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Welcome to the June 2026 edition of What's New in Microsoft 365 Copilot! Every month, we highlight new features and enhancements to keep Microsoft 365 customers 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:
- General availability for Copilot Cowork
- Expanded citations and reasoning for Copilot app and Chat
- New references and access for Copilot Notebooks
- Customization and refinement for Copilot in Outlook
- Improvements to document editing for Copilot in Word
- Updates to branding, skills, and references for Copilot in PowerPoint
- Skills, personalization, and rules for Copilot in Excel
- Planner Agent availability and Researcher options for Copilot Agents
IT admin capabilities:
- New adoption and management capabilities for Microsoft 365 admin center
- Email restriction and Cowork controls for Purview Data Loss Prevention
User capabilities
General availability for Copilot Cowork
Copilot Cowork, an agentic system that plans, executes, and delivers real work, is now generally available worldwide. Users define the task, and Cowork executes it from start to finish, returning a completed deliverable rather than a draft or recommendation. Powered by Work IQ, Cowork grounds every task in the systems that a business already runs on, so the work reflects real context. Cowork is enabled via usage-based billing, and administrators can use the new Cost Management Dashboard in the Microsoft 365 admin center to monitor credit usage, manage budgets, and control spend. Learn more about Cost Management in the entry below.
Now the Microsoft 365 Copilot app has a toggle users can switch between Chat and Cowork. This gives users an easy way to choose between working on answers and action. This feature rolled out in June.
Cowork can now choose the model that best fits the task with OpenAI GPT 5.5 Thinking. Cowork can also choose Anthropic models for visual work like PowerPoint and graphics or use GPT 5.5 for deeper research with citations. This helps users get more tailored support for different types of work without selecting a model manually. This feature rolled out in June to Frontier.
Cowork now supports more plugins, giving users access to additional business systems directly in the flow of work. New plugins available in the plugin store include Enosix, Harvey, LSEG, Miro, monday.com, Moodys, Morningstar, S&P Global Energy, and TeamsMaestro, with Databricks available through sideloading. Microsoft Fabric and the full Dynamics 365 portfolio, including Sales, Customer Service, and ERP apps, are also supported. These plugins rolled out in June.
Users can now easily create, edit, and manage custom skills in Cowork through the Customize tab to personalize what Cowork can do. Skills are custom instructions that make Cowork work the way users do. Now users can more easily build and refine custom skills over time as well as combine your own workflows with partner-provided or org-wide skills deployed through plugins. This helps teams standardize recurring tasks without rewriting prompts each time. This feature rolled out in June.
Cowork can now directly create and edit visuals including deck graphics, document illustrations, and email imagery. Powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT Images 2.0, this helps users generate visuals in the flow of work without switching tools. Cowork can also now use branded PowerPoint templates from an organization’s asset library, so users can create decks with approved colors, fonts, logos, and layouts from the start, reducing manual formatting and brand cleanup after a presentation is generated. These features rolled out in June.
Cowork can use the Edge browser to do work across an organization’s business systems, websites, and intranet sites. This feature rolled out in June to Frontier.
Cowork is now available for mobile users on iOS and Android. Users can start working on one device and continue on another with the same context and conversation intact. This gives mobile users full access to Cowork without losing their place. This feature rolled out in June.
Cowork now sends push notifications for long-running tasks, including approvals, input requests, and completions. This enables users to stay informed without needing to monitor open tasks, so they can continue their own work while Cowork finishes. This feature rolled out in June.
Expanded citations and reasoning for Copilot app and Chat
With Work IQ, Microsoft 365 Copilot can now reason over Power BI enterprise data and return grounded answers directly from Power BI reports and semantic models. Users can ask natural-language questions and get accurate answers without building queries themselves. This brings governed BI data into the Copilot experience for faster, trustworthy insights. This feature rolled out to the Frontier program in June.
Work IQ also enables Copilot to now search and query Dataverse business data, bringing line-of-business records into the flow of work across Copilot Chat experiences. Users can ask about their Dataverse data in natural language and get grounded answers without leaving Copilot. This extends Copilot's reach into the structured business data organizations keep in Dataverse. This feature rolled out in public preview in June and will be generally available in September.
Deep citations let users verify Copilot's results by linking directly to the specific part of a referenced file rather than the whole file. The feature is rolling out with support for Word and PowerPoint files, and soon will include Meetings, Web, and PDF references as well. By enabling users to trace an answer back to its source, deep citations build trust in Copilot's output. This feature rolled out in June.
