACT, which stay live and do not force a full-column recalculation.
• Follow-up questions: You can tell Copilot to come back and ask you when it hits an ambiguous cell. A formula cannot do that.
• Checking your work: Copilot will audit the column it just wrote. That alone is worth the switch.

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PowerPoint just picked up a Copilot skill called Create interactive slides, and it is the one I would pay for a license to get. It takes a table, a spreadsheet, or even a plain content slide and turns it into something a viewer can click — filters, running totals, growth percentages, swapping visuals — all live in normal editing view, without ever starting a slide show.

I am going to walk you through three examples: building an interactive slide from a table already on a slide, building one from an Excel workbook, and making non-numeric slide content interactive. I will also show you how to verify the math before you trust it, and how to update the slide when the numbers change.

What you need

Create interactive slides requires a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license — not the free Copilot Chat. It is rolling out gradually, so if it is not in your skills list yet, check again in a couple of weeks. The three skills alongside it (Visualize this slide, Review this presentation, and Prepare for questions) have been around a few weeks longer.

Where to find Create interactive slides

Open the Copilot pane in PowerPoint — it opens in the task pane on the right. If your Copilot icon has moved on you, Microsoft has been relocating it; I covered that in my post on the recent Copilot updates in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

In the Copilot pane, click the plus sign under the prompt box, then choose Choose skills. Four skills are listed. Pick Create interactive slides and it drops into the prompt box as a hyperlinked skill tag. You then type the rest of your instruction after it.

Example 1: Turn a table on a slide into an interactive slide

My starting deck has a slide titled Head Count by Department. It is a plain table: four departments, actual head count for 2024, 2025, and 2026, and a 2027 estimate. Nothing wrong with it — it just sits there.

With slide 2 selected, here is the prompt I used after inserting the skill tag:

create-interactive-slides from the table on slide 2. Leave slide 2 alone as is and make the interactive slide a new slide. I want totals and filters

Two things in that prompt matter. First, tell Copilot to build the interactive version on a new slide instead of replacing the table. I want to keep the raw data until I have verified the interactivity. Second, say what you want out of it — in my case, totals and filters.

Copilot came back with a new slide called Head Count Explorer. Across the top are year buttons — 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027 estimate — plus a Select all departments button. On the left is a big running total, and on the right is a department filter where each row can be switched on or off.

The best part: this works in normal editing view. I am not in slide show mode in any of these screenshots. Click a year, click a department, and the numbers recalculate right there on the canvas.

Verify the math before you trust it

This is the step people skip. Before you rely on a generated slide in front of an audience, check a few numbers against your source.

Click 2027 estimate and the total jumps to 184, with a +15 change and an 8.9% year-over-year increase.

I copied the table into Excel, ran an AutoSum, and calculated the percentage change: 169 to 184 is 15 more people, an 8.9% increase. That matches. Do the same with a single department. Turn everything off except Information Technology and click through the years — 60, 68, 75, 82 — and watch the total in the bottom left update as you go.

Once the spot checks line up, you can either hide slide 2 or delete it. That is up to you — but keep it until you have tested.

Updating an interactive slide when the data changes

Here is the important caveat before you build a deck around this: editing the source table does not automatically update the interactive slide. There is no live link between them.

You have two ways to handle it.

If you kept the source slide: change the numbers in the table, then tell Copilot in the prompt box something like "I've updated the table on slide 2 — go update the interactive slide on slide 3." That works.

If you already deleted the source slide: go to the interactive slide and change the value straight from the prompt box. Here is the prompt I used:

for IT for 2027 estimate, we now are expecting 86. Change slide 3

Copilot rewrote the slide and the numbers recalculated: IT moves to 86, the total goes from 184 to 188, and the growth metrics update to +19 and 11.2%. I checked that in Excel too — it is correct.

Note the follow-up chip Copilot offers: Update the source table too. If you kept slide 2, that one click keeps both slides in sync.

Example 2: Build an interactive slide from an Excel file

The second example starts outside PowerPoint. I have a workbook with car brands in column A, the year in column B, and revenue and profit in columns C and D — one row per brand per year across six years.

In the Copilot pane in PowerPoint, upload the Excel file — you can pull it from your Downloads folder or from OneDrive — then select Create interactive slides and describe what you want. Ask for a year filter, revenue and profit totals, and a brand comparison. (If you would rather have Copilot generate a whole deck from a workbook instead of a single interactive slide, I covered that in creating PowerPoint presentations from Excel files.)

What came back is a slide called Revenue scale, profit signal. It opens on "All years" with total revenue of 3.44M, total profit of 360K, a peak year callout, and a combined column-and-line chart of annual totals — revenue as columns, profit as the line.

Now use the Filter year dropdown in the top right. Pick a single year and the whole slide re-renders: the headline changes to a nine-brand comparison for that year, the totals recalculate, and a revenue leader appears. Hover any column and you get the exact figure.

Example 3: Make non-numeric slide content interactive

Filters and totals are the obvious use, but the skill is not limited to numbers. My third deck is about Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Slide 2 is a stat slide — four cards with passenger counts, takeoffs and landings, destinations served, and a world ranking, plus a bar chart of top domestic routes. Slide 3 is a timeline: 1925, 1980, 2003, Today.

I selected Copilot, clicked Create interactive slides, and typed one sentence: change slides 2 and 3 and make them both interactive. That was the whole prompt.

Slide 2 came back as a Select a measure layout. Four measures are listed down the right — passenger volume, aircraft movements, network reach, global ranking — and clicking one drops that figure into a large circle in the center with its own supporting sentence. One number at a time, in the order you choose to tell the story.

Slide 3 became a clickable timeline. Select a year on the left and the headline, the paragraph, and the pull quote all change. The first pass kept one static runway photo on the right no matter which year I picked, so I went back to Copilot and asked whether each year could have its own image. It did it.

Refining the layout after Copilot builds it

The output is not always pixel perfect, and you fix it the same way you built it — with a prompt. On my stat slide, the larger figures run past the edge of the circle they sit in.

Rather than nudging shapes by hand, go back to the prompt box and ask for the change: keep slide 2 interactive, but replace the circle with a rectangle so the text fits inside it. Treat layout cleanup as another round of prompting, not manual formatting.

Tips worth remembering

• Build on a new slide. Tell Copilot to leave your source data alone so you can verify against it.
• Spot check the math. Copy the table into Excel, AutoSum it, and check a couple of totals and percentages before you present.
• Hide or delete the source slide once you are satisfied — do not delete it first.
• There is no live link. Changing the source table does not update the interactive slide. Prompt Copilot to update it, or use the "Update the source table too" follow-up to sync in the other direction.
• Clean source data wins. One row per record, clear headers, no merged cells.
• Fix layout with prompts, not by dragging shapes around.
• It works in normal view. You do not need to run the slide show to click through the interactivity.

Microsoft got this one right. If you have a paid Copilot license and you build data-heavy decks, this is the skill to try first.

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Copilot in Excel has two features that let you customize how it behaves: Personalization and Workbook Rules. Both are great on their own, but if you use both, an obvious question comes up — what happens when they conflict? Which one does Copilot actually listen to?

