- Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents can now be opened, edited and shared inside the Copilot app
- Could this be the company "figuring out what Copilot, and the future of work, should look like"?
- Microsoft describes Copilot as the "new way to work"
Microsoft is making some hefty upgrades to its Copilot app, allowing users to create, edit and collaborate on popular Office documents directly within the AI hub.
This marks a major shift for the company's AI strategy, which previously focused on adding Copilot functionality into its Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps. Instead, this reverses that decision and puts Word, Excel and PowerPoint into the Copilot app.
The Copilot app will likely become the central workspace, allowing users to interact with AI to produce documents without them then having to go off and open those documents in Office apps to make further adjustments.
Word, Excel and PowerPoint now embedded inside Copilot app
Document creation is nothing unexpected, and Copilot retains its abilities to generate new documents based on user conversations within Copilot Chat or Copilot Cowork. The biggest change is the addition of Library within the Copilot app, which puts those documents within reach inside that single interface.
Collaboration is also a big emphasis for the company, which confirmed that users will still be able to share, comment and review documents within Copilot.
"Microsoft Office has defined productivity for the PC era," Office Product Group Sumit Chauhan explained. Chauhan was named as one of the EVPs to report to Copilot, Agents and Platform EVP Charles Lamanna amid the departure of M365's previous EVP, Ryan Roslansky.
At that time, we knew that the company was "figuring out what Copilot, and the future of work, should look like as one ecosystem," and this is likely part one in a much bigger shift for M365.
"As Copilot becomes a new way to work, we're bringing familiar Office creation and collaboration experiences directly into that environment," Chauhan added, noting the push for a "more unified experience."
That new unified experience inside the Copilot app is only available to Frontier customers in Chat and Cowork, but it could only be a few months until it gets pushed onto more users.
