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Welcome to the May 2026 edition of What’s new in Microsoft 365 Copilot! Every month, we highlight new features and enhancements to keep Microsoft 365 admins up to date with Copilot features that help your users be more productive and efficient in the apps they use every day.
Let’s take a closer look at what’s new this month:
User capabilities:
- Updates to mobile app and grounding for the Microsoft 365 Copilot app
- A wave of updates for Copilot Notebooks
- Plan mode and Python support for Copilot in Excel
- Image editing options and public website grounding for Copilot in PowerPoint
- Claude model for Copilot in Word
- Call delegation and consecutive interpretation with Copilot in Teams
- Ready-to-use prompts for Copilot in OneDrive
- Submit agents to Agent Store using Agent Builder
- First draft in the canvas for Copilot in Outlook
Copilot controls:
- Reporting by day and by power users in Copilot Dashboard
- Billing management and new organizational message options in Microsoft 365 admin center
User capabilities
Updates to mobile app and grounding for the Microsoft 365 Copilot app
The Microsoft 365 Copilot mobile app now includes a refreshed, chat‑first design that delivers a cleaner and more intuitive user experience. This update improves the Copilot Chat experience by adding support for text formatting in prompts and introducing a new layout that makes chat responses easier to view, copy, reopen, and reference through citations. A newly streamlined app menu means users can more easily navigate their Copilot experiences. Overall, the app has a more modern look and feel, featuring liquid glass styling and a new visualization for voice conversations. This feature is rolling out in May.
In Copilot Pages, users can already create and preview interactive visuals and apps such as lightweight dashboards, reports, and visualizations using web grounding. Now, they can use Work IQ to generate interactive visuals and apps in Copilot Pages, so they can explore and iterate without leaving the page. When they’re ready to further configure and manage the artifact, they can open it in App Builder right from the page. This feature rolled out in April.
A wave of updates for Copilot Notebooks
Copilot Notebooks is rolling out a wave of new capabilities in preview to users signed up for the Frontier program. These features include enhancements to creation, collaboration, and learning experiences. Users can reference SharePoint content and OneNote notebooks, edit Copilot Pages with Copilot, generate Word documents or PowerPoint presentations from notebook content, share a notebook with a Microsoft 365 Group, and explore content with mind maps and study tools. These features are rolling out in April and May.
Copilot Notebooks now supports creating and editing Copilot Pages through chat, so users can easily shape notebook content without editing pages manually. In chat, users can describe what they want to change or create, and Copilot handles the updates directly on their Page. For admins, this improves usability and helps drive adoption by reducing the learning curve for managing notebook content on the web. This feature is rolling out in May.
Soon, users can add external web links as references in Copilot Notebooks, expanding the sources Copilot can ground on beyond internal content. Users can paste a URL as a Notebooks reference, and Copilot uses that web link content to inform notebook chat and outputs. This enables richer research while keeping notebook context centralized and easier to manage. This feature is rolling out in May.
Copilot Notebooks can now generate PowerPoint presentations directly from the content and references stored in a notebook. Copilot can pull from notes, references, and structure already in a notebook to help users draft slides that are consistent, ready to refine, and preloaded with visuals. Users can choose the primary focus, level of detail, slide deck length, and design theme from example templates, and PowerPoint agent will create a presentation based on those unique requests. Copilot drafts a structured, editable deck that users can open and refine further in PowerPoint. This feature is rolling out in May.
Now, in Copilot Notebooks, users can generate Word documents from the content and references they’ve gathered in a notebook. They can quickly generate documents like reports, summaries, and proposals straight from the notebook content and references. Users simply specify what’s needed in the prompt, and customize document type, main topic, audience and themes to create a first draft that fits the right purpose and audience. Copilot creates a rough draft, and users can open and edit it in Word to finalize their document. This feature is rolling out in May.
