MC1187799 – M365 Change Digest

One-line summary

New Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Copilot agents will become available in Copilot Chat for licensed users, allowing creation and editing of documents, workbooks, and presentations via chat.

Similar updates

Details

Summary

Microsoft 365 Copilot introduces Word, Excel, and PowerPoint agents to assist with content creation via multi-turn chat, rolling out from February 9 to end of February 2026. Available to licensed users with Anthropic enabled, these agents help refine documents, analyze data, and generate presentations interactively.

Body (from Message Center)

Updated February 12, 2026: We have updated the timeline. Thank you for your patience.

[Introduction]

We’re introducing new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot to help users create documents, workbooks, and presentations more efficiently in Copilot Chat within the Frontier program. These agents assist with creating documents, workbooks, and presentations by using web and enterprise grounding. Each agent supports multi-turn chat, enabling user to refine content through an interactive back-and-forth conversation.

This rollout is for Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users. The Copilot Chat user rollout has not yet started.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability: We will begin rolling out on February 9, 2026 (previously January 29) and expect to complete by end of February 2026.

[How this affects your organization:]

If your organization has enabled Anthropic usage in your tenant, users will be able to access Word, Excel, and PowerPoint agents via the navigation pane in the M365 Copilot app or within the Tools menu in Copilot chat. Additionally, users can invoke these agents by typing “@” followed by the agent name (for example, @PowerPoint).

user settings

Who is affected:

Copilot Chat users and Microsoft 365 Copilot users in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app

What will happen:

Users will have access to the following Copilot agents:

Word agent: Assists with research, formatting, layout, and content refinement for documents such as strategic plans, policy documents, and technical papers.
Excel agent: Supports data analysis, formula generation, trend identification, and summarization of insights.
PowerPoint agent: Helps generate presentations from outlines or documents, suggests layouts, and refines visual storytelling.

Each agent supports multi-turn chat for iterative content development.
Users can perform high-level iterations on the generated files via chat directly in the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint agents. For more extensive or granular editing, users can open their documents in the respective applications.

user settings

The feature will be ON by default for tenants with Copilot access and for tenants who have Anthropic usage enabled. If Anthropic usage is disabled by the admin, the agents will not appear in the user experience. Learn more: Connect to Anthropic's AI models | Microsoft Learn.

[What you can do to prepare:]

No action is required at this time.
Communicate availability to helpdesk or content teams.
If desired, review internal documentation or training materials to reflect the new capabilities.

Learn more: Get started with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot (Frontier)

[Compliance considerations:]

No compliance considerations identified, review as appropriate for your organization.

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