The new Regenerate action lets users use simple options like Try Again or Switch Model to quickly get an alternative response to their latest prompt directly in Copilot Chat. Instead of starting over, users can explore different answers and refine the output in place, helping to improve quality and find the response that fits. This feature rolled out in June.
Vision in Microsoft 365 Copilot helps users get answers faster when work depends on what they see on screen or through their phone camera. Instead of trying to describe a dashboard, document, image, error message, or real-world object, users can show it to Copilot and ask questions in a voice conversation. Copilot uses that visual context, along with available work and web context, to explain what is in front of them, surface insights, and guide next steps. Learn how to start vision. This feature is rolling out in July.
Users can now get actionable feedback on a Copilot Page by selecting "Suggested edits" in the Copilot Shortcuts menu. Copilot analyzes the page content and offers feedback and suggestions in-line to improve clarity and quality, which users can then apply directly to the page. This helps users quickly polish their work and keep momentum without switching tools. This feature rolled out in June.
New references and access for Copilot Notebooks
Users can add Outlook emails as references in Copilot Notebooks. Bringing email content into the notebook lets users ground Copilot in the conversations, decisions, and context that drive their work. This connects email-based context to the broader notebook workspace. This feature is rolling out in July.
Previously only available to Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users, Copilot Notebooks is now rolling out to Copilot Chat users, giving more team members a shared place to gather project context, work from reference sources, and turn that information into helpful mind maps and learning tools in study guide. This feature rolled out in June.
Customization and refinement for Copilot in Outlook
Classic Outlook for Windows now provides direct access to different Copilot settings. Users can find and adjust their Copilot options without leaving Outlook. This makes managing the Copilot experience more convenient for classic Outlook users. This feature is rolling out in July.
Users can now refine an email draft with Copilot directly in the compose canvas. By selecting a section of the draft, users can ask Copilot to adjust its length, tone, or structure. This makes targeted edits easy without rewriting the whole message. This feature rolled out in June on the web.
Improvements to document editing for Copilot in Word
Model choice is now available in Copilot in Word, giving users the option to choose Anthropic models when editing documents with Copilot. This gives writers more flexibility for tasks like rewriting, summarizing, restructuring, and refining content, so they can choose the model that best fits the type of work they are doing. Users get more control over the editing experience and a better chance of getting the right tone, structure, and level of detail without starting over or rewriting prompts repeatedly. This feature rolled out in June.
Copilot Catchup is now available as a content card that surfaces a quick recap of what's changed in a document since a user last opened it. Instead of rereading a document to find updates, users get a quick recap up front. It's a fast way to get back up to speed on shared and evolving files. This feature rolled out in June.
Users can now create and insert an image using Copilot in Word. Copilot generates and places the image inline as part of the agentic editing flow. This brings image creation directly into the Word authoring experience. This feature rolled out in June.
Copilot in Word agentic capabilities are now available for iOS, so users can edit and add content to documents from their iPhone or iPad. This brings core Copilot writing support to users who need to keep work moving on their iOS devices. Users can make quick updates, draft new content, and refine existing text directly on their mobile device, while also performing more advanced actions like image insertion and tracked changes in the full Word experience. This feature rolled out in June.
Word now preserves Copilot Chat conversation history from chat to the apps. Users can pick up where they left off without losing the thread of their Copilot session, keeping complex, multi-step document work continuous. This feature rolled out in June.
Copilot can reason over and apply changes edits to a document based on content in comments. Rather than manually working through feedback, users can have Copilot implement the suggested changes. This speeds up the revision cycle on collaborative documents. This feature rolled out in June.
Updates to branding, skills, and references for Copilot in PowerPoint
Brand Kit Picker lets users easily create presentations that follow their organization’s approved brand templates. When building a deck with Copilot, users can select an admin-approved brand kit so the presentation starts with the right colors, fonts, and visual style. This helps teams create polished, on-brand decks faster and reduces the need for manual formatting or brand cleanup after the presentation is generated. This feature rolled out in June.
Users can now create and reuse Copilot skills for repeatable PowerPoint presentation tasks. By saving common instructions as skills, users can standardize how they build, refine, and format presentations without recreating the same prompts each time. This feature rolled out in June on the web.
When creating a presentation with Copilot in PowerPoint, users can now reference SharePoint libraries and OneDrive folders. Copilot draws on these sources to ground the deck in the organization’s existing content, helping users create presentations that reflect specific material instead of relying on general information. This feature rolled out in June.
Skills, personalization, and rules for Copilot in Excel
Users can now use Skills in Copilot in Excel to package repeatable workflows as reusable instructions. Teams can create custom skills for common analysis, modeling, or reporting tasks and invoke them when working in Excel. This helps users standardize complex work without rewriting the same prompts each time. This feature rolled out in June.
