Microsoft Office Apps Get Copilot AI Features That Change the Way They're Used
Microsoft is preparing to launch new features within its $30-per-month Microsoft 365 Copilot subscriptions, which aim to enhance AI integration within Microsoft Office applications. These improvements include Python integration in Excel, an AI-powered story creation enhancer in PowerPoint, improved AI-powered drafts in Word, and Copilot’s ability to help you organize your inbox in Outlook.
Excel Improvements: Python and Copilot Integration
After introducing Python to Excel last year, Microsoft is now integrating its Python support with Copilot to let Excel users easily perform advanced analytics on spreadsheet data. “Now anyone can work with Copilot to perform advanced analytics like forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning, and complex data visualization — all using natural language, without the need for programming,” says Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft. “It’s like adding a skilled data analyst to the team.”
PowerPoint Improvements: AI-Powered Story Creation
Speaking of Microsoft Office apps, PowerPoint has also received improvements, with an improved story creation tool designed to help you quickly draft a slide deck. The smart assistant will soon use a company-branded template to create company-approved drafts or images from SharePoint libraries.
Teams improvements: Conversation summarization
Copilot in Microsoft Teams will summarize conversations that happen in text chat as well as spoken conversations in meetings later this month. This will help meeting organizers make sure they don’t miss any unanswered questions that were typed into chat. “Our customers tell us that Copilot in Teams has changed meetings forever — in fact, it’s the first place they see value,” says Spataro.
Outlook Improvements: Organize Your Inbox
I’ve personally been waiting for improvements to Copilot in Outlook beyond drafts and summaries, and now Microsoft is starting to let the smart assistant organize your inbox. Copilot’s new “Organize My Inbox” feature lets you automatically sort emails. Later this year, you’ll also be able to “teach Copilot specific topics, keywords, or people that are important to you,” according to Spataro. These emails will then also be marked as high priority in your inbox.
Word improvements: Referencing data from emails and meetings
Later this month, Microsoft is also improving Copilot in Word to let you reference data from emails and meetings, along with data from documents, making it easier to bring in attachments from emails or entire talking points from meetings. Microsoft is also rolling out Copilot to OneDrive later this month, making it easier to summarize and compare up to five files to identify differences between them.
Copilot Improvements in Office: Attracting Businesses
Microsoft’s improvements to Copilot in Office are aimed at making the smart assistant more appealing to businesses, along with a new Copilot Pages feature and intelligent agents that will automate certain tasks. Recent reports have suggested that Microsoft’s paid version of Copilot for businesses has been met with a lukewarm reception, due to bugs and reluctance to pay $30 per user per month.
Microsoft says that 60% of Fortune 500 companies now use Copilot and that the number of people using Copilot every day at work “has grown nearly two-fold quarter-on-quarter.” Both of these figures appear to include the free version of Copilot. Microsoft has already acquired a major customer for Microsoft 365 Copilot: Vodafone expects to sign up for 68,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses for its 100,000 employees, after trialing the smart assistant and seeing early benefits.
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