Microsoft 365 Copilot May 2026 Updates: EVERYTHING You Need to Know

If you're having trouble staying up to date on the latest features and functionalities rolling out in Microsoft 365 Copilot, don't worry, you're not alone. I am, too. So, in today's video,

alone. I am, too. So, in today's video, I'm going to navigate you through some of the newest features that we've actively rolled out in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and a variety of app

experiences. My name is Nick Harris and

experiences. My name is Nick Harris and I a senior copilot cloud solution architect with Microsoft. I directly

work with enterprise customers every single day on how to leverage the latest and greatest in co-pilot to actively assist them with creating more automation in their direct workflows.

So, let's go ahead and hop directly into the chat experience to review some of the latest updates that are directly available. You'll all notice that

available. You'll all notice that there's a new UI that's directly rolled out in relation to the navigation as well as the prompting experience directly in the middle of the screen on

the left side. Navigation, we've now consolidated many of the copilot options into a single app launcher button. So

now create is directly inside of here as well as copilot notebooks. This also

centralizes all of those app experiences directly within this one specific launcher. This now creates more real

launcher. This now creates more real estate within the navigation on the left. Also in our prompting experience,

left. Also in our prompting experience, we have prompt categories. So now when you want to navigate into any particular prompt that may be available in the prompt gallery, I can click on

particular categories like files or emails or people. And I can quickly and easily access the entirety of the co-pilot prompt gallery through the ellipsies. We've also released the brand

ellipsies. We've also released the brand new GPT 5.5 models in the model picking experience. So now you have options for

experience. So now you have options for think deeper as well as quick response with 5.5. Please experiment with these.

with 5.5. Please experiment with these.

Let me know any of your learnings and if you've seen any value with these brand new models align to any of your particular use cases. We've also added some slight updates to the schedule a

prompt feature. We now have a new user

prompt feature. We now have a new user interface as well as the ability to directly modify and work with your prompt and at the bottom receive an email when your prompt has ran. So you

have a direct notification. Also

navigating into the scheduled prompt section, you now have the ability to directly edit and modify the overall schedule. Before you could only disable

schedule. Before you could only disable the particular prompt and then you would have to manually rerun and then schedule again. Now you can inline edit the

again. Now you can inline edit the particular prompts that you're directly working with and modify the cadence or the email notifications to your requirements. We've also released a

requirements. We've also released a brand new UI for agent builder.

Navigating into new agent, you'll now see this new refreshed UI experience. It

still works exactly the same as before, but now we've completely revamped and laid out these elements in a different way. It's much easier to find the

way. It's much easier to find the particular templates for agents that you may want to start from. Such as if you want your own custom prompt coach, you can directly click on the prompt coach

agent in this experience. I also think this is really nice because the pre-built agents, you may wonder what are the instructions for the agents that Microsoft makes available. You can see

those directly here when starting from a template. You also have the direct chat

template. You also have the direct chat experience here on the left and then again the configuration experience here on the right. And when you want to test,

you can now click on this little try it symbol and you can try the agent out in the agent chat preview. You can now also more easily identify the agents that

you've directly created and worked with under the my agents section. Before this

was a little bit hidden. Now it's more readily available. Moving on into

readily available. Moving on into Copilot notebooks. Just recently on May

Copilot notebooks. Just recently on May 14th, 2026, I've rolled out a live stream that reviews all Copilot notebook capabilities. And I do have a recent

capabilities. And I do have a recent video within the last month or two linked at the very top of this video on a review of these new UI elements available in notebooks. So, let's talk

about the latest capabilities that have been released. So, you can see there's a

been released. So, you can see there's a bunch of new options in Copilot notebooks. Starting off with the

notebooks. Starting off with the overview page in the middle of my screen, we now lay out the quick create options to be easily and readily available to you. You can see I can

create an audio overview, a mind map, and different document types such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files. Those

directly leverage the Word, PowerPoint, and Excel agents to create those document types. I can also directly

document types. I can also directly click on the quick create option on the lefth hand side to create all of those options as well. Currently today, the

mind map functionality is still a frontier feature. So you must be in the

frontier feature. So you must be in the frontier program to leverage this. The

other functionalities available should be readily available in the general availability experience for everybody.

