Microsoft is rolling out Copilot Chat to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote for paying Microsoft 365 business customers.
Copilot Chat (short for Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat) is the company’s AI-powered, content-aware chat that enables users to access AI agents. However, unlike Microsoft 365 Copilot, which has access to organizational content, Copilot Chat only works with data from the web.
While Microsoft says Copilot Chat is “included at no additional cost” for Microsoft 365 users, this refers only to Entra account users with Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Business, Microsoft Teams, and Office 365 licenses.
The list of licenses that will provide access to this newly added feature to Office apps is available in this support document.
“Copilot Chat is secure AI chat grounded in the web—and now, it’s available in the Microsoft 365 apps. It’s content aware, meaning it quickly understands what you’re working on, tailoring answers to the file you have open. And it’s included at no additional cost for Microsoft 365 users,” said Seth Patton, general manager of the Microsoft 365 Copilot product marketing team.
“The moment you need it, you can pull up Copilot Chat in a side pane of your file, and it will be ready to help right where you’re working—which means less copy and pasting, file uploading, and switching apps.”
Patton said that Microsoft 365 customers can also grant Copilot Chat access to all their data, not just the currently open document, if they’re willing to pay extra for a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
“A Microsoft 365 Copilot license unlocks the most powerful version of Copilot Chat, reasoning over not just the file or email you have open, but all of your work data—drawing from personal and shared documents, emails, meetings, chats, and more,” Patton added.
Starting next month until mid-November, Microsoft will also begin automatically installing the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on Windows devices outside the EEA region that have the Microsoft 365 desktop client applications.
However, IT administrators responsible for managing Microsoft 365 app deployments will still have the option to opt out in the Apps Admin Center.
In August, as part of the same effort to expand Copilot’s reach to more users, Microsoft announced that it would add Microsoft 365 Copilot agents to the Edge sidebar, starting in late September 2025, to enable users to access them while using Copilot.
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