I ran four hands-on tests to find out. The answer isn't a simple "one always beats the other" — it's more nuanced, and worth understanding if you're setting either of these up.

The Two Features

Excel Copilot gives you two ways to customize its behavior, and they work very differently. Personalization is an account-level setting that applies quietly in the background across every workbook you open — it's best for general style preferences like table styles, number formats, or preferred formulas. Workbook Rules, on the other hand, live inside the file itself on a worksheet named .Rules, making them ideal for team standards that need to travel with the file.

Personalization

• Account-level preferences
• Private to you, not saved in the workbook
• Applies automatically across every workbook, on every prompt
• Best for general style preferences — fonts, table styles, formula choices, number formats

To create Personalization in Excel using Copilot:

1. Click the Copilot icon
2. Click Setting
3. Click Personalization
4. Add Personalizations

See Copilot in Action

Copilot's time-saving tricks aren't limited to Excel. Here's how it can save you hours replying to email in Outlook:

Workbook Rules

• File-level instructions, one rule per cell in column A
• Saved inside the workbook — visible to anyone who opens the file
• Best for team standards and file-specific conventions

To create a Rules worksheet in Excel using Copilot:

1. Click the Copilot icon
2. Click Add sources, skills, and more (The plus sign)
3. Click Create workbook rules
4. A new worksheet will automatically be generated with sample rules. The worksheet is called ".Rules".

Personalization vs. Rules Comparison

Here's what both look like in Excel — Personalization settings on the left, a .Rules worksheet on the right:

The Real Priority Order

After testing, here's the actual hierarchy:

1. Direct prompt instruction — always wins, no exceptions
2. Workbook Rules — win, but only when the prompt references them in some clear way
3. Personalization — the default that applies to everything else

That middle point surprised me. Workbook Rules don't apply automatically just because they exist in the file — Copilot needs to be pointed at them.

Grab the Cheat Sheet

Four Tests, Four Confirmations

Test 1: No Rules Mentioned → Personalization Wins

Prompt: "Create a sample HR worksheet... make sure to make it a table."

Result: Copilot used Purple Medium 12 table style and no-currency, no-decimal number formatting — both straight from my Personalization settings. The .Rules sheet, which specified Red Table Style Medium 10 and currency formatting, was ignored entirely.

Image for Test 1 - Personalization

Notice in the image below, Excel used Personalization. Annual salary in column H has no dollar symbols and no decimal places, and it used the exact table style I asked for in personalization.

Test 2: ".rules" Named Explicitly → Rules Win

Prompt: "Use the .rules worksheet and create a sample vendor table..."

Result: Copilot used Red Table Style Medium 10 and currency-formatted numbers — both from the Rules sheet, overriding the conflicting Personalization settings.

Image for Test 2 - RULES

In the image below, notice column F is using currency with two decimal places, and the table is Red Table Style Medium Ten

Test 3: Explicit Prompt Formatting → the Prompt Wins

Prompt: "Create another HR sample data worksheet. Put it in a table format. Use annual salary field for sure. Format the numbers with three decimal places. Also give me date of hire, and for the date of hire, I want MM-DD-YY. I need at least 20 records."

Result: Copilot applied three decimal places to salary and MM-DD-YY dates — the exact formats stated in the prompt.

• Overrode Personalization: which called for no decimals/no currency symbol and dates as MMM. DD, YYYY.
• Overrode Workbook Rules: which called for currency formatted as $#,##0.00 (no date rule was specified, so only the currency rule was in conflict).

Direct prompt instructions beat both settings whenever there's a conflict.

Image for Test 3 - Prompt wins

Notice in the image below, column H has three decimal places, and column I (date of hire) has the date format I requested, overriding both personalization and workbook rules.

Test 4: "Use the Workbook Rules" (No Literal Filename) → Rules Still Win

Prompt: "Make sure to use the workbook rules." (no ".rules" mentioned by name)

Result: Copilot correctly identified and named all four rules — currency as $#,##0.00, Red Table Style Medium 10, a meaningful table name, and a frozen top row — and applied them. This confirms Copilot recognizes a natural reference to "workbook rules," not just the literal .rules filename.

Practical Takeaway

Don't assume Workbook Rules apply automatically the way Personalization does. If you want a workbook's rules enforced, your prompt needs to point Copilot at them in some clear way — a natural phrase like "use the workbook rules" is enough; you don't need to type ".rules" literally. Otherwise, your personal Personalization settings will quietly take over, even inside a workbook that has its own .Rules sheet.

And if your prompt gives explicit formatting instructions, that always wins over both — so be specific in the moment whenever precision matters.

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Microsoft is rolling out a small but genuinely useful update to Excel: when you create a new Table, you can now name it right in the Create Table dialog box — instead of accepting the default "Table1" and renaming it later (or, more likely, never renaming it at all).

This feature is currently rolling out on the Beta Channel as of August 30, 2026.

It's a tiny workflow change, but it's a good excuse to talk about something many Excel users skip entirely: naming your tables in the first place.

Reasons to Rename Tables

If you're using Tables in Excel — and you should be — naming them matters more than most people think. Here's why.

1. Formulas become readable

Compare these two formulas:

=SUM(Table1[Column3])
=SUM(Sales_2025[Revenue])

The first tells you nothing. The second tells you exactly what you're summing and where it came from. Multiply that across a workbook with a dozen formulas, and named tables turn your formulas into self-documenting code.

2. Copilot works better

When you prompt Copilot in Excel, a meaningful table name gives it real context to work with. "Update the Vendor_Purchases table" is a much clearer instruction than "update Table4" — and the difference shows up in how accurately Copilot understands what you're asking for.

3. Navigation is faster

The Name Box in the top-left corner of Excel becomes a jump-to menu for your entire workbook once your tables have real names. Click the dropdown, pick "Vendor_Purchases," and you're there instantly — no scrolling through sheets to find it.

4. Multiple tables stop being confusing

One workbook, five tables, all named Table1 through Table5? Good luck remembering which is which three months from now — or explaining it to a colleague who opens the file for the first time.

5. Power Query and Power Pivot depend on it

Once you start pulling tables into Power Query or building a data model, "Table1" and "Table2" become a genuine nightmare to trace. Clear table names are the difference between a data model you can maintain and one you can't.

6. It documents your work for free

A well-named table is self-explanatory to the next person who opens the file — including future you, six months from now, trying to remember what you were doing.

Quick Tips: How to Rename a Table Today

Tip1: Create a Table: CTRL + T

Tip2: You don't have to wait for the new feature to start naming your tables properly. Right now, in any version of Excel:

1. Click anywhere inside your table
2. Go to the Table Design tab (or Table tab, depending on your version)
3. Find the Table Name box on the far left
4. Type a new name and hit Enter

Takes five seconds, and it saves you hours later.

The Bottom Line

The new "name it at creation" feature removes the friction that causes most people to skip this step entirely. But whether you're using the new dialog or renaming an existing table, the underlying habit is the same: give your tables real names. Your formulas, your future self, and anyone else who opens your workbook will thank you.

Do you name your tables, or are you still on Table1, Table2, Table3? Let me know in the comments.