Copilot in Excel now supports Personalization, so users can set standing preferences once and have Copilot apply them consistently across workbooks. Users can define guidance for formatting, naming conventions, formulas, PivotTables, and report styles, so Copilot’s edits reflect how they prefer to work without repeating the same instructions in every prompt. This helps make outputs more consistent, reduces rework, and gives users more control over how Copilot edits their spreadsheets. This feature rolled out in June.
Copilot in Excel now gives teams a way to define standards that stay with a specific workbook through workbook rules sheets. Rules can capture structure, formatting, naming, formula conventions, and examples in a .Rules sheet, so everyone using Copilot to edit the file follows the same workbook-specific guidance. Rules can also reference examples, formulas, ranges, and other sheets, making it easier to standardize recurring templates and team workflows directly in Excel. This feature rolled out in June.
Planner Agent availability and Researcher options for Copilot Agents
When the Researcher agent is added to a Copilot chat, users can now choose from supported Researcher models and modes directly in the conversation. This puts control over depth and approach in the user's hands for each research task. Teams get more flexibility to match the model to the job at hand. This feature rolled out in June.
The Planner Agent helps users plan, organize, and manage work more efficiently. The agent delivers interactive task cards and actionable insights in Microsoft 365 Copilot, so users can easily prioritize tasks across Planner plans, and focus on what matters. Via natural language prompts, users can also create and update tasks or ask the agent to create structured plans with goals and buckets. This feature rolled out in June.
IT admin capabilities
New adoption and management capabilities for Microsoft 365 admin center
Admins can now create and publish organization prompts in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, easily guiding users toward relevant, effective ways to use Copilot for common workflows. Users can find organization prompts in the Copilot Chat prompt suggestions and Prompt Gallery, helping them build effective prompting habits and explore Copilot use cases tailored to them. This feature rolled out in June.
Cost Management Dashboard in Microsoft 365 admin center provides a centralized way to activate, manage, and optimize spending on AI experiences enabled by usage-based billing, including Copilot Cowork. Administrators can allocate Copilot Credits, create spending policies and limits by groups, and choose between prepaid credits and pay-as-you-go billing models. Reporting, budgets, alerts, and hard caps help organizations monitor usage, control costs, and manage spend. This capability rolled out in June. Learn more here.
Additional cost reporting at the group or team level will also be available through a dashboard in Insights to give team leaders a view into their team’s use of Copilot Credits. The dashboard is enabled by default and available to managers with at least five direct reports, as well as Insights Analysts and Global Administrators, helping leaders quickly understand and manage AI spend. This capability will roll out in July.
Agent metrics for custom reporting will be available in Insights. Analysts can explore and combine granular agent usage data with organizational context to identify adoption trends, create customize reports, and make data-driven decisions without relying on predefined dashboards. This feature will roll out to public preview in July and be available in September.
Organizational Messages now support hybrid‑joined devices, enabling admins to deliver targeted in-product communications to users on devices that are connected to both on‑premises Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID. This expands message reach to users within enterprise environments where hybrid identity configurations are common, helping organizations consistently drive awareness, onboarding, and adoption of Copilot, agents, and other Microsoft 365 experiences across managed endpoints. By closing a key gap in device coverage, IT teams expand organizational messages reach and engage users on a broader set of devices. This feature rolled out in June.
Admins now have a control for vision in Microsoft 365, which uses a stream of images from screen or camera sharing as input to the model. This gives organizations control over when and where vision can be used. This feature rolled out in June.
Email restriction and Cowork controls for Purview Data Loss Prevention
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention can now restrict external emails from being referenced in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat. Admins can use this control to exclude messages from external senders from being summarized, referenced, or used as grounding data in Copilot responses. This helps organizations reduce the risk of external, third-party, or unvetted information appearing in AI-generated responses while keeping users productive with trusted internal content. The capability applies to Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents built in Copilot Studio that are published to Microsoft 365 Copilot, using only Microsoft 365 data. This feature rolled out to public preview in June and will be generally available in July.
Microsoft Purview controls now extend to Cowork, helping organizations manage security and compliance with the same tools they use for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Cowork supports sensitivity label inheritance and display, audit logging, interaction content in Data Security Posture Management Activity Explorer, Insider Risk Management of user risks associated with Cowork interactions, as well as eDiscovery, Data Lifecycle Management (DLM), and Communication Compliance of Cowork interactions. This helps organizations secure and govern Cowork interactions with familiar controls. These features rolled out in June.
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.
