Welcome to the August 2026 edition of What’s New in Microsoft 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:
- More control for effort level and cost in Cowork
- Text selections, session sharing, and more for Copilot Chat
- New ways to work in Copilot Notebooks
- Change languages for meeting recaps with Copilot in Teams
- Hyperlinks, image understanding, and highlights for Copilot in Word
- Chat history and change history skill for Copilot in Excel
- Personal skills in Copilot in SharePoint
- Agents, email drafting, and management enhancements for Copilot in Outlook
- Improved file capabilities with Copilot in OneDrive
- Status reports and task enhancements for Copilot in Planner
- New Connectors and Plugins
IT admin capabilities:
User capabilities
More control for effort level and cost in Cowork
Users can now choose an effort level to control how Cowork balances quality, speed, and credit usage. Medium is the default for everyday work, while Light is designed for simpler tasks. High, Extra High, and Max give Cowork more room for deeper analysis, complex reasoning, and more thorough responses, but may take longer and use limits faster. Model and effort controls now appear directly in the compose box together. This feature rolled out in August.
The /cost skill now provides more visibility into Cowork credit usage. In addition to estimating the credits used for the current task session, it now shows the percentage of the monthly credit limit remaining, credits used month to date, and when the monthly limit resets. This feature rolled out in August.
The Scheduled tab in Cowork is now called Automations. The updated section gives users one place to view and manage all of their automated tasks, including both scheduled and event-triggered tasks. This feature rolled out in August.
Text selections, session sharing, and more for Copilot Chat
Now in Copilot users can select a sentence, paragraph, or table in a Chat response and ask Copilot to work only on that content. The selected text is previewed in the prompt before sending, enabling more focused explanations, summaries, translations, and next steps. This feature rolled out in August.
Copilot users can now share either a full chat session or an individual response through a simple link. Recipients get a read-only view and can continue the chat like it was their own, so they can easily reuse work and collaborate within organizational controls. Users can share their full chat session by selecting ’Share chat’ from the Share menu located in the top right of the chat UX. Or they can share an individual response by selecting ’Share response’ from the More options menu at the end of a response. This feature rolled out in August.
Copilot can now reason over enterprise data from Power BI reports and semantic models in both Chat and Cowork. Users can ask natural-language questions and receive accurate, grounded answers directly from data they have access to. This feature rolled out to Public Preview in June and rolled out worldwide in August.
New model-driven answer cards dynamically display content in Chat like weather, sports, finance, images, video, places, and news. The cards surface rich answers for Entra and Microsoft account users based on the user prompt across supported experiences in Copilot. This feature rolled out in August.
Users can now generate a new response to their latest prompt in Chat without having to start over. They can select ‘Try again’ to generate a new response with the same model or they can select a new model and have Copilot run the same prompt. This lets users explore different answers and refine output quality without restarting their conversations. This feature rolled out in August.
Mobile users can now turn an idea into a ready-to-send email. They simply describe the message they need, and Copilot will create an embedded Outlook draft directly in Copilot Chat. Users can then open the draft directly in Outlook mobile to edit and send. This seamless experience helps users move from idea to action without leaving their flow of work. This feature rolled out in August.
New ways to work in Copilot Notebooks
Copilot Notebooks now gives users two connected ways to work: a lightweight experience in the Copilot app, and a workspace experience in OneNote. In the Copilot app, users can quickly chat with Copilot, explore references, and create artifacts. In OneNote, users will get a workspace experience for deeper project work, expanded artifact creation, and team collaboration. Because notebooks stay in sync across the Copilot app and OneNote, users can move between the two without losing context. To go directly from the Copilot app to OneNote, users simply select “Open in OneNote.” This feature rolled out in August.
Copilot Notebooks proactively let users easily generate relevant documents by recommending artifacts based on WorkIQ and their notebook content. Selecting a suggestion prompts Copilot to generate a more specific Word, Excel, or PowerPoint artifact based on the user’s notebook content and current project. This feature rolled out in August.
Multimodal capture on Android helps users bring conversations, meetings, brainstorms, and other work moments into Copilot Notebooks. Users can capture audio, images, and notes in one experience, and Copilot automatically generates structured notes for their Copilot Notebooks. Multimodal capture is also available in the OneNote app on iOS and iPad. This feature rolls out in September.
Change languages for meeting recaps with Copilot in Teams
Users can now change the language of a meeting recap after it has been generated. A translation button makes multilingual recaps more flexible when users need the recap in a different language. This feature rolled out in August.
Hyperlinks, image understanding, and highlights for Copilot in Word
Creating polished documents is now easier with Copilot. Users can simply ask Copilot to add hyperlinks, and it can insert and format linked text directly in their document, helping them create professional, connected content without manual editing. This feature rolled out in August.
Copilot can now understand images in a user’s reference documents and incorporate them into the content it creates. Whether users are drafting a new document or building on existing materials, Copilot can use relevant text and visuals from referenced files to help create more complete documents. This feature rolled out in August.
When Copilot rewrites or refines text, it now highlights the exact words it edited rather than marking entire paragraph. This more granular view makes it easier for users to review, understand, and accept changes with confidence. This feature rolls out worldwide in August.
