Microsoft has been adding Copilot support for its various Office productivity apps for some time. Today, the company announced several new additions to those apps, including Excel, PowerPoint, and more.
In a blog post, Microsoft announced support for using Python in the Excel spreadsheet has finally hit general availability, over a year after it was first added for Microsoft 365 Insider users. In addition, it has launched the previously announced public preview of Copilot in Excel with Python. It states:
Now, anyone can work with Copilot to conduct advanced analysis like forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning, and visualizing complex data—all using natural language, no coding required. It’s like adding a skilled data analyst to the team.
People who use the PowerPoint presentation app can now access Copilot for what Microsoft calls Narrative Builder. Users can type in text prompts in Copilot with PowerPoint, and it will generate a draft outline based on those prompts. The company is also adding Brand Manager to PowerPoint, which will allow employees of a business to get brand assets from the company to add to the presentation.
For Outlook email app users, Microsoft has announced Prioritize My Inbox. With this feature, Outlook will use Copilot to help users get to the emails they need to access more quickly. The blog post stated:
Copilot automatically generates a concise summary of each email, and includes why it prioritized the message along with top insights. And soon, you’ll be able to teach Copilot the specific topics, keywords, or people that are important to you, ensuring those emails are marked as high priority.
This feature will launch sometime later in 2024 in a public preview.
Other Office apps that will be getting new Copilot features soon include:
- Microsoft Teams - Users will be able to ask Copilot to analyze a Teams meeting transcript and ask if they missed any questions in that meeting. That feature will roll out later in September
- Word - Later in September, users of Copilot in Word will be able to put in reference to more data sources, including other Word documents, along with PDFs, emails, meeting transcripts and more.
Finally, Microsoft confirmed that Copilot support for its OneDrive file service is finally rolling out after a number of delays. It stated:
Copilot in OneDrive can reason over all your files quickly to find the information you need, making it easy to gain insights, summarize, and compare up to five files with a clear, easy-to-read summary of the details and differences within your files—without opening a file.
The new Copilot support in OneDrive will be available for all users by the end of September.
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