Regarding the threshold handling in copilot studio.

Question

Regarding the threshold handling in copilot studio.

Raju Raju1 0

I have more than 4,000 records in Excel and am using the "List Rows Present in Table" action from the Excel connector. However, I observed that, unlike Power Automate, Copilot Studio does not appear to provide an option to handle pagination or threshold limits. I tried both direct implementation and topic-based approaches, but I could not find any setting to manage large datasets.

I also attempted to use a Power Automate flow and pass the retrieved data back to the Copilot Studio agent. However, I was unable to do so because of the 256 KB response size limitation, which results in a throttling issue.

Since Copilot Studio and Power Automate use the same connectors, why is it not possible to configure the connector settings in Copilot Studio to handle larger thresholds (for example, up to 100,000 records) directly? Alternatively, is there a recommended best practice or solution for handling and processing large volumes of data in this scenario?

Note: Don't include other services like Microsoft foundry etc.,

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Answer 1

Ashlesha Pawar (Tata Consultancy Services Limited) 385 Microsoft External Staff

@Raju Raju1

Thank you for the detailed question.

Why Copilot Studio doesn't expose pagination/threshold settings — by design: Copilot Studio's connector actions are intentionally simplified and do not expose low-level settings like pagination thresholds. It is a conversational AI runtime, not a bulk data processing engine — large dataset operations are expected to be delegated to Power Automate flows, not handled natively in topics.

The 256 KB flow response limit is real and documented: Returning 4,000+ rows of Excel data in a single flow response will breach the payload size limit between Power Automate and Copilot Studio. The fix is to never return all records — filter at the source.

Recommended approach:

Filter in the flow, not after: Use Filter Query or Top Count in "List Rows Present in Table" to return only rows matching the user's specific input. This keeps the response well under the size limit regardless of total record count.
Enable Power Automate pagination only when needed: Set a threshold under the action's Settings, but always combine with server-side filtering so the agent receives a small targeted result, not a bulk export.
Migrate from Excel to SharePoint List or Dataverse: Excel is not optimized for large-dataset querying. Both alternatives handle large record counts far more reliably with filtered queries.

Raju Raju1 0 Reputation points

2026-06-24T11:54:55.9233333+00:00

Hi @Ashlesha Pawar (Tata Consultancy Services Limited) ,

Thank you for your response and recommendations.

Regarding Approach 1, I have already tried using OData filters. However, my requirement is to retrieve a large dataset (more than 4,000 records), not just a filtered subset based on specific user input. Therefore, using Filter Query or Top Count does not address my use case.

Regarding Approach 2, as I mentioned earlier, I can retrieve the data through Power Automate by enabling pagination on the Excel connector. However, the challenge occurs when passing the retrieved data back to the Copilot Studio agent. The agent response is limited to 256 KB, so large datasets cannot be returned successfully. Because of this limitation, this approach does not fully solve the problem.

Regarding Approach 3, migrating the data source is unfortunately not an option. The client is accustomed to working with Excel and prefers to continue using it due to existing business processes and user familiarity.

Given these constraints, is there any recommended approach for handling and consuming large Excel datasets in Copilot Studio without hitting the 256 KB response limit or threshold issue?
Ashlesha Pawar (Tata Consultancy Services Limited) 385 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2026-06-26T13:32:54.5433333+00:00

hi @Raju Raju1

Your understanding is correct on all three points.

Processing 4,000+ raw Excel rows directly within a Copilot Studio conversation is not a supported scenario under your stated constraints, and there is no alternative pattern within Copilot Studio + Power Automate alone that bypasses the 256 KB limit or adds iterative accumulation support.

The recommended approach is exactly as you've summarized: perform all processing inside Power Automate and return only the final computed result to the agent.

If retrieving and reasoning over large Excel datasets natively within Copilot Studio is a business need, please consider submitting it as a feature request via the Power Platform Ideas forum so the product team can evaluate it.