Skills are coming to Copilot for Excel

Microsoft Copilot for Excel adds customizable financial skills using SKILL.md files and connectors like FactSet and PitchBook for verifiable workflows.

In Excel, Copilot is gaining skills designed for repeatable financial workflows. A team can now define how Copilot should build a DCF, prepare a variance analysis, refresh a monthly model, or assemble a board package, with its own steps, formats, and conventions.

These skills can leverage a SKILL.md file stored in OneDrive, while Microsoft is also adding workbook rules, work preferences, and new financial connectors, including CB Insights, Daloopa, FactSet, Morningstar, PitchBook, and S&P Global. The key concern remains traceability: Copilot can propose a plan before modification, specify the affected ranges, formulas, and assumptions, then attribute its changes in the file's history.

The objective is clear: to make Excel an environment where the agent doesn't just produce an answer, but follows a verifiable method within the workbook.