So in this notebook, I've already created a mind map. Mind maps are brand new. Let's take a look. And this is

new. Let's take a look. And this is really a different way for you to learn about the content that is directly referenced inside of your co-pilot notebook. You can see I have the

notebook. You can see I have the original topic here, deal portfolio, and then I have some subtopics. And

underneath all of these, I have more subtopics. So maybe, for example, I'm

subtopics. So maybe, for example, I'm interested in the Stream Vault docue series. I can either click on this or

series. I can either click on this or expand it further. That then further expands out the underlying topics within Stream Vault. Maybe I'm interested in

Stream Vault. Maybe I'm interested in our stream vault series concept. I can

click on that particular tag and I get an initial summary of what's included.

This is a 4 episode documentary following recording and creative process of debut major label album information.

So I can click on explain then and it directly pulls up the chat experience here on the right hand side of my screen and it submits a prompt automatically to

then explain this particular topic to me in more detail. Now talking to the Word, PowerPoint and Excel document creation experiences. I've just opened up this

experiences. I've just opened up this Marcus web business portfolio document.

You can see here in the chat on the right, it directly leveraged the Word agent and what happened was it looked at all of the knowledge, the reference data that exists inside of my co-pilot

notebook and it attached all of that knowledge into this particular prompting experience and submitted the create a document prompt for me. This then took

about 10 to 15 minutes to run and I now have my direct document linked inside of my notebook. So I can review all of this

my notebook. So I can review all of this file information which gives me really a status report or a snapshot in time in document form of what is going on with

my fictitious example Marcus web. Here's

also a quick example of an Excel file.

It did create this portfolio overview worksheet. Apex record, deal terms,

worksheet. Apex record, deal terms, stream ball docu series information, and any open risks or action items. And then I could directly open these up in Word or Excel or PowerPoint. Let's check out

a PowerPoint example. I've navigated

into a different notebook now that I already have a PowerPoint within my Project Falcon status report. And here's

an overall presentation that was generated again based on the referenced data that exists inside of this current notebook, but now in PowerPoint form.

Really cool. And finally, another new feature with notebooks is the ability to add references. So I can click on add

add references. So I can click on add references here. And now we can

references here. And now we can reference web links. So I can directly add those referenced web hyperlinks into a notebook. So I can ground in that

a notebook. So I can ground in that knowledge. Let's do so really quick. I'm

knowledge. Let's do so really quick. I'm

going to click on add a link here in the top right hand corner and I'm just going to insert a sample hyperlink. This is

the what's new and co-pilot blog post and we have added that. And now here on the lefth hand side, what's new in co-pilot April 2026 is directly added. I

do also have my microsoft.com link in here as well. Let's go ahead and submit a chat. And there we go. We can now see

a chat. And there we go. We can now see the information populating. What's the

latest in copilot for April 2026? And

there's our reference link. So web

references now supported. Moving on to Excel. So there are some UI tweaks for

Excel. So there are some UI tweaks for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel inapp experiences. General note, the co-pilot

experiences. General note, the co-pilot option in the ribbon bar in the top right hand corner has now been moved to the co-pilot icon in the bottom right hand corner. So I can open up copilot

hand corner. So I can open up copilot chat directly in the bottom right. And

there is a new option available to you with copilot in Excel. We've talked

about allow editing and chat only before, but now we have plan. So I can click on plan. And what this allows me to do is prompt with copilot to generate

a plan of what exactly I want to do inside of Excel before actually making the changes. Previously, if we were

the changes. Previously, if we were doing the allow editing experience, it would directly create anything that we indicated in our prompt. But maybe we wanted to plan out exactly what it would

do first and ensure that the plan is accurate prior to actually running those creation actions or modification actions. The plan mode is now available.

actions. The plan mode is now available.