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Here is a problem I run into often: I have one flat list of employees with a department next to each name, and what I really want is a column for each department with the right people underneath it. HR in one column, Accounting in the next, and so on — built once, updating on its own as the source list changes.

Three functions do the whole job: UNIQUE pulls the distinct department names, TRANSPOSE turns that vertical list into horizontal headers, and FILTER — one of my favorite Excel functions — drops the matching names underneath each one. No sorting, no copying, no manual cleanup.

The sample data

Column B has twelve names and column C has the department each person belongs to, in rows 2 through 13. There are four departments in that list — HR, Accounting, Training, and IT — but they repeat all the way down, and they are not in any particular order.

The layout I am building starts in cell E1. Row 1 gets the department names running across, and everything from row 2 down gets the people who belong to that department.

Step 1: Get the distinct departments with UNIQUE

The UNIQUE function takes a range and hands back each value one time. Point it at the department column:

=UNIQUE(C2:C13)

Press Enter and there they are — HR, Accounting, Training, IT. Four departments out of twelve rows, no duplicates.

One thing worth pointing out about dynamic arrays: the formula lives in a single cell. Click on the second result and the formula bar shows the text grayed out. That is Excel telling you the value is part of a spill range owned by the cell above it — you cannot edit it there.

Step 2: Turn the list sideways with TRANSPOSE

UNIQUE gave me exactly what I asked for, but it gave it to me going straight down, and I need my headers going left to right. TRANSPOSE flips a range from vertical to horizontal, and it nests around UNIQUE without any extra work.

Start typing =TRAN in cell E1 and Excel offers TRANSLATE first, then TRANSPOSE — make sure you pick the second one.

Wrap TRANSPOSE around the UNIQUE formula and highlight the same department range:

=TRANSPOSE(UNIQUE(C2:C13))

Press Enter and the four departments spill across E1 through H1 instead of down. I made them bold so they read as headers, but that is cosmetic — the formula is doing the work.

Step 3: Pull the names with FILTER

Now for the function I genuinely love. The FILTER function takes two required arguments: the array you want back, and the condition that decides which rows qualify.

Go to cell E2, directly under the HR header. Argument one is what I want to pick up — the names, B2:B13.

Argument two is what to include. I am testing the department column against whatever department is sitting in the header cell above:

=FILTER(B2:B13,C2:C13=E1)

Press Enter and I get Emma Brooks, Ava Collins, and Olivia Hayes. Always check what a formula is doing before you trust it — scan back through column C, find every row tagged HR, and confirm those are the same three people.

Notice that the array and the condition point at two different columns. I am returning names from column B while testing departments in column C. That is the part that makes FILTER so useful — what you get back and what you test do not have to be the same range.

Step 4: Lock the references before you fill across

The formula is correct for HR, but it will fall apart the moment I drag it to the right, because B2:B13 and C2:C13 will shift over to C and D. Those two ranges need to stay put.

Double-click cell E2 to edit the formula, put your cursor in each range, and press the F4 function key to make it absolute:

=FILTER($B$2:$B$13,$C$2:$C$13=E1)

The E1 reference is different. That one should move — when the formula lands in F2 it needs to look at F1, in G2 at G1, and so on. So leave it relative and it works fine on its own.

If you want to be strict about it, you can press F4 twice to get a mixed reference, E$1. That freezes row 1 while leaving the column free to move. It is not necessary here, but it is a little cleaner, and it protects you if the formula ever gets copied down instead of across.

Step 5: Fill the formula across

Select E2, grab the fill handle in the bottom-right corner, and drag across to H2. Let go, and every department fills in with its own people underneath it.

Because every cell here is a formula, the whole layout is live. Add a new hire to the bottom of the source list and their name appears under the right department. Add a brand new department and TRANSPOSE widens the header row automatically — you only need to fill the FILTER formula one column further.

The three formulas

• =UNIQUE(C2:C13) — the distinct values from a column, each one listed once.
• =TRANSPOSE(UNIQUE(C2:C13)) — the same list flipped from vertical to horizontal.
• =FILTER($B$2:$B$13,$C$2:$C$13=E$1) — the names whose department matches the header above, ready to fill across.

UNIQUE, TRANSPOSE, and FILTER are all part of Excel's dynamic array family, so they spill onto the sheet and recalculate as the data underneath them changes. If you want to go further with the same building blocks, you can count how many people land in each group with COUNTIF, or use UNIQUE to find and remove duplicates in a messy list. Thank you for your time, and thank you for supporting my YouTube channel.

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RIP =COPILOT(): Why Microsoft Is Retiring Excel's Newest Function Before It Ever Really Took Off. If you've been playing around with the =COPILOT() function in Excel, mark your calendar: September 14, 2026 is its last day. Microsoft quietly updated its support documentation with the retirement notice, and if you missed it, here's what's happening and what you should do instead.

What's Being Retired

The =COPILOT() function let you call on AI directly inside a cell — summarizing text, classifying data, or generating content without leaving your spreadsheet. It was a clever idea on paper: bring generative AI into the same formula bar you use for VLOOKUP and SUMIF.

But it never made it out of preview. The function was only ever available through the Frontier and Microsoft 365 Insider programs, and it's now being phased out in favor of Copilot in Excel's side pane, which Microsoft says already covers most of the same ground.

Why Microsoft Is Pulling the Plug

A few things stand out when you read between the lines of Microsoft's own documentation:

It never graduated from preview. After all this time in Frontier and Insider builds, =COPILOT() never reached general availability. That's usually a sign a feature is being reworked rather than shipped as-is.

Microsoft told people not to rely on it for the things Excel users actually need. The support article is blunt about this — the function was explicitly not recommended for:

• Numerical calculations
• Workbook lookups
• Legal, regulatory, or compliance-related work
• Anything requiring deterministic, repeatable accuracy

That's a significant list of exclusions for a spreadsheet function. If you can't trust it for numbers or lookups, its usefulness inside Excel — a tool built on precision — was always going to be limited.

The Copilot side pane already does the job. Microsoft is steering everyone toward Copilot in Excel, which is generally available (not stuck in preview) and supports summarizing text, classifying data, generating content, and pulling information from the web — the same core tasks the function offered, just without living inside a cell.

What This Means for You

If you're using =COPILOT() in any live workbooks, start migrating that logic to the Copilot pane now rather than waiting until mid-September. A few practical notes:

• Don't build new workflows on =COPILOT(). It's a dead end at this point.
• For AI-assisted tasks, use the Copilot pane instead. It handles text summarization, data classification, content generation, and web lookups — the function's core use cases — and it's the actively supported path forward.
• Keep using traditional formulas for anything that needs to be exact. Microsoft's own limitations list is a good reminder: don't lean on generative AI for calculations, lookups, or compliance-sensitive work. That guidance doesn't go away just because the function does.

The Bigger Picture

This is a pretty clean example of Microsoft consolidating its Copilot experience rather than fragmenting it across a dozen entry points. Instead of a formula that behaved unpredictably for the exact kinds of tasks Excel users care most about, Microsoft is pushing everyone toward one well-supported surface — the Copilot pane — where the guardrails and capabilities are clearer.

