AI is changing our lives. Are you ready?
Microsoft's AI chatbot, Copilot, has been steadily growing and adding new features since its introduction last year. (At that time, Microsoft called it Bing Chat.) As with all things AI, it can be difficult to keep up with the changes and new features, but Microsoft is updating Copilot at a steady clip.
Here are some of the best features and changes Microsoft has brought to Copilot this year.
If you're still using the Copilot web app, feel free to keep doing so. However, since the beginning of 2024, Microsoft has offered Copilot as a dedicated mobile app as well. You can choose to use the experience signed in or signed out, but signing into your Microsoft account gives you access to more features (including bypassing the very strict prompt limit). As of October, the Copilot app (and site) even have a new look.
One of Copilot's flagship features is its integration with Microsoft 365. Microsoft turned the bot into an AI Clippy, adding AI assistant options to apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. However, Copilot in 365 was only available to business users—the rest of us that use these apps outside of work were out of luck.
That changed early in 2024, when Microsoft rolled out Copilot support in Microsoft 365 to all Copilot Pro users. As long as you subscribe to the plan for $20 per month (and you have a separate Microsoft 365 subscription), you can try out Copilot in this suite of apps. While it's a pricey subscription, if you're interested in Copilot, it might be worth the price, since Microsoft is adding most of Copilot's new features to Microsoft 365 apps.
Previously, if you wanted to use Copilot in Outlook, you needed to head to the web app or go the long way through Microsoft Teams. Since May 2024, however, Microsoft has offered Copilot support in the Outlook app itself. That makes it easier to use some of the new Copilot features in Outlook, like email draft coaching and choosing the tone of a draft (e.g. neutral, casual, formal), to help manage your email. Since July, Copilot has been able to recognize the email you're reading so it drafts an appropriate response when asked.
As of September 2024, you're now able to pull AI generated images into both Word and PowerPoint documents. You can prompt Copilot from the chat window, ask for an image of your choosing, and add the results to your document. Copilot will also search Microsoft's stock image library for you if you don't want to make something new.
Since May 2024, you've been able to pull in files from your device, SharePoint, and OneDrive when prompting Copilot. If you want the bot to summarize a Word doc, or to have the context of a Powerpoint presentation when responding to your prompt, just type a / when prompting to pull up the file locator.
Since June, you've been able to reference PDFs as well, and ask Copilot to compare two referenced documents and explain the differences between them. Starting in July, Microsoft added the ability to generate summaries from multiple referenced files. And, as of September, you've been able to use Copilot to compare up to five documents side-by-side in OneDrive as well.
In July 2024, Microsoft rolled out "Catch-up," which lets you use Copilot to, well, catch up on what's going on with your work. Copilot should be able to tell you about projects that are due, give you the latest updates on those tasks, and pull up relevant conversations with coworkers. Copilot can also identify time periods now, so you can ask it for a document you first made back in February, for example.
In 2024, Microsoft has given Copilot in Word a boost. Here are some of the highlights:
Use Rewrite on specific sections of a document.
Highlight a portion of text to summarize and share.
Create tables from your text.
Make new tables based on the format of previous tables in your doc.
Confidential docs are labeled as confidential when referencing them in new docs.
Pull from up to three other files to create new content.
Rework text, lists, or tables, and ask for an explanation of the selected information.
Search the web for content or information directly from Word.
Pull in emails, meeting notes, and contacts when writing in Word.
Copilot now has expanded paste options.
Microsoft has been adding new Copilot features to Excel this year as well. Since the beginning of this year, here's what you've been able to do:
Request a chart of your data.
Ask Copilot follow-up questions, including requesting clarifications to previous responses.
Generate formula column options with one prompt.
Use Copilot to figure out why you're running into issues with a task.
Ask Copilot to generate a formula column.
Copilot can reason with data ranges that only have one row of headers.
As of September, Copilot is now fully integrated in Excel.
Since June 2024, Microsoft has added new Copilot functionality to PowerPoint. Here are the features you can expect to find:
Copilot can add an agenda slide to your presentation.
Create presentations from PDFs.
Start a presentation from a Word document without copying links into the deck.
Copilot can summarize and answer questions about presentations.
OneNote actually has had quite a few new Copilot features since January 2024. If you have access to Copilot in OneNote and frequently use the app, here's what you can look for:
Create notes from audio recordings and transcriptions, then ask Copilot to summarize the notes and arrange them in different ways.
Create to-do lists with Copilot.
Copilot can search through information within your organization for added context to your requests.
Ask Copilot to organize your notes for you.
Copilot now recognizes handwriting, so you can scribble out a prompt in the chat window.
If you use Copilot in Teams, you may notice now that the bot can now automatically take notes during meetings. If you head to Recap the meeting, you can get a summary of what your team or the call just talked about.
You may also see a new Copilot option attached to the top of your Teams chats. This lets you quickly prompt Copilot inside chats, pulling in documents with the / key. You'll also see that Teams will alert you when AI is being used in a meeting, such as when Copilot is in use without transcriptions.
In addition, you can use AI writing tools in Teams to rewrite or adjust the tone of your messages.
Microsoft adds new Copilot features every month, which they announce on both the latest updates blog post as well as a dedicated monthly "What's New" update, such as this post from September 2024.
However, we know some features that are on their way. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced Copilot Voice, a new feature that lets you have a more natural conversation with the chatbot. In addition, the company is working on Copilot Daily, which uses AI to summarize the day's top headlines. There's also "Think Deeper," a feature in testing that gives Copilot more time to analyze your prompts, with the goal of delivering a more complete and useful result.
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