So with the plan mode on, I'll just indicate plan out a data dashboard to provide executive leadership a current snapshot based on the data in this workbook. And now we see the plan mode

workbook. And now we see the plan mode has responded. It's giving me initial

has responded. It's giving me initial overview information of the data that it's found. And then asking me some core

it's found. And then asking me some core questions for the dashboard plan. It's

asking me where I want the dashboard to be located, what key metrics do I want to emphasize, and what is the visual style that I require. And now I'll just prompt I want a new worksheet titled

executive dashboard. I want to cover all

executive dashboard. I want to cover all three areas. I want KPI cards plus chart

three areas. I want KPI cards plus chart as well as an executive summary section at the bottom to explain the data to an executive. Now after answering those

executive. Now after answering those questions, it gives me a checklist of the work that it's going to perform and we'll click proceed. So really quickly, it created the dashboard, but you can see the formatting is a little bit off.

So I just told it, hey, formatting is off. Lay everything out. Space it out so

off. Lay everything out. Space it out so I can read it. Let's see what happens.

There we go. A lot better. It looks like it's removed the text at the top. Again,

I could prompt a little bit more and just manually add some text. It's nicely

laid out the overall width of columns.

Looks like there's a little bit of overlay with the charts, but I could just manually move some of those. Not a

big deal. And then I do have an executive summary explanation at the bottom based on the data. So, some good stuff in here. The plan mode definitely useful for those of you that do not use

Excel very often to get better results out of prompting against the allow editing experience in Excel. Try it out.

And finally, Copilot in PowerPoint. And

where we're going to focus here is the new image model features directly available to you. If I navigate into allow editing mode, you'll notice that I

can of course select particular models.

However, I do have an image model section. And this image model section

section. And this image model section allows me to select from the latest image models available that I can directly work with and against objects

within my specific PowerPoint. I can

either create background images or overlay textual objects directly on top of those images. There's a lot of ways that you can use this, so let's show a few. In this case, I'm going to select

few. In this case, I'm going to select image two from Open AI. I've really

enjoyed using this experience. something

to try out from Microsoft. We also have just recently released the MAI image 2 efficient model. Something else to try

efficient model. Something else to try out as well. So, just a really quick prompt here for your reference. Let's go

ahead and submit this off. Hey, while

this is creating, hit the thumbs up button. There we go. We have our slide.

button. There we go. We have our slide.

We have the background image and text overlaid. The text is an actual object.

overlaid. The text is an actual object.

So, I could manually modify this if I require or I can have co-pilot modify this. I could tell it, hey, I actually

this. I could tell it, hey, I actually want the text in the image. You know,

this is really basic, though. I want

this to be a little bit more creative in a sense. So, let's prompt Copilot a

a sense. So, let's prompt Copilot a little bit more to spice it up a bit.

So, here's just the very natural language prompt that I submitted for reference. Let's see what PowerPoint

reference. Let's see what PowerPoint creates for us. And there we go. It's a

lot different, right? So, it looks like the text now it is a part of the image.

So, definitely more creative designs that we can add. Uh, also here is the white triangle. You can see this is an

white triangle. You can see this is an object. I can move this around. So I

object. I can move this around. So I

have the ability to modify and work with objects in the slide canvas and I can further modify those, add effects to those and work with them in a sense that

uh I require for my brand presentation style experience. As general note for

style experience. As general note for everyone, this is directly now what I am using to create all of my YouTube thumbnails. some really cool things that

thumbnails. some really cool things that you can do in here. And again, if you find any creative use cases or cool ways to prompt against the image models and PowerPoint editing experiences, let me

know in the comments section below. So,

that's it for me for today, everyone.

Just as one final call out, I do highly recommend everybody look at the new co-work skills and plugins article.

Skills are a new way to automate your work if you have access to co-work. And

you're going to start to see skills being rolled out into a variety of experiences. I know that it's coming to

experiences. I know that it's coming to PowerPoint as well. So, I'll have the links to all of the blog articles in the description below. Let me know if you

description below. Let me know if you have any questions on any of these. If

you like this content, do me a favor. As

always, give me that thumbs up. Leave a

comment in the comment section below. If

you're not subscribed, feel free to join the community to stay updated on the latest and greatest. And we'll see you in the next one. Have a good one everybody.