Microsoft’s Copilot Chat AI assistant is now available in a range of Office apps at no addition cost to Microsoft 365 customers.

The Copilot Chat interface can be accessed via a side panel in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, which should result in less app-switching for users who want to query the AI assistant. Copilot Chat was previously available to M365 customers via a separate app.

Copilot Chat lets users ask for help drafting documents, analyze a spreadsheet or catch up on emails, for example. It’s context aware, Microsoft said in a blog post this week, “meaning it quickly understands what you’re working on, tailoring answers to the file you have open.”

The chatbot interface is already available to M365 customers who pay for the M365 Copilot add-on, priced at $30 per user each month. It’s another example of premium Copilot features being made more widely available to business customers: Last week Microsoft announced that three role-based Copilot products are available at no additional cost to M365 Copilot subscribers.  

Microsoft also announced some new capabilities within Copilot Chat, including access to OpenAI’s ChatGPT 5 model. Users can also upload multiple images when interacting with the chatbot, while the input area has been expanded to provide more room to view, edit, and format longer prompts, Microsoft said.

Customers will have to pay for the M365 Copilot add-on to gain access to the full breadth of Copilot Chat features, however. The premium version enables the AI assistant to respond to user queries based on information held across all work data in their M365 environment, rather than a specific file or email that’s open. The paid add-on also provides access to more advanced Copilot AI agents, Microsoft said, as well as “priority access” to features such as file upload and image generation.