Excel Copilot SharePoint PDF Access & Custom Agent

Question

Hello Microsoft Support Team,

I’m working on a solution using Excel Copilot and have two questions I’d appreciate your help with:

I’m trying to build a workflow where Excel Copilot reads PDF files that are linked via SharePoint URLs pasted into cells. However, when I instruct Copilot to read or summarize the content from those links, it says it cannot access them. Can Excel Copilot read or reference SharePoint links embedded in cells?

I’ve created a custom AI agent using Copilot Studio and would like to use it within Excel Copilot. Is it possible to import a custom agent into Excel Copilot or create a new one directly within the Excel Copilot interface?

I’d appreciate any official documentation or guidance you can share on these capabilities.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Hi Ashton P Haynes,

At the moment, Excel Copilot cannot read or summarize PDF files directly from SharePoint URLs pasted in cells. The links are treated as plain text, and Copilot doesn’t have permission to open or interpret the file content unless those PDFs are part of an indexed SharePoint or OneDrive location that Copilot can access internally. To make this work, store PDFs in a SharePoint document library that’s accessible to Copilot and users, and use the built-in file reference features rather than pasted URLs.

As for your second question, you can’t import or run a Copilot Studio custom agent directly inside Excel Copilot. Excel Copilot has its own built-in intelligence and doesn’t yet allow external agent embedding. You can, however, build a custom agent in Microsoft Copilot Studio, publish it to Microsoft 365 Copilot, and make it available through supported M365 apps once your tenant enables that capability.

Official Microsoft documentation:

• Use data sources and connectors in Microsoft Copilot Studio
• Search and import data with Copilot in Excel

Thank you.

Karan Shewale.

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