Excel Copilot – “Edit with Copilot” not available in Desktop

Oh joy, the new Excel update of June 16, 2026 - Version 16.110 seemed to have fixed the issue I had - I can now use Copilot to directly edit my Excel sheets in desktop app again.

Found this:

Known Causes:

1. The May 26 Ul Redesign Rollout: Microsoft launched a massive, systemic overhaul to the Microsoft 365 Copilot May 2026 Updates experience, introducing a new canvas entry point, model selection (like GPT 5.5 and Claude), and "Plan vs Edit" modes. This major structural change has caused localized token/cache corruption on macOS desktop apps.

Microsoft Learn +4

2. Service Incident CW1391746: Microsoft flagged an active internal build bug starting June 12, where Copilot prompts fail with a "Something went wrong" message due to a bad backend server deployment.

Dear @Rogers, Phillip,

I hope you’re having a good day and thank you for the detailed explanation

Based on what you’ve described, it seems likely that your Copilot license and tenant configuration are generally in place, since Copilot is still working in Teams, the standalone app, and Excel for the web.

Regarding your questions:

1. For whether “Edit with Copilot” is supported in Excel Desktop or web-only, it may not be strictly limited to the web in all cases, as your prior experience on Desktop suggests. However, the current message in Excel Desktop indicates that, in your present environment, the feature is being treated as available only in Excel for the web. This might suggest a difference in feature availability rather than a permanent platform restriction.
2. For update channels, Microsoft guidance indicates that Copilot features are intended to work best when Microsoft 365 Apps are on Current Channel or Monthly Enterprise Channel. If your Desktop client is running on a Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel, it’s possible that certain newer or more advanced Copilot capabilities, such as “Edit with Copilot,” may not consistently appear or may depend on compatibility with the current service behavior.
3. For tenant or policy settings, there are Copilot-related controls in the Microsoft 365 admin center, such as the option to pin Microsoft 365 Copilot chat within apps. These can influence how Copilot surfaces in the user interface. In addition, having the correct Copilot-related service components assigned (such as Copilot in productivity apps, Teams, SharePoint, and related Graph capabilities) is typically required for full functionality. That said, there does not appear to be a clearly documented policy that would only disable “Edit with Copilot” in Desktop while leaving it active in the web application.

The key point in your scenario is that the feature was previously available and then disappeared without an explicit change on your side. That pattern may suggest a difference related to client version, update channel, or a change in how the feature is currently being exposed.

To help narrow this down further, it would be helpful if you could confirm:

1. The exact Excel Desktop version and build you are currently running.

1. A screenshot of the exact message you are seeing in Excel Desktop (to confirm the behavior precisely in your environment).

If after confirming the version and channel the behavior remains unchanged, you might also consider contacting Microsoft Support so they can review the tenant-side service behavior in more detail and confirm whether there has been any recent change or limitation affecting Desktop Copilot editing.

I hope these observations help provide some direction, and I’d be happy to continue looking into it with you once you have those additional details.

Warm regards, 

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