How to Use Copilot in Power BI (October 2026): Setup, 20 Prompts, Prep Data for AI and Fixes

How to use Copilot in Power BI: open a report in Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service, select the Copilot button on the ribbon, pick a Copilot-enabled workspace the first time, then type a request such as 'Summarize this page' or 'Create a page that shows sales by region'. It only works when a workspace you can use sits on a paid Fabric (F2 or higher) or Premium (P1 or higher) capacity and your admin has Copilot switched on.

This guide is for analysts and report builders who can see the Copilot button but are not sure what it can do, why it is greyed out, or how to get answers they can trust. Everything below matches the Microsoft docs as of October 2026. The timing matters: Power BI Q&A retires in December 2026, and Microsoft is pointing every Q&A user to Copilot.

In this guide

• What Copilot in Power BI can do today
• Licence cost, requirements and admin setup
• How to use Copilot in Power BI Desktop
• Copilot in the service and the standalone chat
• Copilot in DAX query view
• Prep data for AI
• 20 prompts you can copy
• Copilot not working? Fixes
• Copilot vs Q&A, M365 Copilot and Fabric data agent
• Limits and best practices
• Conclusion and next steps
• FAQ

What Copilot in Power BI can do today (October 2026)

Microsoft Power BI Copilot is not one feature but a family of chat panes and inline helpers, some generally available and some in preview.

The places Copilot lives in Power BI

• Report Copilot pane (generally available): the pane on the right side of a report. It summarizes pages, answers questions about the open report and, in edit mode, creates and edits report pages.
• Standalone Copilot (preview): a full-screen chat opened from the Copilot icon in the left navigation of the service. It searches across every report and semantic model you have access to.
• Copilot in apps (preview): the same full-screen chat, limited to one app's content, with verified answers written by the app author.
• Inline Copilot for builders: DAX query view, measure descriptions, the narrative visual, and Copilot in web modeling (preview) for semantic model authors.

Every surface accepts prompts of up to 10,000 characters, per the Copilot for Power BI overview on Microsoft Learn.

What changed this autumn

Q&A retires in December 2026, and Microsoft maps each Q&A use to a Copilot replacement. The standalone Copilot is on by default for tenants that allow Copilot, so many people now see an icon they never asked for. And the October 2026 feature summary made the report authoring skill in Skills for Fabric generally available with custom visual support; that is a separate agent tool, and the in-report pane still does not support custom visuals.

Power BI Copilot license cost, requirements and admin setup

Copilot in Power BI is billed by capacity, not per seat, so the real question is whether your workspace is on the right capacity.

What does Copilot cost in money?

There is no separate Copilot fee. Each prompt uses capacity units (CUs) from the workspace's capacity. The smallest SKU, F2, is roughly US$262 a month pay-as-you-go in US regions (check Azure pricing for yours). Below F64, report viewers still need Pro (US$14 per user per month) or PPU (US$24). Admins can track Copilot usage in the Fabric Capacity Metrics app under the 'Copilot in Fabric' operation.

Is there a Power BI Copilot free trial?

No. Copilot does not run on trial capacities, including the Fabric free trial. The cheapest way to test is a pay-as-you-go F2 in the Azure portal that you pause when idle; allow up to 24 hours after buying it before Copilot appears.

How to enable Power BI Copilot (admin steps)

1. Open the admin portal: in the Power BI service select the Settings gear, then Admin portal.
2. Go to Tenant settings and find the Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service section.
3. Turn on Users can use Copilot and other features powered by Azure OpenAI, choose who it applies to (the whole organisation or security groups), then select Apply.
4. If your capacity is outside the US or EU data boundary, also turn on Data sent to Azure OpenAI can be processed outside your capacity's geographic region, compliance boundary, or national cloud instance.
5. For the full-screen chat, check that Users can access a standalone, cross-item Power BI Copilot experience (preview) is on.
6. Assign the workspace to the capacity: open Workspace settings, go to the Premium licence section and pick Fabric capacity or Premium capacity.

Capacity admins can override the tenant choice under Delegated tenant settings, but the standalone chat needs the main setting on at tenant level. Every switch is on the Enable Fabric Copilot for Power BI page.

How to use Copilot in Power BI Desktop, step by step

If you are learning how to use Power BI Copilot for the first time, start in Desktop. It has one extra step: you link Desktop to a Copilot workspace for billing, and then the pane works on any report you open.

The Power BI Copilot select a workspace prompt

1. Sign in to Power BI Desktop with your work account and open a report that has a semantic model.
2. Select Copilot on the Home ribbon. The Copilot pane opens and asks you to select a workspace.
3. Pick a workspace from the list. Only workspaces that support Copilot appear, and it does not need to be the workspace where you will publish this report.
4. To change it later, select the Settings gear in the bottom-right corner of Desktop. The Options window opens on the Copilot (preview) settings, where you can see and switch the workspace.

