Microsoft brings the full Word, Excel and PowerPoint experience to the new Copilot app
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
In 30 seconds
Microsoft has put Word, Excel and PowerPoint inside the Copilot app: the file opens next to the chat and takes written requests or manual tweaks. Every file lives in OneDrive, shows up in Library and lets a whole team work on it at once. For now it only reaches those enrolled in Frontier, the early access program, with no date for anyone else.
Microsoft began bringing Word, Excel and PowerPoint into the app of Copilot, its AI assistant, on Friday, October 9. Documents, spreadsheets and presentations are created, edited and shared right there, without opening each program separately. The company announced it on its Copilot blog, where it describes the move as bringing "the full power of Office" into the app.
It works like this: a user asks Copilot for something, for example to turn some research notes into a launch brief, and the assistant creates a Word document that opens side by side with the conversation. From there, further changes can be requested in writing ("Make the opening more direct", "Add a table comparing the three rollout options") or made by hand with the familiar controls, because editing is complete. The conversation history is retained. It is also possible to pick the AI model for each task or let the Auto option choose it.
It is built for working with other people in the same view: sharing the file, leaving comments and several people editing at once, with changes visible in real time. According to Microsoft, everything stays in the same file, with no separate drafts to reconcile.
A section called Library gathers recent Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, as well as pages and AI-generated images, whether they were created in Copilot or in the Office apps, and from there they can be reopened or new ones started. Every file is stored in OneDrive (the cloud storage service from Microsoft) and keeps its formatting, comments, sharing permissions and version history. Files also inherit the security labels and the compliance and governance controls the organization already has. The work can later continue in the standalone apps without losing context, the company says.
The announcement also runs through Copilot improvements elsewhere in Microsoft 365 that, according to the company, are coming to this version: in PowerPoint, it helps keep presentations on-brand and apply custom templates; in Excel, it lets people review the edits Copilot has made, understand what changed and create charts from recommendations.
For now it is not for everyone. Microsoft has been rolling it out since October 9 to customers in Frontier, its early access program for experimental AI features, inside Chat and Cowork (the feature in which Copilot plans the steps and completes multi-stage tasks, according to the program page). The announcement gives no date for other users, and no details on price or countries.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
The order of work is reversed. Copilot was already helping inside PowerPoint or Excel; now the conversation acts as the front door and the app shows up when it is needed. For an office, the practical difference is that the draft the AI produces is born as a regular file, with its permissions, its history and its comments, rather than as text that later has to be copied somewhere else. That removes the step of carrying what the assistant wrote into the document that actually gets shared. The main things needed to decide are still unknown: when it will leave the early access program, at what price, and whether editing is as complete as in the familiar apps. Anyone already in Frontier can try it on a real team document before changing the way they work.
Official source: Microsoft · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