If you've got workbooks depending on =COPILOT(), now's the time to test the pane-based alternative and make the switch before the September 14 cutoff.

Sources:

• COPILOT Function – Microsoft Support
• Get Started with Copilot in Excel – Microsoft Support
• FAQ About Copilot in Excel – Microsoft Support

There are a lot of reasons to convert a range into an Excel Table, but the one I lean on most at work has to do with lookups. Once your lookup data lives in a table, your formulas get shorter, you stop fighting with absolute references, and the formula keeps working when someone adds a row to the source data.

Here I am going to run the same task two ways. Method one uses a plain range. Method two — my preferred method — uses tables. Same data, same function, very different maintenance.

Why tables beat ranges

Before the walkthrough, here is the short list of what you get when you convert a range to a table:

The first two are the ones that matter for lookups, and they are what the rest of this post demonstrates.

The sample data

The workbook has two worksheets. Vehicle Purchases holds the transactions: the car model in column A, then purchase date, price, color, mileage at purchase, and buyer region. There are 95 records, in rows 2 through 96.

The second worksheet, Manufacture, is the lookup list. Column C has the manufacturer and column D has the model, again in rows 2 through 96. Notice the order: the value I am searching for (model) sits to the right of the value I want back (manufacturer). VLOOKUP cannot look left, which is one reason I use XLOOKUP for this.

Method 1: XLOOKUP against a range

I inserted a column next to Model on the Vehicle Purchases sheet and called it Man, short for manufacturer. Then in B2 I built an XLOOKUP with three arguments:

• lookup_value — A2, the model on this row
• lookup_array — Manufacture!D2:D96, the model column on the other sheet
• return_array — Manufacture!C2:C96, the manufacturer column

Both of those ranges have to be locked down, or the references shift as the formula fills down. Press F4 right after selecting each range to cycle to an absolute reference — that is what turns D2:D96 into $D$2:$D$96.

There is a small annoyance built into this method. After selecting the lookup array you are parked at the bottom of the sheet at row 96, so you have to scroll all the way back to the top to select the return array, then press F4 again. The finished formula:

=XLOOKUP(A2,Manufacture!$D$2:$D$96,Manufacture!$C$2:$C$96)

Press Enter and B2 returns Acura, which is correct for an MDX. But the formula only exists in one cell, so I still have to fill it down — double-click the fill handle in the bottom-right corner of the cell to copy it to the bottom of the data.

The problem with a fixed range

None of that is a deal breaker. The real problem shows up the first time the source data grows.

Say a 4Runner purchase gets added as row 97. 4Runner is not in the manufacturer list yet, so filling the formula down returns #N/A. That part is expected — the fix should be to add 4Runner and Toyota to the Manufacture sheet.

So I add them, and they land in row 97 of the lookup list. Go back to Vehicle Purchases, and it still says #N/A. The formula's lookup range stops at row 96, so it never sees row 97. To fix it I have to go edit the formula and change every 96 to a 97.

That is the maintenance tax on a fixed range. Every time the lookup list grows, someone has to remember to widen the formula — and if they forget, the error is quiet and easy to miss in a long column.

Method 2: Convert both ranges to tables

Starting over from scratch, this time the first thing I do is convert the data. Click anywhere inside the range and press Ctrl + T. Excel picks up the entire range automatically, and as long as your first row is headers, leave My table has headers checked and click OK.

Naming the table is not required, but I always do it, because the name is what shows up in your formulas. With the cursor inside the table, go to the Table Design tab and type a name in the Table Name box. I named the purchases table vehicles.

Then do the same on the Manufacture sheet. Ctrl + T, confirm the headers, and name it. I used man — short names are easier to type inside a formula.

XLOOKUP with structured references

The function does not change — it is still XLOOKUP, with the same three arguments. What changes is how you point at the data. Instead of typing A2 for the lookup value, click the cell and Excel writes [@Model], which means "the Model column on this row." Instead of selecting D2:D96 and pressing F4, hover over the header of the Model column in the man table and click once. Same for the Manufacturer column.

=XLOOKUP([@Model],man[Model],man[Manufacturer])

Compare that to the range version. It is shorter, it reads in plain English, and there is no F4 at all — structured references do not shift when the formula copies, so there is nothing to lock down. If you have Copilot available, structured references are also easier for it to work with; Copilot's formula completion writes XLOOKUP formulas more reliably when the source is a named table.

Press Enter, and here is the part I like most: the formula fills the entire column by itself. That is a calculated column — a table feature. No double-click on the fill handle, no dragging.

Now watch what happens when the data grows

Back to the 4Runner. Add 4Runner and Toyota to the man table, and the table expands to include the new row automatically — that is the automatic expansion from the list at the top. Because the formula points at man[Model] rather than a fixed D2:D96, it picks up the new row with no edit at all.

Return to the vehicles table and the 4Runner row now reads Toyota. Nothing to change, nothing to remember.

Add a new purchase row to the bottom of the vehicles table and you get the same behavior in the other direction — the table grows and the calculated column writes the formula into the new row for you.

Why I use tables for lookups

I do XLOOKUP constantly at work, and I am always doing it against tables. The formula is shorter, I skip the absolute references entirely, it fills down on its own, and it survives new data without anyone having to babysit a range. That last point is the one that saves real time — a formula nobody has to maintain is a formula that does not quietly break.

It pays off past lookups too. A table is a better PivotTable source, charts expand as the data grows, dynamic functions like FILTER stay accurate, and if you want to skip lookup formulas between sheets altogether, you can link tables through Excel's Data Model instead. For a walkthrough of the same cross-sheet XLOOKUP pattern in a different workbook, see this cross-sheet XLOOKUP example.

If your lookup data is still sitting in a plain range, press Ctrl + T on it. It takes two seconds, and you get all these benefits for free.

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If you're not using live captions in Teams meetings yet, here's a quick rundown of what's possible — it's more customizable than most people realize.

Why Turn On Live Captions?

Live captions in Microsoft Teams are one of the most underused features in the app — and one of the most useful. Whether you're in a noisy environment, working through a fast-paced conversation, or just someone who reads better than you listen, captions give you a second way to follow along without missing a beat. And here's the part most people don't realize: turning them on doesn't notify anyone else in the meeting. They're completely private to you, so there's no reason not to use them whenever they'd help.

1) Accessibility

Captions make meetings usable for colleagues who are deaf or hard of hearing, and for anyone who processes written text better than audio.

2) Noisy or Quiet Environments

Joining from an airport, a coffee shop, or an open office? Captions keep you following along even when audio is a struggle — or when you have to mute your own mic.

3) Non-Native Speakers

Reading along in real time (or with real-time translation) makes it far easier to keep up with fast talkers or unfamiliar accents.

4) Fewer "Can You Repeat That?" Moments

Missed a name, a number, or an acronym? Glance at the caption instead of interrupting the meeting.

5) Better Focus

Some people simply retain information better when they can see it as well as hear it.

How to Turn On Live Captions

Turn On Captions — During a meeting, click More (•••) in the toolbar, then select Captions. You'll find it next to Record, Transcribe, and Interpreter. When you turn on Live Captions, they are only on for you. No one knows you are using Live Captions.