Mind maps in Copilot Notebooks provide an interactive, grounded view of key topics and relationships across a notebook’s content. Users can explore nodes, open summaries for specific areas, and use Copilot to drill deeper into what they see on the map. This gives users a faster way to understand complex concepts and notes in their notebook. This feature is rolling out in May.
Multimodal capture in Copilot Notebooks in Microsoft OneNote mobile app (iOS) lets users capture audio transcription, images, and typed notes in a single session—ideal for offline moments like in-person meetings or whiteboard discussions. Copilot then turns that capture into a structured Copilot Page with insights and the user’s content, saved into a selected notebook. This feature rolled out for iOS devices in May.
Plan mode and Python support for Copilot in Excel/h4>
Plan mode for Copilot in Excel helps users make complex changes with confidence by outlining a clear, step‑by‑step approach before anything in the workbook is updated. To enter Plan mode, users select Plan from the menu above the prompt box. Users can then review how Copilot intends to complete a task, see which data or capabilities it may use, and adjust the plan as needed, ensuring edits are intentional, transparent, and aligned with their goals before edits are applied. This helps users easily tackle multi‑step or high‑impact tasks while staying in control of every change. This feature is rolling out in May.
Users can now use Python when editing with Copilot in Excel to take on more advanced data analysis without leaving a workbook. Copilot can apply Python-powered techniques as it makes edits, transforming data, generating visualizations, and completing complex, multi‑step tasks. When Python is enabled, Copilot can create charts and other visual outputs as part of the requested edits, bringing powerful analytical capabilities into the same experience to clean, reshape, and update a spreadsheet. Users can invoke this feature directly in their prompt by asking Copilot to use Python, or Copilot will automatically invoke Python when necessary. This feature is rolling out in May.
Image editing options and public website grounding for Copilot in PowerPoint
Copilot in PowerPoint will soon let users choose which image model to use when creating or editing images, including GPT-Image, Flux, or an Auto setting that picks the best option for the request. When a user generates visuals for a slide or updates an existing image, Copilot routes the prompt through the selected model and returns a result they can iterate on. Model choice aligns image generation with quality, style, and governance expectations across teams. This feature rolled out in April.
Users can now edit images with the Microsoft AI Image 2 Efficient model, giving users a faster, high-quality way to create and edit images directly within their workflow. Whether generating new visuals from a prompt or refining existing images, users can quickly iterate to match their desired style, tone, and content. With improved performance and efficiency, this model helps teams produce polished, presentation-ready visuals without leaving Microsoft 365. This feature rolled out in April.
Copilot in PowerPoint can now use public webpages as source material when building a deck, so users can ground slides in up-to-date external information without copy/pasting content. When a user adds a web reference, Copilot pulls in the relevant context and uses it to generate an initial outline and slides that they can refine. This helps users produce more accurate, well-sourced presentations while keeping the experience inside Microsoft 365. This feature rolled out in April.
Claude model for Copilot in Word
Copilot in Word now includes a Claude model option, giving users another high-quality LLM choice when drafting or editing content. Users can select an Anthropic model alongside OpenAI options, and Copilot will run the same editing workflows using the chosen model. This adds flexibility for teams that prefer specific model behaviors while keeping work inside a managed environment. This feature rolled out in April.
Call delegation and consecutive interpretation with Copilot in Teams
Now users can allow Copilot to handle incoming Microsoft Teams calls on their behalf with Copilot call delegation. Once enabled in the Teams Calls settings, Copilot can help answer incoming Teams calls and gather context from callers to help the user decide whether to pick up. It can also set up follow-up appointments via Microsoft Bookings, so users remember to meet with the callers that matter most. This feature is rolling out in May.
Consecutive interpretation is a new mode in Microsoft Teams Interpreter that helps participants collaborate more naturally in meetings with two spoken languages. With consecutive interpretation, the translation begins after each speaker finishes speaking. This creates a turn-based flow that more closely reflects how people naturally communicate in multilingual conversations. In addition, consecutive interpretation brings Interpreter onto the meeting stage for everyone to see and hear, so they can more easily follow, participate, and stay aligned. With this update, Interpreter now supports two modes: real-time simultaneous interpretation, launched last year, and the new consecutive interpretation mode designed for back-and-forth conversations. This feature rolled out in April to Public Preview.
