Microsoft 365 Copilot has changed. Here’s what it can do now.

If your impression of Microsoft 365 Copilot was formed a year ago, what you can do with it now may surprise you.

Copilot can still help you draft an email, summarise a document, or answer a question. However, Microsoft has continued to develop the platform, taking it beyond these familiar generative AI tasks.

Today, Copilot can work more directly within the Microsoft 365 applications many businesses already use. It can help you work on spreadsheets, catch up on meetings, refine emails and documents, create presentations and increasingly carry out multi-step tasks on your behalf.

Microsoft describes its latest evolution as Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot, moving Copilot beyond AI assistance towards more agentic capabilities. But what does that actually mean for someone trying to get through a busy working day?

From answering questions to helping get work done

Much of the early conversation around generative AI focused on prompts.

Ask AI to write something. Ask it to summarise something. Ask it a question.

Those capabilities haven't disappeared, but Copilot can increasingly help users work on the task itself.

That distinction is important.

Instead of simply asking Copilot how you might analyse a spreadsheet, for example, you can work with Copilot within Excel to make changes to the workbook. Instead of receiving suggestions for improving an email and then making every change yourself, Copilot in Outlook can apply selected coaching suggestions directly to the draft. With newer capabilities such as Copilot Cowork, Microsoft is taking this even further.

In other words, Copilot is becoming less about asking AI a question and more about working alongside AI to complete a task.

Excel: get more from your data, whatever your experience level

Not everyone who needs to understand data is an Excel expert.

You might occasionally receive a spreadsheet and need to understand why sales have changed, which products are performing well or where costs have increased.

For someone else, analysing data and building reports in Excel could be part of their job.

Both can benefit from Copilot.

Edit with Copilot in Excel lets users describe what they want to achieve through chat and make changes to a workbook using Excel features, including formulas, tables, charts, and PivotTables.

That can make sophisticated Excel capabilities more accessible to occasional users while helping experienced users work through analyses and repetitive tasks more efficiently.

The capabilities are also becoming more advanced. In August 2026, Microsoft added the ability to use Python when editing with Copilot in Excel, supporting tasks such as advanced data analysis, statistics, simulations, visualisations and data transformation.

The important point isn't that Copilot suddenly makes everyone an Excel expert. It's that different levels of Excel experience don't have to be a barrier to getting useful answers from your data.

Teams: spend more time participating and less time taking notes

Taking comprehensive notes while contributing properly to a meeting isn't easy. Concentrate on writing everything down, and you may miss part of the conversation. Concentrate on the conversation, and you may miss something you need to remember later.

And the work doesn't necessarily stop when the meeting ends. Someone may still need to organise the notes, identify actions, and communicate what happens next.

This is one area where Copilot can play a practical role. Copilot in Microsoft Teams can help users understand what was discussed in a meeting, recap key points and identify follow-up information. Microsoft has continued to develop its meeting capabilities, including adding the ability to change the language of a Copilot meeting recap.

The benefit isn't simply "AI meeting notes".

It's the opportunity to spend more of the meeting engaged in the discussion, while having Copilot available to help you revisit what was said afterwards.

Outlook: it's about more than writing emails

Writing an email was one of the earliest, most obvious applications of generative AI. But writing the message isn't always the part of email that takes the most time. It's the growing inbox. The long email chain you need to understand before responding. Finding information from an earlier conversation and deciding which messages need your attention. Then drafting, checking and refining your response.

Copilot's capabilities in Outlook have continued to expand for everyday tasks. For example, Copilot can coach you as you draft an email. Rather than simply receiving a rewritten version, users can review individual suggestions, refine them, and choose which ones Copilot applies directly to the message.

Microsoft has also continued to expand Copilot's email and management capabilities in Outlook as part of its August 2026 Copilot updates. That marks an important shift in how to think about Copilot. It isn't only there when you don't know what to write. It can increasingly help you work through the communication that's already part of your day.

Word: work with the content, not just generate it

There's a similar story in Word.

Generating a first draft remains useful, but it's only one part of creating a document. Often, the information you need already exists, though it may be spread across reference documents, meeting notes and other source material. The task is to bring that information together, organise it and turn it into something useful. Recent updates have made Copilot better at working with existing material.

For example, Copilot can now understand images contained within reference documents and use relevant text and visuals when creating content. It can also add and format hyperlinks when requested, while more granular highlighting makes it easier to see exactly what Copilot has changed when rewriting text.

You can find these and other developments in Microsoft's What's New in Microsoft Copilot – August 2026.

The result is a tool that's becoming more useful throughout the process of working on a document – not just when staring at a blank page.

PowerPoint: go from information to presentation

Few presentations genuinely start from nothing.

You may already have a report that needs turning into a presentation. Perhaps you've been given meeting notes, research or another document and need to communicate the important points to a particular audience.

Or you might already have a deck but need to restructure, refine or adapt it.

This is where Copilot's integration across Microsoft 365 proves particularly useful.

Microsoft's latest generation of Copilot is designed to work more directly within applications such as PowerPoint, helping users create and edit their work rather than simply returning content through a separate AI conversation. Microsoft's Wave 3 announcement outlines this broader move towards Copilot working alongside users inside the Microsoft 365 apps.

The value isn't simply "AI can make a PowerPoint".

It's about moving more efficiently from the information you already have to something you can actually use.

And Copilot is starting to go beyond individual tasks

Perhaps the biggest indication of where Microsoft 365 Copilot is heading is Copilot Cowork.

Traditional generative AI typically works one prompt at a time. You ask for something, receive a response and decide what to do next. Cowork is designed for a different type of interaction.

You describe an outcome, and it can work through a longer, multi-step task using Microsoft 365 tools. Microsoft says Cowork can perform actions such as creating documents, working with spreadsheets, sending emails and scheduling meetings, with users retaining control and approving actions before they happen.

Copilot Cowork became generally available in June 2026, and Microsoft has continued adding capabilities since then. The easiest way to understand the difference is: Instead of "help me with this step", we're moving towards "help me get from here to the finished outcome".

That doesn't mean you should hand every task over to AI. Human judgement, review and accountability remain important. But it does show how far the concept of Copilot has moved beyond simply placing a chatbot alongside Microsoft 365.

So, is it time to take another look at Microsoft 365 Copilot?

No single Copilot use case will apply equally to every person or organisation.

Someone who spends much of their day in meetings and on Outlook may use it very differently from someone analysing data in Excel. And an occasional spreadsheet user may derive value from Copilot for entirely different reasons than an experienced analyst.

That's precisely why the conversation around Copilot is becoming more interesting. It's no longer simply about asking "What can AI generate for me?"

Increasingly, the question is: "Where could Copilot make the work I already do easier to manage?" And the answer to that question continues to evolve as Microsoft adds new capabilities.

If you looked at Microsoft 365 Copilot before and decided it wasn't right for your organisation, it may be worth looking again.

Ready to see what Copilot could do for your business?

Microsoft 365 Copilot continues to evolve, from helping people manage everyday tasks in the applications they already use to supporting more complex, multi-step ways of working.

Misco can help you understand the latest Microsoft 365 Copilot capabilities and how they fit within your existing Microsoft environment.

Talk to our Microsoft specialists about getting started with Microsoft 365 Copilot.