Microsoft is changing Excel behavior because it was causing too much confusion for users

We recently covered all the new features that Microsoft added to Excel during the month of February 2026. There were not many additions to speak of, but one other change that has kicked off in the popular spreadsheet software is the consolidation of App Skills into Copilot.

For those unaware, App Skills in Excel allowed users to trigger actions via conversational prompts powered by Copilot. This allowed them to play around with data, create charts, formulas, and more in Excel, similar to Agent Mode. This experience could be initiated via the Copilot drop-down in the Excel ribbon, but Microsoft is now getting rid of it.

To be fair, the rationale for this UX change is understandable. Customers had been complaining to Microsoft that multiple Copilot entry points within the same application result in a fragmented experience, which is why the company is now transitioning towards a more unified experience that offers App Skills functionalities directly in Copilot Chat and Agent Mode.

This redesign was communicated to enterprise customers back in November 2025 and began rolling out late last year. Although this change should now have reached all customers, the App Skills option may still be visible to some. However, if they try to trigger it, they will run into an error message that will explain that App Skills are no longer available.

Agent Mode is already a more powerful tool than Excel, so rather than fragmenting functionalities across two separate interfaces, Microsoft is combining the two. This will result in more clarity for end-users while also allowing Microsoft to build new capabilities in a more focused way for a single experience. This still differentiates Copilot Chat from Agent Mode since the former does not allow modification of content and is more suitable for analysis and exploration activities.

That said, Agent Mode is still not a perfect replacement for App Skills. The Advanced Analysis mode, powered by App Skills that uses Python in Excel and advanced text analysis capabilities, is not available in Agent Mode or Copilot Chat yet. Microsoft is working on bringing them to these utilities.

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Posted Thursday 26 February 2026 at 5:07 am AEST (my time).

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