Microsoft has rolled out Copilot Chat and its suite of AI agents to a wider audience, bringing the unified AI chat directly into Microsoft 365 apps. This is a big deal because the full-featured Copilot chat panel was only for those with a paid plan.
This update now makes Copilot Chat available to all Microsoft 365 users, in apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote at no extra cost. The biggest thing here is that Copilot Chat is now content-aware, which means it can understand the file you have opened and tailor its answers to what you’re working on.
You can pull up the chat panel in the side pane, right next to your document, so there’s no more copying and pasting or switching between apps. It’s a huge time-saver and makes the workflow feel much more natural. If you want to reference another file, you don’t have to upload it. Just type a “/” and you can search for what you need. Copilot will even suggest the most relevant files, like the ones you’ve used most recently, to make it even easier to reference things in your prompts.
Along with this huge change, you can now upload multiple images directly into the chat, which is a great way to collaborate visually. The input box has also been expanded, so you have more room to view, edit, and format longer prompts without constantly having to scroll. This is such a simple but important change for anyone who uses Copilot for more complex tasks. You’ll get quick access to features like pages, image generation, and agents.
Microsoft has made significant investments in the core fundamentals of Copilot. Answers are now 30% longer with clearer structure and more citations. It’s a noticeable improvement, and apparently, this has led to users giving an 11% increase in “thumbs-up” ratings.
Whenever Microsoft adds a new AI feature, I always jump straight to whether or not you can disable it. Luckily, you can disable these Copilot integrations in each app.
Microsoft has made it clear that these upgrades are not the end of the line. The company will continue to work on making Edge even faster. You can expect to see more performance improvements for specific features like Print Preview and Extensions in the coming months.
For those with a premium Microsoft 365 Copilot license, this doesn’t just mean having to share exclusive features. These users get a version of Copilot Chat that can reason over all of their work data, including personal and shared documents, emails, meetings, and chats. They also get in-app access to advanced agents like Researcher and Analyst, which can help with exploring ideas and analyzing data.
This is in addition to priority access to features like file upload and image generation, as well as the latest technology like GPT-5. These premium users can expect faster response times and more consistent availability, even during peak usage periods.
Source:Â Microsoft
