How to enable Copilot to become active without autosaving a MS Excel report to OneDrive?

Question

Could you please assist or direct me to the appropriate team regarding the following issue;

On MS Excel, Copilot is requesting to put the report on autosave but the autosave is only directing to the One drive.

I do not want the MS Excel report to autosave to the One drive but to autosave to the device please.

My reason for why I do not want the MS Excel report to autosave on One Drive because it is a draft document, and I have seen many SARS employees’ One drive documents/reports become available on the MSN Work option and I was not even part of their teams.

Because I do not want to autosave on the One drive platform, Copilot is unable to be used on the MS Excel report itself.

Is it possible to change the settings on Copilot to allow a MS Excel report to autosave on the device to activate or enable the Copilot response on the specific MS Excel document?

Does an IT Team need to change the setting on MS Excel or Copilot?

According to Copilot;

Unfortunately, you cannot currently change Copilot’s settings to allow autosave to your device only. This is a built-in requirement by Microsoft for security, collaboration, and AI processing reasons.

But on MS Word and MS PowerPoint, a person can use Copilot without the autosave option.

How do I address this issue on the autosave option on MS Excel documents? Not all MS Excel documents require to be autosaved and to be the OneDrive platform for Copilot to become active. Microsoft needs to allow Copilot to become active and operational on MS Excel documents without the autosave option and saving the documents to OneDrive as Copilot is active and operational on MS Word and PowerPoint without the autosave option and saving the documents on the OneDrive platform. Not all MS Excel documents require to be analysed and formulas but will require Copilot assistance. Copilot needs to be available on MS Excel as a general standard irrespective where its saved and if it is autosaved or manually saved.

The issue is more about the Copilot functionality becoming available and operational.
On MS Word and MS PowerPoint, Copilot is available and operational without saving the documents to the OneDrive platform and without setting the documents to autosave.

But for Copilot to become available and operational on MS Excel, the document/report it first needs to be set on autosave mode, and it needs to be saved on the OneDrive platform.

My request is for Microsoft, to allow Copilot to become available and operational on MS Excel without the above restrictions.

Thank you for your assistance and regards,

Answer 1

The issue is more about the Copilot functionality becoming available and operational.
On MS Word and MS PowerPoint, Copilot is available and operational without saving the documents to the OneDrive platform and without setting the documents to autosave.

But for Copilot to become available and operational on MS Excel, the document/report it first needs to be set on autosave mode, and it needs to be saved on the OneDrive platform.

My request is for Microsoft, to allow Copilot to become available and operational on MS Excel without the above restrictions.

Answer 2

Thank you for your response.
I had a discussion with the Microsoft Support team, and they requested that I need to log an issue on MS Excell whereby MS users can vote.

Please vote on the following link for Microsoft to consider this option on MS Excel;

Copilot functionalities only available on MS Excel when autosave is selected to the OneDrive platform · Community

Answer 3

I would not be asking copilot to look into another file for the queries I have, all of the data will be on the same file. I should be able to do queries in the same workbook without saving it. Microsoft should look into this.

Answer 4

We are currently on Microsoft® Excel® for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2502 Build 16.0.18526.20286) 64-bit.
Based on your explanation this means; For future all Microsoft Office products for Copilot to become available and operational all documents need to be on autosave mode and be saved on the OneDrive platform. This is like limiting the Copilot assistance with MS Office documents and it seems MS Office users are forced to do so.

Answer 5

o365 any new doc is saved to OneDrive no docs are saved or can be saved to the local device. Doing so would simple result in the doc been synced to OneDrive