Microsoft Excel

Excel Copilot Formula Completion Now Available on Desktop

Chris Menard

Chris Menard

— 3 min read
Excel Copilot Formula Completion Now Available on Desktop

Excel's Copilot-powered Formula Completion is now available on the desktop app — not just Excel for the Web. Type an equals sign, and Excel suggests complete formulas based on your data context. Here are three examples showing how it works.

Extracting First Names

With a "Rep Name" column containing full names like "Chris Menard," type = in a "First Name" column. Formula Completion suggests =LEFT(C2,SEARCH(" ",C2)-1) — a formula that finds the space and extracts everything before it. Press Tab to accept.

Excel showing Formula Completion suggesting =LEFT(C2,SEARCH(' ',C2)-1) in the First Name column, with a tooltip reading 'Return the first name from rep name'
Formula Completion suggests the exact LEFT+SEARCH formula to extract first names — just press Tab to accept.

Extracting Last Names

For the "Last Name" column, Formula Completion suggests a RIGHT+LEN+SEARCH combination that extracts everything after the space. The same pattern: type =, review the suggestion, and press Tab.

Calculating Quarters from Dates

Given an "Invoice Date" column, Formula Completion suggests =ROUNDUP(MONTH(F2)/3,0) to calculate the quarter — dividing the month by 3 and rounding up. This correctly maps January–March to Q1, April–June to Q2, and so on.

Excel showing Formula Completion suggesting =ROUNDUP(MONTH(F2)/3,0) in the Quarter column, with a tooltip reading 'Calculate quarter from invoice date'
Formula Completion identifies the date pattern and suggests ROUNDUP+MONTH to calculate fiscal quarters.

Key Details

  • Formula Completion now works on Excel Desktop, not just Excel for the Web
  • It requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license
  • Suggestions appear automatically when you type = in a cell adjacent to existing data
  • Press Tab to accept a suggestion, or keep typing to ignore it
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