Microsoft Copilot can now assist with Excel formulation, make PowerPoints, and extra

After a 12 months and a half of Copilot, the generative AI instrument is attending to a genuinely helpful place. That literal and figurative place is in Microsoft Excel.

On the Microsoft 365 Copilot livestream on Monday, CEO Satya Nadella introduced Copilot options for the OG spreadsheet program and different 365 apps like PowerPoint, a collaborative “canvas” referred to as Copilot Pages, and customizable AI Brokers.

Whereas the livestream was largely meant for Microsoft’s enterprise prospects and never for the informal viewer (it was hosted on LinkedIn, for Pete’s sake), there have been loads of options and bulletins for each Microsoft 365 consumer to understand.

We have rounded up the takeaways from the occasion that it is advisable find out about.

New Copilot options in Excel, PowerPoint, Groups, Outlook, Phrase, and OneDrive

As talked about above, Copilot for Excel is a noteworthy addition to the suite of capabilities. Copilot will help Excel customers format knowledge, assist with widespread formulation like XLOOKUP and SUMIF, and visualize knowledge in charts and pivot tables. It might probably additionally work with textual content, not simply numbers, so customers can seek for key phrases and phrases and analyze knowledge accordingly. Copilot in Excel is stay right now.

Microsoft additionally shared that Copilot in Excel understands Python, so customers who aren’t aware of the programming language can use Python with out having any prior coding information.

Copilot in Excel now is aware of Python.
Credit score: Microsoft

In PowerPoint, Copilot can generate a top level view of a presentation from a immediate by pulling in your knowledge from 365 sources. Then it may slot info into particular person slides and design a presentation — even pulling in model photos or DALL-E 3-based AI-generated photographs. Copilot’s “Model Narrative” function in PowerPoint does not have a launch date, however it’s coming quickly, in keeping with the announcement.

Copilot’s Model Narrative instrument does the heavy lifting of constructing a PowerPoint.
Credit score: Microsoft

Copilot was already used for summarizing assembly transcripts in Groups, however now it may additionally incorporate conversations taking place within the chat. This function will likely be accessible this month.

For Outlook, Copilot can prioritize vital emails in your inbox and provides summaries of what every e-mail entails, and generate beneficial responses. Sounds acquainted? Apple just lately introduced an analogous function for its Mail app that makes use of Apple Intelligence to prioritize and summarize your inbox. Prioritizing your inbox will likely be accessible for public preview on the finish of 2024.

Coming quickly, Copilot can prioritize your emails in Outlook.
Credit score: Microsoft

Phrase additionally leverages Copilot’s summarization and knowledge gathering capabilities. With the Copilot sidebar, customers can pull in work knowledge from the emails, different 365 apps, and the net to generate drafts inside your doc. That is additionally now typically accessible.

Final however not least, the entire thing that makes all of it doable is OneDrive, the cloud storage platform that shops all of your work knowledge — it is also getting an AI-powered facelift. On OneDrive, Copilot will enable you discover and type by way of related recordsdata, and summarize them, so you do not have to click on round in search of the file you want. That is rolling out now to OneDrive now and will likely be broadly accessible later this month.

Copilot Pages for collaborating on Copilot responses

With Microsoft’s new Copilot Pages instrument, customers can share Copilot responses with different workforce members, and collaborate on a challenge in a freestanding canvas inside BizChat.

“You and your workforce can work collaboratively in a web page with Copilot, seeing everybody’s work in actual time and iterating with Copilot like a associate, including extra content material out of your knowledge, recordsdata, and the net to your Web page,” the announcement mentioned. It eliminates the necessity for impartial analysis inside Copilot by permitting different customers to construct upoon the preliminary Copilot response.

Copilot responsive grow to be collaborative with a brand new Pages instrument.
Credit score: Microsoft

Copilot Pages can be found by way of BizChat beginning right now, and can roll out to the free Microsoft Copilot model within the coming weeks for customers with a Microsoft Entra account.

Copilot Brokers get common availability

Unveiled final Could, Copilot brokers act as customizable AI-powered assistants for automating sure duties. Much like a Google function referred to as AI Teammates that was showcased at Google I/O, customers can share inner information and databases with brokers and prepare to run sure duties within the background. This could possibly be creating an agent to onboard a brand new worker, or an agent that serves as a discipline service technician for troubleshooting on-site issues with equipment.

A personalized Copilot agent can troubleshoot on-site points.
Credit score: Microsoft

As of right now, brokers are typically accessible. With this announcement, Microsoft has additionally launched an agent builder, a user-friendly instrument which helps customers simply construct an agent with out the necessity for immediate engineering know-how. Copilot brokers will likely be accessible by way of BizChat and can roll out to prospects within the coming weeks.