Microsoft is unveiling new features in its $30 per user Microsoft 365 Copilot monthly subscriptions. These features are designed to improve AI integration inside of Office apps. Excel is getting Python integration inside of Copilot.
Feeling wordy? Watch how Microsoft 365 Copilot helps slim down communication and focus on what's most important, so your team stays in the know. #IYCYK pic.twitter.com/nt3NNMkIGZ
— Microsoft 365 (@Microsoft365) September 17, 2024
PowerPoint has an improved AI-powered narrative builder. Word is getting better at AI-assisted drafts. Copilot will be able to help you organize your Outlook inbox.
📧 Need to create a quick report? Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word references work data like your emails and meetings to help you create relevant, context-rich documents with your colleagues. #AI pic.twitter.com/6iBEM24hdL
— Microsoft 365 (@Microsoft365) September 17, 2024
Microsoft is now combining its Python support with Copilot. This lets Excel users easily perform advanced analysis on spreadsheet data.
neat little Copilot in OneDrive feature that lets you easily compare files. These are the kind of AI features that I can get behind https://t.co/PsR0XG2LJW pic.twitter.com/9oJS0bN1t0
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) September 16, 2024
Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of AI at work at Microsoft, says “Now, anyone can work with Copilot to conduct advanced analysis like forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning, and visualizing complex data — all using natural language, no coding required.”
The Copilot and Python integration inside of Excel enters public preview today.
Copilot in Excel becomes generally available to its Microsoft 365 Copilot subscribers. Microsoft has also added Copilot support for XLOOKUP and SUMIF, conditional formatting, and the ability for the AI assistant to produce more charts and PivotTables. Copilot in PowerPoint is also getting improvements.
An improved narrative builder is designed to let you quickly create a first draft of a slide deck. The AI assistant will soon use a company’s branded template to create drafts or company-approved images from SharePoint libraries. Copilot in Microsoft Teams will summarize conversations that happened in the text chat as well as spoken ones in meetings later this month.
Microsoft 365 Copilot AI upgrades
This will help meeting organizers make sure they didn’t miss any unanswered questions that were typed into the chat. Spataro says “Our customers tell us Copilot in Teams has changed meetings forever — in fact, it’s the number one place they’re seeing value.”
Copilot is also getting more useful inside of Outlook inboxes.
Microsoft is starting to allow its AI assistant to organize your inbox. A new “prioritize my inbox” feature lets Copilot automatically prioritize emails. Later this year, users will also be able to teach Copilot the specific topics, keywords, or people that are important.
These emails will then be marked as high priority in your inbox. Later this month, Microsoft is also improving Copilot in Word. It will let you reference data from emails and meetings, alongside data from documents.
This will make it easier to bring in attachments from emails or entire talking points from meetings. Microsoft is also rolling out Copilot in OneDrive later this month. It will make it easy to summarize and compare up to five files to spot differences between them.
Microsoft’s improvements to Copilot in Office are designed to make the AI assistant more enticing to businesses. Microsoft says 60 percent of the Fortune 500 now use Copilot. The number of people who use Copilot daily at work nearly doubled quarter-over-quarter.
Vodafone, for instance, is signing up for 68,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses for its 100,000 employees. This is after trialing the AI assistant and seeing early benefits.
Noah Nguyen is a multi-talented developer who brings a unique perspective to his craft. Initially a creative writing professor, he turned to Dev work for the ability to work remotely. He now lives in Seattle, spending time hiking and drinking craft beer with his fiancee.