After you turn on Live Captions, your language will be your default language. For me, that is English. Over to the right, you have three options. Let's explore those.

The three options are

1. Open Caption Settings.
2. Open captions in new window.
3. Hide live captions. The keyboard shortcut is Alt+Shift+C

Open Captions Settings Options

This is where you'll find a lot of options, including:

• Setting the meeting spoken language
• Translate to
• Caption styles
• The position of the caption
• Always turn on captions
• Filter profane words

Meeting Spoken Language

This tells Teams what language is being spoken during the meeting, which the captioning engine uses to transcribe accurately. It defaults to your Teams language setting, but if a meeting is being conducted in a different language, updating this ensures captions come through correctly instead of garbled or mismatched text.

Translate To

This is separate from spoken language — it controls what language the captions are displayed in, regardless of what's being spoken. If you set spoken language to English but Translate To to Spanish, you'll see live-translated Spanish captions while everyone else hears English. It's especially useful for global teams or meetings where not everyone shares a first language.

Caption Styles

Here you can adjust font color, background color, font size, and panel height to make captions easier to read. This helps with visibility in bright rooms, personal contrast preferences, or simply making text large enough to read comfortably on a smaller screen.

Position

This controls where captions appear on screen — at the top, at the bottom, or on the right. It's a small setting, but it matters if captions are covering shared content, a speaker's video, or anything else you need to see clearly during the meeting.

Always Turn On Captions

Toggling this on means captions will automatically appear every time you join a Teams meeting, so you don't have to manually turn them on each time. It's a good option if you've found captions genuinely useful and don't want to think about enabling them meeting after meeting.

Filter Profane Words

This setting censors profanity in the caption text, replacing it with symbols or blanked-out characters. It's useful in professional settings, recorded meetings, or any situation where you want cleaner, more polished captions on display.

Stopping Live Captions

To stop live captions, click Hide live captions. The keyboard shortcut is Alt+Shift+C

Upcoming live hands-on presentations

APC Conference - September 2026

I'll be speaking at the APC Conference 2026 in Nashville (Gaylord Opryland, September 13–16), where I'm leading hands-on sessions on two of my favorite topics: Advanced Excel Mastery and M365 Copilot Essentials Masterclass. If you're attending, come say hello — I'd love to talk shop on everything from Excel formulas and automation to getting the most out of Copilot in your daily workflow.

Live Stream on Teams Newest Features

Also in September 2026 (exact date TBD), I'll be going live on LinkedIn with a session on the latest Microsoft Teams features. It's open to everyone, no registration required — more details coming soon.

University of Georgia - Executive MBA Training - October 2026

The following month, I'll be delivering a full day of hands-on Excel training on Saturday, October 3, for the Executive MBA program at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business. We'll cover PivotTables, data analysis, charts, and working with financial data—practical skills built for busy professionals who need Excel to work harder for them.

If you have a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license, PowerPoint is getting three new Copilot skills. One of them, Prepare for questions, reads your entire deck and tells you where your audience is going to push back — before you ever stand up to present. I want to walk you through exactly how it works.

This is the skill I reach for on any deck that has to survive a room full of decision makers. It does not rewrite your slides. It plays the skeptic, and it points at the specific slide numbers where your argument is thin.

What you need first

These skills require a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license — the premium one, not the free Copilot Chat. They are still rolling out, so if you do not see them yet, check again in a few weeks.

The deck I am testing this on

I am using a 12-slide presentation about rolling Microsoft 365 out to a company of 500 to 2,000 users. I built the deck with Copilot, so it looks polished — executive summary, rollout waves, licensing, an investment overview, and a "How We'll Measure Success" slide. That is exactly the kind of deck that feels finished and still falls apart under questioning.

Download the file below to practice:

Where to find the new Copilot skills in PowerPoint

Open Copilot from the icon in the bottom right of the PowerPoint window. If your Copilot icon is not where you expect it, Microsoft has been moving it — I covered that in my post on the recent Copilot updates in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

With the Copilot pane open, click the plus symbol under the prompt box. In that menu you will see Choose skills.

Click Choose skills and you get the three new options:

• Visualize this slide — turn text-heavy slides into polished visuals
• Review this presentation — improve slides with strong storytelling
• Prepare for questions — predict audience questions or concerns

Manage skills: turning them on and off

Below that list, past a thin divider line, there is Manage skills. Click it and you get a Skills & plugins panel with a toggle for each skill, plus a separate entry for Custom skills.

My first reaction was: why would I turn any of these off when there are only three? I am speculating, but I think Microsoft is planning to ship a lot more skills. Once you have 15 of them and you only use four or five, being able to hide the rest makes sense. For now I leave all three running.

Running Prepare for questions

Close the Manage skills panel, click the plus symbol again, go to Choose skills, and pick Prepare for questions. Copilot writes the prompt for you: "Use prepare-for-questions to help me address weak points in my presentation." You do not have to type anything — just send it.

Answer the three setup questions

Here is the part I did not expect. Instead of dumping generic advice, Copilot interviews you first — three questions, and it recommends an answer for each based on what is already in the deck.

Question 1 of 3: Who is the intended audience for this presentation? The choices are Executive leadership (recommended), IT and security, Finance and procurement, and Steering committee. There is also a free-text box if none of those fit. I picked leadership.

Question 2 of 3: What is the goal or purpose of this meeting? Approve the pilot (recommended), Approve full rollout, Refine the plan, or Inform and align. I chose approve the pilot.

Question 3 of 3: How will this presentation be delivered? In person (recommended), Hybrid, or Async (read alone). I said in person, then clicked Confirm. If you would rather skip the interview, there is a Skip all button on every step.

Those three answers change the output. A deck read alone by finance needs different reinforcement than a deck you present live to leadership.

What Copilot hands back

After it finishes reading the deck, Copilot returns a list under the heading Top objections. Each one has a short title, a severity rating, and four parts: Objection, Acknowledge, Reframe, and Evidence. Because I asked it to prepare for questions, every objection is phrased as an actual question someone would say out loud.

My first objection came back rated HIGH: "Budget is undefined." The question: "How can we approve a pilot budget when there is no seat price, total cost, or spending ceiling?"

That is a fair hit. The acknowledge line admits the deck asks for approval before quantifying the investment. The reframe suggests positioning it as a capped learning investment and stating the pilot's total cost, staffing commitment, and maximum authorized spend.

Follow the evidence back to specific slides

The Evidence line is what makes this useful rather than just interesting. For the budget objection it told me to add actual pricing, 25- and 50-seat scenarios, and the requested approval amount to slides 9 and 12.

So I went to slide 9, "Investment Overview." It has a bar chart of licensed users by phase — 40 in the pilot, then 400, 1,000, and 1,800 across three waves — and a Cost Considerations box. And Copilot is right: there is not a single dollar figure on the slide.

Then slide 12, "Next Steps & The Ask," which asks leadership to sign off on 25 to 50 pilot seats. Asking for a signature on seats with no price attached is exactly the gap Copilot flagged.

