A client recently asked me to give a kind of “state of the union” talk on Excel and its growing AI stack. And honestly, it’s not wrong to call it messy. There are so many new pieces floating around. Even Microsoft admits that Copilots and Agents are not the same thing, yet you use Copilot Studio to build Agents! 🤔
Still, there’s a structure forming. Over the past year, the Excel ecosystem has been reshaped around a much broader vision of AI and automation. Excel is no longer a canned set of gridlines… it’s a gateway to an entire AI-powered data platform. If you can start seeing how these parts connect, you’ll be way ahead of most analysts and organizations.
Let’s walk through what I see as the emerging stack for AI and Excel, as well as some of my resources to get you started.
Power BI and Dataverse
At the foundation of the stack sits Power BI and Dataverse. Think of this as the data governance and storage layer, the place where your organization’s data actually lives and is managed. Power BI remains the visualization front end, but Dataverse is the real star for those moving beyond spreadsheets. It provides structured, secure tables of data that can be shared across Excel, Power Apps, and Power Automate without the chaos of file versions and email attachments.
In practical terms, Dataverse acts as your organization’s “truth layer.” When you connect Excel to Dataverse, you’re no longer pulling from CSVs or manually refreshing reports. Instead, you’re working directly with live, centralized data. This means your Copilot queries and Python models in Excel are referencing the same trusted data that your BI dashboards and apps do.
For a deeper dive on this, I wrote about how Excel fits into the Power Platform and Dataverse ecosystem here:
You can also check out my LinkedIn Learning course on the basics of Power BI for Excel users who are new to the Power Platform. It’s a great starting point, and the skills you’ll learn include many of the other tools mentioned in this post, like Power Automate and Copilot Studio. Definitely a keeper!
Power Query/Dataflows
Next comes Power Query and Dataflows. Power Query has long been Excel’s built-in ETL (extract, transform, load) tool, allowing analysts to clean, reshape, and combine data before analysis. But with Dataflows, this logic can be pushed into the cloud. Instead of each workbook running its own refresh process, you can define transformations once and share them across the organization.
If Dataverse is your source of truth, Power Query and Dataflows are how you make that truth usable. They standardize messy spreadsheets, merge data from multiple systems, and prepare clean tables for analysis. And since Dataflows can feed directly into both Power BI and Excel, your analysts can stay in Excel while working with enterprise-grade pipelines.
I covered how to connect Excel to Dataverse via Dataflows in detail here:
For a deeper dive into the fundamentals of Power Query in Excel, take a look at my book Modern Data Analytics in Excel:
Excel
Now we arrive at the familiar territory: Excel itself. Except this isn’t the Excel of even five years ago. Today’s Excel contains multiple AI-powered features that together form the intelligence layer of the stack: Copilot, Python, and now Agent Mode.
Copilot
This is the most visible AI layer, allowing users to generate formulas, create charts, and summarize data through natural language. It’s the first step toward conversational analytics inside the spreadsheet. You can ask it to “summarize sales by region” or “highlight outliers in this column,” and it will produce working Excel formulas or visualizations for you.
But Copilot doesn’t replace your analytical thinking. It depends on your ability to ask the right questions and recognize when its answers don’t quite make sense.
To get started with Copilot in Excel, check out my course on LinkedIn Learning:
Python in Excel
Next comes Python in Excel, which bridges the gap between Excel users and the data science ecosystem. Python unlocks advanced analytics, machine learning, and visualization capabilities directly in the workbook. You can import packages like pandas, numpy, or matplotlib and perform operations that were once out of reach for Excel alone. This means you can run predictive models, clean data programmatically, or create custom visuals, all while maintaining Excel’s familiar interface.
For a quick, practical overview of 15 ready-to-use Python in Excel examples, check out my short course on Gumroad.
What’s especially exciting is that Copilot and Python now work together through the Advanced Analysis experience. Instead of writing Python code manually, you can ask Copilot to generate it for you. For instance, you might type “show me a histogram of revenue distribution by region” or “forecast next quarter’s sales with a linear model,” and Copilot will return executable Python code that runs right inside your workbook.
To see Advanced Analysis in action, check out this post:
It’s a major leap toward making Excel a full analytics development environment: one where formula-based logic, natural language prompts, and code-based analysis coexist seamlessly.