If the list is empty, the settings page shows: 'Either none of your workspaces have the right capacity to use Copilot, or you don't have the right permission to use them.' That means you need Contributor or higher on a workspace that sits on F2 or P1 and up.

Create a report page with Copilot

1. With the Copilot pane open, select Suggest content for this report, or type what you want, for example 'Create a page that shows total sales by month, region and product category'.
2. Copilot builds a new page with visuals bound to your fields and measures.
3. Keep prompting to add, change or delete visuals. Copilot actions support undo and redo, so experiment freely.
4. Review every visual before you trust it: check the measure used, the filters and the sort order.

Copilot does not do styling or formatting changes. For colours, fonts and visual defaults, apply a report theme; our Power BI theme builder gives Copilot-built pages a consistent look in one import.

Summaries and measure descriptions

Ask the pane to 'Summarize this page' for a written overview, or add the narrative visual so the summary lives on the page. For measures, use Create with Copilot under Description in the Properties pane; good descriptions also improve Copilot answers.

How to access Power BI Copilot in the service and the standalone chat

Here is how to access Power BI Copilot in the browser.

The report Copilot pane

1. Open a report in a workspace that sits on a Fabric or Premium capacity.
2. Select Copilot in the report toolbar. In reading view you can summarize and ask questions; you need at least read access.
3. To create or edit pages, select Edit first. That needs edit access to the report or build access to the semantic model.

If you close and reopen a Copilot-built report, it opens in reading view without the pane; select Edit to bring the button back.

Standalone Copilot (preview)

Select the Copilot icon in the left navigation, or use the Copilot entry on the Home page. Ask in full sentences, as you would ask a colleague, and Copilot finds the right report or model for you. If you already know the source, attach it with the + option so Copilot does not have to guess.

It picks a billing workspace automatically (change it under More, Manage workspace). Models not marked Approved for Copilot show a low-quality warning with a View answer button.

App authors switch the app-scoped chat on or off per app under Advanced settings, Show Copilot in app navigation.

Copilot in DAX query view: write, explain and fix DAX

This is the most useful Copilot for developers, because you see the DAX, run it and decide whether to keep it. Nothing reaches your model until you say so.

In Desktop, open DAX query view (the fourth view on the left), create a query tab and select Copilot or press Ctrl+I. In the service, choose Write DAX queries from a semantic model's menu. Starter buttons: Write DAX query, Explain this query and Explain a DAX topic.

Worked example: year-over-year sales by category

Sample model: a Sales fact table with an existing [Total Sales] measure, a Product table with Category, and a Date table marked as the date table. Prompt: 'Show total sales, sales last year and year-over-year % by product category, highest sales first.' Copilot returns a query along these lines:

DEFINE
    MEASURE Sales[Sales LY] =
        CALCULATE ( [Total Sales], SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR ( 'Date'[Date] ) )
    MEASURE Sales[Sales YoY %] =
        DIVIDE ( [Total Sales] - [Sales LY], [Sales LY] )

EVALUATE
SUMMARIZECOLUMNS (
    'Product'[Category],
    "Total Sales", [Total Sales],
    "Sales LY", [Sales LY],
    "Sales YoY %", [Sales YoY %]
)
ORDER BY [Total Sales] DESC

Select Run (or F5) to see the result before you accept anything. With a page filter on 2026, the sample data returns:

Select Keep query to accept it, or keep chatting; follow-ups show a diff of what changed.

Turn the query into model measures

Select the Update model: Add new measure link above each MEASURE line to add it to your model. Then set a format string and a description.

Caution: SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR needs a date table with contiguous dates, and Copilot reads only model metadata and the first 200 characters of each description.

Power BI Copilot prep data for AI: get answers you can trust

Vague or wrong answers are usually a model problem, not a prompt problem. Prep data for AI is your biggest quality lever, and it is saved on the semantic model, so every Copilot surface benefits.

In Desktop, select Prep data for AI on the Home ribbon, next to the Copilot button. In the service, open the semantic model and select Prep data for AI on its ribbon. The dialog has three tools; Microsoft's Prepare your data for AI guide covers each one.

1. AI data schema

Choose which tables, columns and measures Copilot should consider. Untick staging tables, keys, sort helpers and test measures; a cleaner schema means Copilot picks the right field more often.

2. AI instructions (copy-paste starter)

Give Copilot the business rules a new analyst needs on day one:

Business context: this model holds retail sales for 2024 to 2026.
The fiscal year starts on 1 July. 'This year' means the current fiscal year.
'Revenue' and 'sales' both mean the [Total Sales] measure (net of returns).
'Margin' means [Gross Margin %]. Never add up margin percentages.
Customers are grouped by 'Customer'[Segment]: Retail, Wholesale, Online.
If a question has no time period, use the last 12 complete months.
Show currency in USD with no decimals.
Ignore the table 'Staging Orders'. It is only used for data loads.

3. Verified answers

1. Select a visual you trust, for example 'Sales by Region' (in the service, in edit mode).
2. Open the visual's ... menu and choose Set verified answer (in the service it is Set up a verified answer).
3. Add the trigger phrases people really type: 'sales by region', 'regional revenue', 'which region sells most'.
4. Save. Matching questions now return your approved visual.