The second objection, also rated HIGH, was "Benefits lack evidence": "What supports the claim that each user will save three to five hours per week?"

The evidence line pointed me to slide 11. Sure enough, the second tile on my "How We'll Measure Success" slide reads "3-5 hrs — estimated time saved per user, per week," with nothing behind it. Copilot's suggestion was to cite the source and add baseline-versus-pilot measurement for representative workflows.

A third HIGH objection covered security: "If existing permissions are overly broad, won't Copilot make sensitive information easier to discover?"

Copilot acknowledged that yes, it respects existing permissions but can amplify existing permission-hygiene problems.

Keep scrolling for the medium-priority items

The list does not stop at three. Scroll down and you get objections rated MED as well — things like "Alternatives were not compared" ("Why Copilot rather than targeted licenses, the status quo, or another enterprise AI tool?") and "Decision gates are vague" ("What specific result would cause us to pause or cancel after the pilot?"). Those come with the same four-part breakdown and slide-level evidence.

These are questions I would not have thought of on my own. Either I go back and add the evidence to the deck, or at minimum I walk into the room ready to answer them.

Copy the response out of PowerPoint

Scroll to the very bottom of Copilot's answer and you get the normal Copy response button. I tested it in a blank Word document with Ctrl + V, and the whole Q&A came across — roughly three pages of prep notes.

One thing to watch: the paste brings the Markdown formatting characters with it. You will see #### in front of each objection title and ** around the labels. A quick find and replace cleans that up if you plan to share the document.

From there it goes anywhere — Word, OneNote, or a Teams chat with the colleague presenting alongside you.

Why use this before an important deck

Copilot is not judging your design here. It is stress-testing your argument and telling you which slide number to fix. Run it after your deck is built but before you rehearse, answer the three setup questions honestly, and work down the HIGH-rated objections first. Even if you disagree with half of them, the other half will save you from being caught flat-footed.

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Mark your calendars! I'm going live on Thursday, August 6th at 12:00 PM ET (noon) to walk through the latest new features in Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Microsoft has been rolling out updates to Copilot at a rapid pace, and it's easy to fall behind. In this session, I'll break down what's new, what's actually useful, and how you can start using these features right away to save time in your day-to-day work.

What We'll Cover

• The newest Microsoft 365 Copilot feature releases
• Tips and tricks to get more out of Copilot across Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Teams
• Live Q&A — bring your questions!

Sample of what we will cover with Copilot in Outlook

Excel file I use to create the PowerPoint

Prompt I used in PowerPoint

Create a Presentation from this file

Completed PowerPoint Created from the Excel file

About Your Presenter

I'm Chris Menard, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Teams. My full-time role is Senior Trainer at BakerHostetler, where I help the firm get the most out of Microsoft 365. Alongside that, I've spent years creating Microsoft 365 training content, with over 30 million views across 900+ videos on my YouTube channel. I also speak at two to four major conferences each year to stay active in the community, keep up with my public speaking skills, and maintain my Microsoft MVP credentials.

Set a Reminder

This is a great opportunity to get your Copilot questions answered live and stay current on everything Microsoft is rolling out. Add it to your calendar now so you don't miss it!

See you there!

Catch Me Live in Nashville Too

If you want hands-on Microsoft 365 Copilot training, I'll be presenting at the Administrative Professionals Conference (APC), September 13–16, 2026, at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, TN, where approximately 3,000 administrative professionals will gather. I'm leading three sessions, including an M365 Copilot Essentials Masterclass—hands-on, in person, and a great chance to dig deeper than a live stream allows.

🎤 My APC Speaker Profile: View here

📋 My APC Full Session Schedule: View here

Record video clip is one of those Microsoft Teams features people see in the menu and almost never use. Two recent changes make it worth a second look. You can now record your screen, not just your webcam. And a clip can run five minutes instead of the old one-minute ceiling.

That combination turns a small chat feature into a quick way to show someone exactly what you mean, without scheduling a meeting or opening a separate screen recorder.

Two good reasons to use a video clip

The first is onboarding. Say a new hire starts on Monday and you are out of town that whole week. Record a short clip welcoming them to the team so they hear from you on day one instead of day eight.

The second is support. When someone asks how to do something, a 30-second screen recording answers it better than three paragraphs of instructions. They can rewatch it as many times as they need.

Where to find Record video clip

This works the same way in a one-on-one chat, a group chat, and a channel, and it lives in the same place in all three. Open the conversation, click Actions and apps — the plus symbol next to the Send button — and choose Record video clip.

What the recording window gives you

The recorder opens with your camera live and a row of controls along the bottom: Camera, Mic, Screen, Backdrop, Script, and Effects. Camera and Mic each have a dropdown arrow so you can switch devices before you start — worth checking if you have more than one headset or webcam plugged in, the same way you would test your mic and speaker before a meeting.

Script is the one people miss. It puts a teleprompter directly over the video preview, so you can read your talking points while looking at the camera. Backdrop blurs or replaces your background, and Effects adds filters.

Notice the line at the bottom of the window: only people in that chat can view the clip.

Switch to a screen recording

Click Screen and the window changes. Your camera shrinks into a small bubble in the bottom-left corner, and the button becomes Start screen recording. Drag the bubble anywhere you like — put it where it will not cover the part of the screen you are demonstrating.

The vertical strip of icons on the right controls the shape of that camera bubble. You get Circle Pip, a square, a star, and a cutout picture-in-picture that removes your background entirely. A Draw tool also appears in the bottom row once you are in screen mode, so you can annotate while you record.

Have your app open before you start

This is the step that trips people up. Open whatever you plan to demonstrate before you click Start screen recording, because recording begins the moment you pick a window.

Teams then asks what you want to record. The Window tab lists every open application, and the Entire Screen tab shares your whole desktop. There is also an Also share system audio toggle if you need the sound coming out of your computer captured too. Select your window and click Share.

Record, then stop sharing

Your chosen window comes to the front and recording starts. Talk through whatever you need — deleting a column, reformatting a value, walking someone through a report. A small bar at the bottom of the screen shows that Teams is sharing a window, with a Stop sharing button. Click it when you are done.

Review the clip before it goes anywhere

Teams drops you straight into a preview window called Review your clips, already playing your recording back. Along the bottom you get Trim, Split, Delete clip, Record more, and Music.

Record more is the useful one for longer explanations: record a section, stop, then add another take onto the end without starting over. Music adds a background track.

If the take did not go well, Delete clip throws it out and lets you start again. Teams asks you to confirm first, and the deletion is permanent — there is no undo.

Download it, or continue

Two arrows matter on this screen. The down arrow in the top right saves a copy of the clip to your computer before you send it — handy if you want to reuse the recording somewhere else. The arrow on the right side is Continue, which takes you to the message.

Add a message and send

The clip lands in your compose box as an attachment and processes for a few seconds. While it does, type your message around it — something like "Here are the steps you need to follow for this report" gives the recipient context before they press play. Then send it like any other chat message.

Where your clips are stored

Every clip you record is saved to your own OneDrive, under Recordings > Video Clips. If you ever need the original file after the chat has scrolled away, that is where to look.

