Microsoft announced a broad set of Microsoft 365 Copilot enhancements during its Ignite developer conference, covering new app-specific agents, deeper in‑app collaboration, expanded admin and security tooling, and offerings tailored to small and midsize businesses.

Word Excel and PowerPoint Agents

Microsoft 365 Copilot will include dedicated Word, Excel and PowerPoint agents that create high‑quality Office content directly from Copilot Chat. Each agent can ask targeted follow‑up questions, handle research, formatting and layout, and support multiturn iteration in chat before handing off to the native apps. Word and PowerPoint agents will be able to use Work IQ to reason across files, meetings, emails and organizational knowledge; the Excel agent will transform data into charts, summaries and insights using built‑in formulas and logic.

Agent Mode across Office apps

Agent Mode, which enables Copilot to iteratively create, edit and format content inside apps, is expanding to PowerPoint and receiving enhancements in Excel and Word. PowerPoint Agent Mode (early access via Frontier) will co‑create slides, apply branded templates, insert and style tables and draw context from files and meetings. Excel Agent Mode adds integrated web search and lets users choose between Anthropic and OpenAI reasoning models. Word’s Agent Mode is generally available for Copilot and Premium subscribers and uses Work IQ to automatically select the most relevant sources, across web and desktop apps including Mac.

Copilot in Outlook

Copilot in Outlook is gaining practical features to streamline emailing and scheduling. A hands‑free interactive voice experience for mobile will summarize unread mail and guide actions; one‑tap prompts like “Triage my inbox” and “Summarize and reply” are broadly available; scheduling via chat (finding times, booking rooms, drafting agendas) is generally available for Copilot license holders; and Copilot can auto‑resolve scheduling conflicts for flexible meetings with early access in targeted tenants.

Work IQ and richer context

Work IQ, the intelligence layer under Microsoft 365 Copilot, is gaining conversational memory so Copilot can retain context and user preferences across sessions while leaving users in control to review, update or delete memories. Copilot’s reasoning over structured SharePoint metadata is now generally available, improving accuracy for prompts grounded in SharePoint libraries and extending grounding to images, intranet pages and sensitivity‑labeled files.

Voice and conversational experiences

Voice in Microsoft 365 Copilot is generally available for commercial customers, enabling natural spoken interaction where users can interrupt Copilot and switch between voice and text on mobile and desktop. The rollout begins with Word, Excel and PowerPoint agents and will expand into the Copilot app, Outlook and other apps, with Work IQ surfacing priorities and meeting, email and file context in responses.

Copilot Notebooks and Copilot Pages

Copilot Notebooks received collaboration upgrades in the Frontier program: a new overview page, proactive topic recommendations, Video Overview summaries and shareable Notebooks for co‑authoring. Separately, Copilot Chat can now create Copilot Pages from user intent; Pages can include code to produce interactive reports and prototypes, and Copilot can convert a page into a PowerPoint presentation. Copilot Pages is generally available.

Media creation and Sora 2

Microsoft 365 Copilot is integrating OpenAI’s Sora 2 video model into the Create experience for commercial Frontier customers. This will let users generate short AI‑created video clips from natural language prompts or replace stock footage with generated content, with built‑in voiceover, music and brand kit support to keep outputs on brand.

SharePoint and SharePoint agents

Copilot Chat in Frontier enterprise now supports creating SharePoint pages and lists from natural language prompts, and SharePoint admin tooling adds an AI‑driven SharePoint Admin Agent in preview to monitor inactive or ownerless sites, oversharing and permissions sprawl and to automate remediation actions. Copilot’s improved reasoning over SharePoint metadata (generally available) complements these capabilities to produce more accurate, context‑aware responses grounded in SharePoint content.

Access for non‑Copilot license users and Microsoft 365 Copilot Business

Copilot Chat will deliver expanded value to users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license via a preview planned by March 2026. Outlook will become content‑aware across an entire inbox, calendar and meetings for triage and meeting prep. Agent Mode will be available with standard access in Word, Excel and PowerPoint so users can iterate with Copilot on multistep tasks using web data and referenced files. Separately, Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, priced at $21 per user per month, targets organizations under 300 users and will be generally available in December; it automates routine tasks such as email summaries, drafting, data analysis and meeting notes while letting businesses add agents to handle processes.

Security, governance and admin visibility

Many Copilot enhancements were announced with explicit governance and security integrations. Agent capabilities are tied into Microsoft 365 admin controls and Agent 365 for lifecycle governance. Copilot features like Work IQ memory include user controls, and SharePoint/Purview integrations plus admin agents aim to provide the visibility and automated remediation necessary for enterprise adoption. Several of these admin and security features are in preview through the Frontier program.

The Ignite announcements position Microsoft 365 Copilot as a platform that moves beyond a single assistant toward an ecosystem of app‑specific agents, in‑app co‑creation, multimodal media generation and enterprise‑grade governance. Many features are available now in preview via the Frontier program, some are generally available, and others are scheduled for rollouts into 2026 as part of Microsoft’s Ignite developer conference updates.