4. Test, then mark the model Approved for Copilot

Close and reopen the Copilot pane in Desktop to pick up changes, and use Select skills to test what each audience sees. Then publish, open the semantic model's settings in the service, expand Approved for Copilot, tick the box and select Apply. Note that Prep data for AI still requires Q&A to be enabled on the model.

Power BI Copilot examples: 20 prompts you can copy

Good prompts read like a message to a colleague: name the measure, the breakdown and the time period, ask for one thing at a time, then follow up. These examples assume a sales model; swap in your own field names.

Quirk: the same prompt on an unchanged model within 24 hours returns a cached answer, even after clear chat.

Power BI Copilot use cases by role

• Business users: report summaries, 'why did this drop' questions, finding the right report.
• Report authors: a first-draft page in a minute, then manual polish.
• Model authors: DAX queries to test logic and explanations of inherited measures.
• Admins: replacing Q&A visuals before December and approving trusted models.

Copilot not working in Power BI Desktop? Fixes for every error

Nearly every case of Copilot not working in Power BI Desktop or the service traces back to one of the causes below. Check capacity and workspace role first; they explain most of the support tickets.

Still stuck? In the Desktop Copilot pane, open the ... menu and use Download diagnostics, then attach the file to your support ticket.

Power BI Copilot vs Q&A, M365 Copilot and Fabric data agent

Short version: Power BI Copilot is the right tool for questions about Power BI reports and models.

Power BI Copilot vs Q&A: what to do before December

On power bi copilot vs q&a, the decision is made for you: Q&A goes away. Microsoft's Q&A deprecation post maps Q&A in reports to the report Copilot pane, Q&A on dashboards to standalone Copilot, and Q&A setup (synonyms, linguistic schema) to Prep data for AI. List every report with a Q&A visual now, move your synonyms into AI instructions and verified answers, and check that the workspace is on a Copilot-capable capacity.

Power BI Copilot vs M365 Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a per-user licence for mail, files and meetings. Page creation, DAX and deep model questions happen in Power BI Copilot, which runs on capacity instead.

Power BI Copilot vs Fabric data agent

A data team builds a Fabric data agent from sources, instructions and example queries. Pick it when questions span lakehouse and warehouse data; for Power BI report users, Copilot needs far less setup.

Limits and best practices

Copilot is a first-draft machine, not an analyst you can stop checking. Our rules:

• Model first, prompts second. Clear table and measure names, descriptions and a star schema beat any clever prompt.
• Always read the DAX. Run it, check the totals against a known number, then keep it.
• Design stays manual. Copilot does not format visuals, so start from a theme or one of our Power BI templates and let Copilot fill the page.
• Watch capacity. Copilot shares CUs with refreshes; a busy F2 can feel slow.
• Language and region. Only English is officially supported.

Conclusion: how to use Copilot in Power BI well

Learning how to use Copilot in Power BI comes down to three moves: get a workspace on F2 or P1 capacity with the admin switch on, prep your model so Copilot understands your business, and use it where it shines (summaries, first-draft pages and DAX queries) while you keep control of design and accuracy.

Next steps: check your workspace capacity, prep your most-used model, replace Q&A visuals before December, and try the prompts above. For more guides, browse our Power BI tutorials.

FAQ

Is Copilot in Power BI free?

Copilot has no separate fee inside Power BI, but it only runs on a paid Fabric (F2 or higher) or Premium (P1 or higher) capacity. Trial capacities and free licences cannot use it, so there is no free tier.

How much does Power BI Copilot cost?

You pay for the capacity, and Copilot consumes capacity units from it. The entry F2 capacity is roughly US$262 a month on pay-as-you-go in US regions, and report viewers below F64 still need Pro or PPU licences.

Can I use Copilot in Power BI with a Pro license?

Only if the workspace you use sits on a Fabric or Premium capacity. A Pro or PPU licence on its own is not enough, and workspaces running on Premium Per User are not supported.

Why is Copilot greyed out in Power BI Desktop?

Usually you are not signed in, the tenant admin has Copilot switched off, or you lack Contributor access to a Copilot-enabled workspace. Sign in, then check the Copilot (preview) page in Desktop Options to see which workspace is linked.

Does Copilot replace Q&A in Power BI?

Yes. Microsoft is retiring Q&A in December 2026 and points report Q&A to the Copilot pane, dashboard Q&A to standalone Copilot, and Q&A setup to Prep data for AI.

Can Copilot change the formatting or theme of my report?

No. The report Copilot pane creates and edits visuals but does not apply styling or formatting changes. Use a report theme JSON for colours, fonts and visual defaults.

Does Copilot use my data to train AI models?

Microsoft states that Copilot in Fabric and Power BI does not use your prompts or data to train the foundation models. Data leaves your region only if your admin turns on the cross-geo setting.