Download the transcript or the video

Once the clip is in the chat, hover it, click the three dots, and you get Download transcript and Download video. The person you sent it to has the same two options. The transcript is genuinely useful for support clips — the recipient can copy a file path or a formula out of the text instead of pausing the video and squinting at it.

A few things to keep in mind

Five minutes is the ceiling, so plan longer walkthroughs as a series of clips or use a dedicated recorder — Windows 11 users can record the screen with the Snipping Tool at no extra cost.

A video clip is also not the same thing as recording a call. If you are on a one-on-one or group video call and the record option is greyed out, that is a call rather than a meeting, and recording is disabled by design.

And if you would rather not appear on camera at all, you can always dictate your chat message instead.

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If you spend your day in Microsoft Teams meetings, get ready for a noticeable change.

Microsoft is rolling out a redesigned meeting experience that simplifies the meeting toolbar, makes screen sharing safer, and gives users more control over the arrangement of meeting buttons. The goal is straightforward: reduce accidental clicks and make the most-used meeting actions easier to find.

When Will You See It?

According to Microsoft, the rollout schedule is:

• Targeted Release: Late July 2026 through mid-August 2026
• Worldwide General Availability: Early September 2026 through late September 2026

What's Changing?

Meeting Controls Move to the Center

For years, Teams meeting controls have been spread across the meeting window. With this redesign, the primary controls will move to the center of the screen.

The microphone, camera, and sharing controls will be grouped together, making them easier to locate during a meeting.

Images of the new layout and current layout are below.

The Leave Button Gets Its Own Space

Have you ever accidentally clicked Leave when you meant to share your screen?

You're not alone.

Microsoft is separating the Leave button from the Share button to reduce accidental meeting exits. This is one of the most user-friendly improvements in the update and should eliminate a common frustration for Teams users.

You Can Rearrange Your Meeting Controls

One of the most interesting additions is the ability to customize your meeting toolbar.

Users will be able to:

• Drag controls to different positions
• Pin frequently used controls (see image below for Record being pinned)
• Unpin controls they rarely use
• Personalize the experience to match their workflow

This means the Teams toolbar can adapt to how you work, rather than forcing everyone into the same layout.

Sharing Content Gets a Major Overhaul

Live Previews Before You Share

Before presenting, you'll see a preview of what you're about to share.

This can help prevent those embarrassing moments when the wrong screen, application, or monitor is selected.

Two-Step Confirmation

Microsoft is introducing a two-step sharing experience.

Instead of immediately sharing content after a click, you'll first confirm your selection before your audience sees it. This extra step is designed to reduce accidental sharing of sensitive information or the use of the wrong application window.

Raise Hand is now with React

Another change users may notice is where Raise hand appears. In the redesigned meeting controls, Raise hand is grouped with React.

Raise hand is a way to let others know you have something to share without interrupting, while React lets users choose emoji reactions during a meeting.

Why This Matters

Over the years, Teams meetings have gained numerous features, which has led to a more crowded toolbar. Microsoft is responding to user feedback by simplifying the experience, reducing accidental clicks, and making core meeting actions easier to access.

For organizations that rely heavily on Teams, these changes should make meetings smoother and less stressful, especially when presenting to clients, leadership teams, or large audiences.

My Take

As a Microsoft MVP and someone who trains Microsoft Teams regularly, I think the redesign is a big win.

I've seen countless users pause before sharing their screen because of concerns about clicking the wrong button. The ability to customize the toolbar is another welcome addition, especially for power users who rely on specific meeting features every day.

Have you seen the new Teams meeting controls yet? What do you think about the redesigned toolbar?

The FILTER function in Excel is one of my favorite functions. Give it a range and a condition, and it spills back only the rows that match — no manual filtering, no copy-paste, and the results update automatically when your data changes.

Before we start, check your version. If you have Microsoft 365, Excel for the web, Excel 2021, or Excel 2024, you have the FILTER function. If you are using Excel 2019 or 2016, you will not see this function when you type it — it simply is not there.

The sample data

In columns A and B, I have a list of fictitious products and the quantity we have on hand — 25 products in rows 2 through 26. I am going to work through three examples with this data: products with a quantity less than 10 showing both columns, the same filter showing just the product names, and a "between" filter that picks up quantities from 5 to 15.

Example 1: Filter products with a quantity less than 10

I want to find the products that are less than ten in quantity, and in this first example, I want to show both the product and the quantity. The FILTER function takes three arguments, and the first two are required:

• array — what do you want to pick up? I am going to select A2:B26, both columns.
• include — what do you want to include? Quantity less than ten: B2:B26<10.
• [if_empty] — optional; what to return if nothing matches.

The finished formula:

=FILTER(A2:B26,B2:B26<10)

Press Enter, and there are your answers — every product with fewer than ten units, spilled into two columns.

If you want to test the results, go over to column B and do a sort, smallest to largest. Every quantity less than ten in the source data is a perfect match with the filtered list on the right.

Bonus tip: Combine SORT with FILTER

Here is a bonus tip: you can include sorting right inside the same formula. Edit the function and wrap the SORT function around FILTER:

=SORT(FILTER(A2:B26,B2:B26<10))

Now the results are sorted by product name — SORT defaults to the first column, ascending.

If you would rather sort by the quantity, tell SORT which column to use. Since I picked up two columns in the FILTER function, quantity is column 2, so the sort index is 2. By default that sorts smallest to largest. To flip it largest to smallest, add a -1 for descending as the next argument:

=SORT(FILTER(A2:B26,B2:B26<10),2,-1)

Example 2: Show just the products

Someone says, "Just show me the products — I do not want the quantity." Same filter, different array. Instead of picking up columns A and B, I am just going to pick up A2:A26. The include argument stays exactly the same, because I am still testing the quantity column:

=FILTER(A2:A26,B2:B26<10)

There you go — just the product names, one column. That is the key idea: the array you return and the column you test do not have to be the same.

Example 3: Between two numbers (5 to 15)

For the third example, I want just the products again, but this time with a "between" condition: quantities from 5 through 15. This one is a little tricky, because FILTER does not have a built-in between — you build it with two conditions multiplied together:

=FILTER(A2:A26,(B2:B26>=5)*(B2:B26<=15))

The first condition is greater than or equal to 5, because I want to pick up the number five itself. The star (*) works as an AND — both conditions have to be true. The second condition is less than or equal to 15.

One gotcha to watch for: each condition needs its own set of parentheses. I almost made that mistake myself — I forgot the open paren before the second B2:B26, and the formula would not behave until I added it. If your between filter is not working, check the parentheses first.

Let's do a quick check on the results. Highlight the quantities between 5 and 15 in the source data: nine items. The FILTER result: nine items. Perfect match.

Recap

Three patterns cover most of what you will do with FILTER day to day:

• =FILTER(A2:B26,B2:B26<10) — filter rows on a condition and return multiple columns.
• =SORT(FILTER(...),2,-1) — wrap SORT around FILTER to sort the results, by any column, in either direction.
• =FILTER(A2:A26,(B2:B26>=5)*(B2:B26<=15)) — multiply conditions for a between (AND) filter.

