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Microsoft is introducing new features to its $30 per user monthly Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription designed to improve the integration of AI into Office applications: Excel is integrating Python into Copilot, PowerPoint has an improved AI powered narrative builder, Word will improve drafts with AI, and Copilot will also help organize your Outlook inbox. After introducing Python to Excel last year, Microsoft is now combining its Python support with Copilot so that Excel users can easily perform advanced analysis 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 coding,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft. "It's like adding an experienced data analyst to your team."
Copilot's Python integration in Excel is currently in public preview, just as Microsoft is making Copilot in Excel generally available to Microsoft 365 Copilot subscribers. Microsoft has also added Copilot support for XLOOKUP and SUMIF, conditional formatting, and the ability for the AI assistant to create more charts and pivot tables. Copilot for PowerPoint has also been improved with an improved narration builder designed to help you quickly create a first draft of a slide collection, and the AI assistant will soon also be able to create drafts and company approved images from a SharePoint library using company branded templates.
Copilot for Microsoft Teams will summarize conversations that take place in text chats and during meetings later this month, helping meeting organizers ensure they don't miss any unanswered questions typed in chat. "Our customer says that the team's co pilot has changed the meeting forever. In fact, it is a place they see value," Spataro explains.
I personally expected a co -pilot in the field of viewpoints in addition to compilation and resumes, but now Microsoft is starting to organize email boxes with artificial assistant intelligence. The new “prioritize my inbox” feature lets Copilot automatically prioritize 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.
Later this month, Microsoft is also improving Copilot in Word to let you reference data from emails and meetings, alongside data from documents. This will make it easy to download email attachments or entire meeting summaries. Microsoft plans to release Copilot to OneDrive later this month, allowing you to easily summarize and compare up to five files and find the differences between them. Microsoft's Copilot in Office improvements, along with a new Copilot Pages feature and AI agents that automate certain tasks, are designed to make the AI assistant more appealing to businesses.
Recent reports suggest that Microsoft's paid version of Copilot for Business has received mixed reviews due to bugs and hesitation to pay the $30 per user fee. According to Microsoft, 60% of Fortune 500 companies now use Copilot, and the number of people using Copilot daily at work "nearly doubled every quarter." These data points appear to include the free version of Copilot. Microsoft has landed some big customers for Microsoft 365 Copilot: Vodafone signed up for 68,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses for 100,000 employees after trialing the AI assistant and seeing early benefits.
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