Welcome to the January 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.
This month we have a special announcement to share: we’ve refreshed the Microsoft 365 Roadmap to make it easier to stay on top of the latest announcements —from core apps to Copilot and agents. Discover exciting features that are now available and coming soon, and dive deeper into the full roadmap for a comprehensive look at what’s ahead.
Now let’s take a closer look at what’s new this month:
User capabilities:
- Agent Mode and new agents
- Voice chats reference memory in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app
- Updates to voice, grounding and natural language for Copilot in Outlook
- Ground Agents on a Copilot Notebook
- Locally stored modern workbooks for Copilot in Excel
- View-only mode and enterprise assets for Copilot in PowerPoint
Copilot Control System:
- Expanded availability of Copilot Chat Insights in Copilot Dashboard
- Drive secure adoption of Copilot with Microsoft Purview
- New overview and readiness report in Microsoft 365 admin center
User capabilities
Agent Mode and new agents
Agent mode in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint helps users edit and refine documents, spreadsheets, and presentations by working alongside users and responding to prompts, as well as actively making changes to files while reasoning through those changes. As it works, Copilot shows what it’s doing and why, giving users transparency and control, so they can review, adjust, or steer the outcome at any point. Copilot Chat users have standard access to Agent mode with web grounding and Microsoft 365 Copilot-licensed users have priority access with both web and work grounding.
- For Copilot Chat users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, Agent mode in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (web) are rolling out in February.
- For users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, Agent mode in Excel rolled out on Web in December and rolled out on Desktop and Mac in January, Agent mode in Word rolled out in November, and Agent mode in PowerPoint is rolling out in February on the web.
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Agents makes it easier for users to create new files with a single prompt from Copilot Chat, generating complete drafts with rich structure, formatting, and detail built in. Instead of starting from a blank page, users can quickly produce polished documents, analyses, and slides that are ready to review and iterate on. Copilot Chat users have standard access to these agents with web grounding while Microsoft 365 Copilot-licensed users have priority access with both web and work grounding. For users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, and for Copilot Chat users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Agents are rolling out in February.
Voice chats reference memory in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app
In the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, voice chats can now reference memory, enabling Copilot to draw on users' existing memories stored in their personalization settings to deliver more relevant and contextual responses. Copilot uses these stored details while respecting user privacy and security. Users cannot modify or edit their memories directly from voice chat due to privacy safeguards, but all memories that may be referenced are fully visible and manageable within their personalization settings. This feature rolled out in January.
Updates to voice, grounding and natural language for Copilot in Outlook
Copilot in Outlook mobile now offers an interactive voice experience that summarizes unread emails and guides users through actions like drafting replies, deleting, archiving, pinning, and flagging, all hands-free. To get started, users open Copilot from their Outlook mobile app home screen and tap “voice catch-up.” This feature began rolling out on iOS in January and will roll out on Android in February.
Implicit grounding on emails and text is now available in Copilot Chat in Outlook. When users open Copilot Chat alongside an email, the email is automatically added as a grounding source in the prompt box. And if they highlight text within the email, that grounding source updates automatically to only use the highlighted text. This gives users clearer, more accurate responses because Copilot can reference the exact email content they are working with, reducing copy‑paste steps and helping them complete tasks faster and with fewer mistakes. This feature rolled out in December.
Users can now take common email triage actions using natural language directly from Copilot Chat in Outlook and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Supported actions include marking messages as read or unread, pinning and unpinning, flagging and unflagging, and archiving messages, all designed to help users stay organized and efficient. For examples, users can get started using prompts like, “Flag all unread emails from my manager” or “Archive all emails related to [project name].” This feature began rolling out in December.
Users can also set up automatic replies using natural language with Copilot Chat in Outlook and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. This feature enables users to turn automatic replies on or off, set a date range, and draft the message response leveraging their previous writing style, all over chat and without having to navigate Outlook settings. For example, users can get started using prompts like “Setup an automatic reply for next Friday,” or “Turn off my automatic replies.” This feature began rolling out in December.
Ground Agents on a Copilot Notebook
Users can now ground an agent on a Copilot Notebook, drawing directly from references and working materials. Grounding on a Notebook helps agents stay aligned with the context of users’ work and ensure responses remain relevant, consistent, and tailored to the information they are working with. This feature is rolling out in February.
Locally stored modern workbooks for Copilot in Excel
Copilot in Excel now works with locally stored modern workbooks. This gives users faster, more consistent assistance across all their files, improving productivity without requiring changes to how workbooks are stored. This feature is rolling out in February.
View-only mode and enterprise assets for Copilot in PowerPoint
Users can now interact with Copilot in PowerPoint when a presentation is opened in view-only mode. If users have access to a presentation they can only read or review—such as a shared or read-only deck—they can still use Copilot to help. With Copilot, they can ask questions about the presentation, request a summary of the content, or get clarification on specific slides, all without needing permission to edit the file, so they can easily understand and review presentations even when they can't make changes. This feature started rolling out in January.
When creating slides with Copilot, PowerPoint can now automatically use approved enterprise assets from an organization’s SharePoint Organization Asset Library (OAL) or connected Templafy libraries. When the assets are integrated, Copilot pulls from trusted, on‑brand images while generating slides, helping teams stay consistent without extra manual work. Learn more about how to enable enterprise brand images with Copilot in PowerPoint.
Users now have more control when creating presentations with Copilot in PowerPoint. During creation, they can guide the length of the deck, the narrative tone, and the overall slide style. They can also include AI‑generated images to support the content. This means they can easily tailor presentations for different audiences and purposes from the first draft. This feature rolled out in December.
Copilot Control System
Expanded availability of Copilot Chat Insights in Copilot Dashboard
Microsoft Viva is expanding access to Copilot Chat Insights in Copilot Dashboard by removing the requirement for tenants to have at least 50 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses. This allows more tenants, lowering the requirement to at least one (1) Microsoft 365 Copilot license, to track adoption trends. Insights will include usage over time, group level adoption, retention, app-level breakdowns, retention, and more. Users can filter by organizational attributes to uncover usage patterns. This feature is rolling out in February.
Drive secure adoption of Copilot with Microsoft Purview
Security is a team sport, and AI or IT admins need a unified view for managing security and governance for Copilot. Microsoft Purview is now integrated into the Microsoft 365 admin center, to help admins ensure secure adoption of Copilot. In the security tab of the Copilot overview page in the MAC, admins can now:
- Gain visibility around oversharing risks and driving remediations
- Understand how sensitive data is used in Copilot interactions and enable a DLP for Copilot policy to protect this data
- Strengthen data compliance and complete suggested actions to meet AI compliance standards
This feature rolled out in January.
New overview and readiness report in Microsoft 365 admin center
The redesigned Copilot overview page in the Microsoft 365 admin center delivers a centralized, comprehensive, and contextual view of Copilot across the tenant. This new experience unifies insights on environment state, configurations, and prioritized recommended actions spanning Copilot Chat, agents, and Microsoft 365 Copilot. These insights and actions align to Copilot admin needs for security and governance, management controls, and measurement and reporting, helping IT teams quickly assess readiness and drive successful Copilot adoption at scale. This feature rolled out in January.
A new Copilot readiness page in the Microsoft 365 admin center is designed to bring structure and clarity to Copilot configuration and rollout. The readiness page organizes Microsoft‑recommended settings into clear categories: deployment essentials, end‑user experience, and data security, so admins can easily understand scope, prioritize actions, and track progress. With completion status, user coverage insights, and guided recommendations surfaced in one place, IT teams can plan, sequence, and deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot more confidently and consistently. This feature rolled out in January.
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.
Microsoft