FILTER is part of Excel's dynamic array family, alongside functions like SORT and UNIQUE — they all spill results onto the sheet and recalculate as your data changes. I appreciate your time, and thank you for your support of my YouTube channel.

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If you spend a big chunk of your day answering email, Copilot in Outlook can hand back somewhere between 3.5 and 5 hours a week — just on your replies. I've been leaning on it daily, and in this guide I want to show you two ways to reply faster: the quick one-click suggested drafts, and the Copilot task pane for the times you need more control over what goes into the reply.

Before we start, this requires a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license. I am working in the new Outlook for Windows, and everything here also works in Outlook on the web. I could not get it to work in classic Outlook desktop, so if a button is missing for you, check which version of Outlook you are running.

To set the scene, I have an email from Carol Wilson about our annual retreat. She listed three cities — Nashville, Austin, and Atlanta — and below that she gave me hotel and venue options for each one. I want to reply to her, and Copilot gives me two very different ways to do it.

Option 1: One-click Copilot suggested drafts

When I click Reply, Copilot reads the thread and offers a row of suggested reply drafts right under the message. In this case I get four of them, including Great location suggestions, Prefer Austin option, and Additional venues ideas. Each one is a complete, ready-to-send reply written from the context of Carol's email.

I click the draft I like — Great location suggestions — and Copilot drops that full reply into the email for me. From there I am not stuck with it as-is. I can use Make it longer or Make it shorter to change the length, and Copilot keeps every version, so I can step back to the previous draft or move forward to the next one and compare them.

When I am happy with it, I choose Keep it. The draft stays in the email, and I can still edit it by hand before I hit Send. This is the feature I reach for most of the time, and it is perfect when the canned replies already say what you mean.

Option 2: The Copilot task pane, for replies that need more

Here is where it gets interesting. The suggested drafts are great, but they only know about what is already in the email. Say I want to push back on Carol and ask for two more cities she never mentioned — Scottsdale, Arizona and Orlando, Florida. The one-click drafts have no idea about those, so I need to give Copilot my own instructions.

I click Reply again, then go up to the Copilot icon in the top-right corner and click it. That opens the Copilot task pane on the right side of the screen. In the box, I type exactly what I want to say: "Great three cities you gave me, but I would like to see two additional locations, Scottsdale, Arizona and Orlando, Florida," and send it off.

Copilot goes to work using the Outlook Draft Assistant, and even though I am typing in the task pane on the right, everything happens in the body of the email. It adds Scottsdale and Orlando as items four and five, matching the tone and detail of the original three, and it keeps them in the correct order. It also offers follow-up prompts under the reply so I can keep refining without retyping.

Now I keep the conversation going. Carol gave hotels and venues for her three cities, so I ask Copilot to suggest hotels and venues for Scottsdale and Orlando. It builds out a Hotels & Venue Options section with real, named properties for both cities.

One more refinement to show how specific you can get. For Orlando, I ask Copilot to list some of the Disney conference resorts, and it adds the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort, Disney's Coronado Springs Resort, and the Yacht & Beach Club Convention Center. If I wanted, I could follow up with "give me Disney and non-Disney options" and it would do that too.

When the reply looks right, I click Replace to drop Copilot's version into the email. Sometimes it replaces automatically; other times you click Replace once to confirm. After that, the finished reply is sitting in the message, ready for me to review and send to Carol.

Which one should you use?

Reach for the one-click suggested drafts when the reply is straightforward and the canned options already capture your point — it is the fastest path. Open the Copilot task pane when you need to add information the sender never mentioned, ask for specifics, or shape the reply through a back-and-forth. Between the two, most of my email replies get written in a fraction of the time they used to take, and that is where those hours come back each week.

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I'm thrilled to share that I've been named a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for the second consecutive year, recognized for my work in Microsoft 365, Copilot, and Microsoft Teams. This award covers the July 15, 2026 – July 15, 2027 term, and it means as much to me this year as it did the first time around.

MVP Award Kit - Short Video

Here's what came in the MVP renewal kit:

• Year ring — the disc that stacks onto the base of your MVP trophy for the new award term
• Lapel pin — MVP logo pin for the current year
• Stickers and decal — MVP logo stickers for laptops, plus a larger decal

What Is the Microsoft MVP Award?

The Microsoft MVP Program recognizes exceptional technology community leaders from around the world who go out of their way to share real-world expertise with users and with Microsoft itself. According to my official recognition letter from Microsoft, MVPs are present in over 90 countries and more than 40 languages, spanning nearly every Microsoft technology. It's a genuinely global community, and being part of it is something I don't take lightly.

Chris Menard - MVP logo

The letter below also highlights what sets MVPs apart: a deep commitment to community, a willingness to help others, and a passion for technology that goes beyond the day job. MVPs earn the recognition by sharing knowledge, providing objective feedback, and helping people solve real problems — every single day.

MVP Recognition Letter

Why This Recognition Matters to Me

For the past year, that's meant:

• Publishing tutorials and tips to my YouTube channel, which has now passed 30 million views across 900+ videos
• Delivering hands-on Microsoft 365 training — Excel, Teams, OneDrive, PowerPoint, and Copilot — to organizations and teams
• Public speaking at conferences and events, sharing practical, real-world guidance rather than just theory
• Live Streams on M365 Copilot and MS Teams
• Writing blog posts and building resources that help people get more out of the Microsoft tools they use every day

Official Credly Badge from Microsoft for MVP

The Specific Contributions I had to Report to Microsoft

April 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026, renewal period

• 33 Articles written about Copilot/Teams
• 44 Videos created on Copilot/Teams features
• Multiple Live Streams
• 1 huge speaking event in November 2025 in Nashville on Microsoft 365 Copilot. Hands-on session for over 300 C-Suite Adm Professionals.

Image Gallery 1 from Microsoft MVP Summit

Chris Menard at the MVP Summit in Redmond, WA, from March 2026

Microsoft's recognition letter puts it well: MVPs get to meet Microsoft executives, network with peers, and position themselves as technical community leaders — largely through speaking engagements, customer events, and technical content creation. That's exactly the work I love doing, and it's rewarding to see it recognized again.

Grateful for the Community

None of this happens in a vacuum. This award is really a reflection of everyone who's watched a video, attended a training session, taken a course, or come up and said hello after a conference talk. Thank you for being part of the journey — this recognition belongs to this community as much as it does to me.

My Accomplishments to get my MVP Renewal

April 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026, renewal period

• 33 Articles written about Copilot/Teams
• 44 Videos created on Copilot/Teams features
• 1 huge speaking event in November 2025 in Nashville on Microsoft 365 Copilot. Hands-on session for over 300 C-Suite Adm Professionals.

Image Gallery 2 from Microsoft MVP Summit

Chris Menard at the MVP Summit in Redmond, WA, from March 2026

Here's to another year of learning, teaching, and sharing everything Microsoft 365 has to offer. If you have topics you'd like to see covered — Excel, Teams, Copilot, or anything else in the M365 world — drop a note in the comments or reach out. I'm always looking for what to tackle next.

#MVPBuzz #Microsoft365 #MicrosoftMVP #Copilot