Ready-to-use prompts for Copilot in OneDrive
OneDrive file preview is adding discoverable Copilot actions, so users can see what Copilot can do the moment they open a file. This feature, also available in SharePoint, displays ready-to-use prompts next to the Copilot button, helping users summarize, generate FAQs, and more without having to craft a prompt from scratch. This lowers the barrier to Copilot adoption and drives more consistent usage patterns across content types. This feature rolled out in April.
Submit agents to Agent Store using Agent Builder
Agent Builder is adding the ability to submit agents for administrator review and approval before they are published to the organization’s Agent Store catalog. This helps organizations scale the distribution of high‑quality internal agents while maintaining IT admin control. Once approved, agents appear in the “Built by your org” section of the Agent Store, where users across the organization can discover and install them. This feature is rolling out in May.
First draft in the canvas for Copilot in Outlook
Copilot in Outlook now writes a first draft directly in the canvas and can then iterate with the user to continue improving it. Instead of generating a one-off draft, Copilot writes in place and asks clarifying questions about the goal, audience, or tone, and then updates the email in place as the user responds. This enables users to refine a message in a few quick turns until it’s ready to send and keeps every change visible in Outlook with no copy/paste or formatting surprises. This feature rolled out to new Outlook in March.
Copilot controls
Export by day and Power users insights in Copilot Dashboard
Admins can now use the most recent Copilot adoption and impact data to more quickly make decisions for license assignment or change interventions. With Copilot export by day, download de-identified Copilot usage metrics aggregated by user and day for the most recent 28 days. This helps to make faster, data-driven decisions around adoption and licensing. This feature is rolling out to Public Preview in May and is rolling out worldwide in August.
With Power users insights, admins can now identify the most engaged Copilot users, to focus enablement where it will have the greatest impact on sustained adoption. In the updated Adoption tab in the Copilot Dashboard, Power users insights classifies users as power, habitual, novice, or non‑Copilot users based on usage frequency and consistency to help activate champions, surface repeatable workflows, and scale enablement across the organization. This feature is rolling out in May.
Billing management and new organizational message options in Microsoft 365 admin center
Microsoft 365 admin center is adding support for using prepaid capacity pack credits as the only billing method for supported Copilot pay-as-you-go experiences, so organizations can avoid pay-as-you-go charges while still enabling consumption-based scenarios. Admins can create capacity pack policies that ensure users covered by the policy draw usage exclusively from available prepaid credits, helping keep spend predictable and aligned to internal budgets. This feature rolled out in April.
Organizational messages in the Microsoft 365 admin center now supports email delivery in addition to other Windows surfaces like the taskbar, Spotlight, notifications, and Teams popovers. This gives admins another familiar channel while keeping messaging in one centralized workflow. Adding email expands reach and simplifies change communications by reducing the need for separate tools. Learn more about Organizational messages. This feature rolled out in April.
Now the Microsoft 365 admin center has user segments for organizational messages, so admins can target messages using dynamic, usage-driven audiences, not only static groups. This helps admins deliver messages to the people who need them, such as users who have not tried a feature yet, making communications more relevant and timely. For admins, this can increase engagement and reduce noise by reaching the right audience with the right message. This feature rolled out in April.
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Did you know? The Microsoft 365 Roadmap is where you can get the latest updates on productivity apps and intelligent cloud services. Microsoft 365 Copilot release notes is where you can see the Microsoft 365 Copilot features that are generally available (Current Channel for Microsoft 365 apps) and specific to each platform. Check back regularly to see what features are in development, coming soon and generally available. Please note that the dates mentioned in this article are tentative and subject to change.