Agent Mode
Agent Mode represents a major shift from single prompts to full reasoning workflows. Copilot is built around a one-shot model: you ask a question, it answers. Agent Mode, by contrast, uses an iterative reasoning loop that plans, executes, validates, and retries until the output meets the user’s intent. Rather than just speeding up a task,
Agent Mode can manage an entire workflow under your supervision, much like delegating to a junior analyst. This means a tool that doesn’t just write formulas for you. It can build reports, validate totals, format outputs, and so much more.
Learn more in my guide on getting started with Agent Mode here:
Office Scripts and Power Automate
Once you’ve built intelligence into your Excel processes, you’ll want to execute them reliably. That’s where Office Scripts and Power Automate come in. Office Scripts lets you record and reuse repeatable actions in Excel on the web: cleaning data, formatting tables, or updating charts. When paired with Power Automate, those scripts become part of larger workflows that run automatically, even when you’re not in Excel.
This combination is how Excel begins to extend its reach across the wider Microsoft 365 ecosystem. A workbook can now refresh data, apply formatting, run calculations, and send updates entirely on its own. A Power Automate flow might open an Excel file stored in OneDrive, trigger a script to recalculate KPIs, and post the results as a formatted summary in Teams. Another flow might collect survey responses from Microsoft Forms, append them to a central Excel table, and update a dashboard every morning. The line between spreadsheets, communication tools, and business systems becomes almost invisible once these pieces are connected.
Power Automate with Office Scripts essentially turns Excel from a static reporting tool into an active participant in your organization’s workflows. It’s where business logic meets execution.
To learn more about these two tools, check out my LinkedIn Learning courses covering each:
Copilot Studio
At the top of the stack sits Copilot Studio, the tool that connects everything else. Copilot Studio lets you build and manage custom copilots and agents that can interact with Excel, Power Automate, and external systems through connectors and APIs. If Copilot is your assistant and Agent Mode is your analyst, Copilot Studio is your command center.
With Copilot Studio, you can design domain-specific copilots that draw from your organization’s own data sources and workflows. A finance Copilot can answer questions about budget performance by querying live Excel data from Dataverse. A project management Copilot can notify stakeholders when milestones are delayed by triggering a Power Automate flow. An HR Copilot might summarize headcount changes from an Excel table or pull analytics from Power BI. In each case, the Copilot is not a static chatbot: it’s an orchestrator that understands context, retrieves information, and can take action.
The real potential of Copilot Studio lies in this orchestration. You’re doing more than just monitoring your data. You’re building systems that can reason across multiple layers of the Microsoft stack and perform tasks end to end.
For an example of how this works, see my tutorial:
What’s fascinating is that Copilot Studio uses many of the same components we’ve already discussed. Your Excel files can act as data sources, your Office Scripts can become agent actions, and your Power Automate flows can serve as orchestration layers. Excel remains the front door, but now the system behind it can reason, decide, and act.
Where it’s all heading
Right now, it’s fair to call this ecosystem messy. The boundaries between products aren’t fully clear, features are evolving fast, and documentation can lag behind the technology. But when you zoom out, the direction is unmistakable.
Excel is becoming the user interface to a much larger AI and automation ecosystem. Analysts will soon spend more time designing workflows, defining logic, and validating insights than manually crunching numbers. The winners will be those who can think across tools—connecting Power Query to Python, linking Office Scripts to Power Automate, and embedding their logic into custom Copilot experiences.
The tools are powerful, but the key is systems thinking. Your team needs analysts who understand how data flows from one layer to another, how automation can scale their work, and how to evaluate AI outputs critically. Without that mindset, you risk building disconnected tools that never deliver true value.
To see how this future might play out when it comes to Excel-based training and skills development, check out this post:
Conclusion: build your strategy now
The best thing you can do right now is get your analysts’ skills ducks in a row. Learn how these tools relate to one another. Start experimenting with small automations. Map out your data pipelines and workflows before the technology overwhelms you.
If your organization is trying to make sense of how to connect Excel, Power BI, and the Power Platform into a cohesive AI strategy, I’d love to help. You can book time with me here to talk through where you are, what you want to achieve, and how to structure a roadmap that turns this messy new world into a clear competitive advantage: