A Logical Progression for Copilot in the Microsoft 365 Apps

The news in message center notification MC1096218 (last updated 17 September 2025) about the rollout of Copilot Chat confirms the worst fears of some that Microsoft is on a one-way path to stuffing Copilot into as many places as it can. Well, that feeling is backed by some truth, but in this case, I think the change is a natural progression of Copilot’s existing presence in apps like Word, where it’s been producing document summaries since last year.

Once Copilot appeared in the Office apps, there was only one way forward, and that wasn’t to see Copilot disappear from Office. Now Copilot Chat is available in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, just like it has been available in Outlook (new and classic) for a while. Microsoft says that the rollout is expected to complete in the coming weeks, which basically means that it will turn up when the stars align in terms of desktop client Office build and server infrastructure.

Copilot Chat for All

Copilot Chat is available for any user of the Microsoft 365 apps, with or without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. The difference is that those with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses can access tenant resources like documents stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business while those without are restricted to web queries (via Bing search).

Working in Copilot and an Office App

The idea behind the side-by-side implementation is that users can work on a file in the main pane while being able to interact with Copilot in a side pane (Figure 1). It’s a useful feature that makes it easy to take questions from the main file, research them in Copilot, and take the results back into the file.

Apart from anything else, integrating Copilot so tightly into the Office apps makes it less likely that users will seek AI assistance elsewhere and potentially end up uploading documents from SharePoint and OneDrive to services like ChatGPT. It also encourages people to consider upgrading from the free Microsoft Copilot to the full-feature and more expensive Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Word Action Button for Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

After Outlook, Word is easily the Office app where I spend most time. The announcement in message center notification MC1143298 (last updated 17 September 2025) that an Open in Word action button will soon be available to move text from Copilot to Word is therefore very interesting.

It’s possible to move content from Copilot to Word now using Copilot pages as an interim step. Copilot pages are built from Loop, so the intention is that the content is worked on in Loop after coming from Copilot rather than being exported to a new app. At this point, Word is a more sophisticated word processing tool than Loop is. Given the use cases for the two apps, this is the natural state of affairs. I seldom need to collaborate with others to write articles or book text. Being able to move content from Copilot to Word is an action I shall check out once it becomes available later this month.

Teams Move to the Unified Microsoft 365 Apps Domain

Before closing for the weekend, a little bird tells me that Teams might soon move from its teams.microsoft.com domain to teams.cloud.microsoft as part of the initiative launched by Microsoft to create a unified domain for Microsoft 365 apps.

In March 2024, Microsoft posted a note for developers to tell them that Teams apps needed to be able to use teams.cloud.microsoft. By this point, I’m sure that most ISVs will have updated their apps, but if your tenant has some custom home-grown Teams apps, it’s worthwhile checking with the developers that the apps are ready to accommodate the domain switch. Who wants to be surprised when the switch happens?

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