New Copilot in PowerPoint capabilities for further brand curation and faster collaboration
Now users can assign tasks and notify relevant stakeholders in comments using Copilot in PowerPoint. Users can ask Copilot to pull in stakeholders and automatically assign follow-ups directly in the comment thread. This helps teams move from feedback to action faster, keeps presentation reviews organized, and reduces the manual effort needed to track next steps across stakeholders. This feature rolled out in August.
Strict brand adherence restricts Copilot to your approved template and slide master layouts. When it’s on, Copilot won’t add or remove placeholders or invent new layouts. Use it when brand consistency matters more than creative flexibility—for official, customer-facing, or regulated presentations. This feature rolled out in August.
Note steering lets you guide Copilot with plain-language instructions written in a slide’s notes for slide by slide governance. Copilot reads those notes each time it creates a presentation from your template, so you don’t have to repeat the same preferences in every prompt. Learn more here Manage template settings in your Brand Kit for Copilot in PowerPoint | Microsoft Support This feature rolled out in August.
Users can now upload, create, edit and delete their own custom skills in PowerPoint. Skills turn repeated instructions into reusable guidance that Copilot can apply in the flow of a user’s presentation work. To learn more, visit Use custom skills with Copilot in PowerPoint. This feature rolled out in August.
Translation capabilities in PowerPoint have now been moved from the ribbon to Copilot in PowerPoint. Translation is now faster, with the ability to dynamically resize text boxes depending on the text. This feature rolled out in August.
Copilot can now edit smart art while staying on brand. Use copilot to edit diagrams and shapes on the canvas instead of manually adding and aligning smart art. This feature is in Frontier in August.
Chat history and change history skill for Copilot in Excel
Change history skill helps users understand how a workbook has evolved over time. Copilot can summarize recent changes, identify who made edits, and explain how both people and AI have modified the workbook. It can also help undo specific edits or restore formulas by returning the workbook to a previous working state. This feature rolled out in August.
Chat history helps users pick up where they left off with Copilot by preserving past conversations and sessions. To access chat history, use the menu icon in the upper left corner of the Copilot in Excel pane to open your previous conversations. Conversations are listed based on recency, with your most recent chat at the top of the list. Select a conversation from the list to view it. This feature rolled out in August.
Personal skills in Copilot in SharePoint
Users can create personal skills in Copilot in SharePoint and use them across SharePoint sites and OneDrive. Each user-owned skill is saved as a markdown file in OneDrive, so users don’t need to recreate skills for every site. This feature rolled out to Public Preview in August and rolls out worldwide in December.
Agents, email drafting, and management enhancements for Copilot in Outlook
Custom engine agents are now available directly in Outlook. Users can access these agents where they manage their work, making their capabilities available within the Outlook experience. This feature rolled out in August.
Copilot in Outlook can help users manage more email and calendar tasks using natural language. Users can ask Copilot to organize messages, apply categories, create folders, manage inbox rules, and take action on meetings and events—all from chat. By bringing more Outlook actions directly into the chat experience, Copilot helps them stay in flow and get work done more efficiently. This feature rolled out in August.
Improved file capabilities with Copilot in OneDrive
With improved Copilot file capabilities in OneDrive, users can go from files to finished work directly from chat. Copilot helps users find the right content, analyze files and data, create polished outputs like summaries, dashboards, and presentations, and collaborate by saving or sharing the results from OneDrive. This feature rolled out to Public Preview in August and rolls out worldwide in December.
Status reports and task enhancements for Copilot in Planner
Planner Agent can help turn plan data into a polished status report covering progress, risks, overall status, and next steps. Users can specify the audience, tone, length, and sections to quickly produce a stakeholder-ready update. This feature rolled out to Frontier in August.
Copilot will now support creating Planner tasks and querying Planner task information. This lets users manage task work across Copilot and Planner more seamlessly. This feature rolls out in September.
New Connectors and Plugins
Microsoft continues to grow the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem with new connectors and plugins spanning multiple industries. By connecting Copilot to valuable business data and domain-specific knowledge, organizations can unlock richer context, deeper insights, and more relevant experiences across everyday workflows. These include:
- Financial Services: Mercury, Xero
- Legal Services: iManage Work, Boardwise, Harvey, Descrybe Legal Engine, Relativity, Everlaw
- Professional and Business Services: Statista, Crossbeam, ZoomInfo, IDC
- Energy & Resources: S&P Global Energy
- Healthcare & Life Sciences: Scite and Consensus
- Software & Technology: Adobe Journey Optimizer, GoDaddy, Asana
IT admin capabilities
Data export and GitHub Copilot AI Credits
Admins can create custom reports with new data export capabilities from the Copilot and Agent 365 Dashboards. These dashboards now support exporting de-identified, row-level metrics and attributes. Admins can get deeper insights into organizational Copilot and agent usage and user-level interactions while removing personal identifiers. These features roll out in September.
The Consumption Dashboard in Insights now supports GitHub Copilot AI Credit usage. Admins can analyze how developers use GitHub Copilot to manage adoption and credits. Managers, Insights analysts, and Global admins can compare spending with budgets and make data-driven decisions about GitHub Copilot investment. This feature rolled out in July.
Did you know? The AI at Work Roadmap is where you can get the latest updates on productivity apps and intelligent cloud services. Microsoft Copilot release notes is where you can see the Microsoft 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.