Microsoft 365 Copilot: Key aspects of ChatGPT-powered Office apps

With new ChatGPT 4-based Copilot feature, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Office apps become smarter and more user friendly

After integrating OpenAI's ChatGPT with its search engine Bing and Edge browser, Microsoft is now ready to offer generative Artificial Intelligence(AI)-powered Office apps such as Words, Excell, PowerPoint, Outlook Mail, Teams, and more.

The apps come incorporated with ChatGPT made of large language models (LLMs) and is upskilled from the learnings of ChatGPT 3.5 preview and is updated with all the latest information available on the internet.

Besides helping you write a leave application or revise your new resume, which we saw with Copilot on Bing, ChatGPT 4.0 on Microsoft 365 will offer creative solutions that were never imagined before.

Once you install the latest version of Microsoft 365, it will sync with the calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts. And with this, he/she can ask the Copilot to respond or create summaries or PPTs.

For instance, you have been coordinating with your colleagues and subordinates on a project. You might have added new things and deleted some. But, a member fell sick and took a day off, and returns the next day. If you find it cumbersome to make him/her up to date with progress, you can take the help of Microsoft 365's Copilot. You just have to task it "'Tell him/her (name) how we updated the product strategy” and it will be able to generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails, and chat threads.
Here are key things you can do with Microsoft 365's Copilot feature on Office apps:

Microsoft Word
This is the most used app among the Office apps. It is used by all age groups from school kids to write essays to adults working on novels or journalists like me, scratching my head to come up with some create lede to start off the article.

Copilot just needs a topic and it can instantly scribble a first draft for you, bringing in information from the web or from a reference document.

Microsoft 365's new Copilot feature on the Word app. Credit: Microsoft

The Copilot can also add content to existing documents, summarize text, and rewrite sections or the entire document to make it more articulate.

If the document doesn't match your style or tone of writing, you can collaborate with Copilot to make changes and balance the tone—be it professional or casual.

Furthermore, Copilot is also capable of offering valuable suggestions to help the user to improve the writing that can strengthen the arguments or correct inconsistencies in the sentence construction.

Microsoft Excel
This app is mostly used by data scientists, and corporates, particularly the marketing and sales department. Even we journalists use them during election coverage. Though it is very useful to quantify data, it is very hard to learn at first and after that, it is a breeze.

With new Microsoft 365, newbies now never have to learn complex formulas for each column and row to get concise statistics data out.

Microsoft 365's new Copilot feature on the Excel app. Credit: Microsoft

With the latest Microsoft 365, you can ask the embed Copilot option on Excel to do all the hard work.

Microsoft PowerPoint
Besides Word, PowePoint is also popular among most Office app users. It is used to present school projects, office corporate meeting presentions, and more.

With Copilot, users can ask it to draft a sample PPT on a product based on existing written documents and stock photos available on the computer.

Microsoft says it can create simple decks complete with speaker notes and sources. It is even capable of condensing lengthy presentations at the click of a button.

Microsoft 365's new Copilot feature on the PowerPoint app. Credit: Microsoft

If you think the PPT is too lengthy, you can ask it to shorten from a 10-slide to a 5-slide presentation.

Customers can use natural language commands to adjust layouts, reformat text, and perfectly time animations. It can all happen in a few seconds.

Must read | Google brings AI tech to Gmail, Docs and more

Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams have been underwhelmingly dull compared to Zoom or Google Meet or even the Cisco Webex. But, with the ChatGPT 4.0 Copilot integration, the user experience will be several notches up.

Corporate users will definitely find Microsoft Teams handy to help them draft key takeaways from the meeting. Even if a member misses to note an assignment, he/she can ask the Copilot to get the summary, list out important decisions taken, and work assigned to individuals in short crisp notes.

Microsoft 365's new Copilot feature on the Teams app. Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft says users can even ask Copilot to list out the pros and cons of the meetings too. This will help in making the discussion more efficient in the next meeting and curb unwanted topics from appearing again.

Microsoft Outlook
Like Internet Explorer, Outlook has faced a lot of flak and has also been the butt of jokes, for being too rigid and visually unappealing compared to Gmail and other email service apps.

Over the years, Microsoft has made it colourful and now, it is more intelligent than others.

With ChatGPT integration, Outlook gets the Copilot tab in the mail. It can help you find the right information within a multi-thread email exchange. You can just ask it to summarise the exchange in a paragraph.

Microsoft 365's new Copilot feature on the Outlook email app. Credit: Microsoft

Also, if you happen to have gone on a long vacation and missed all the emails. You can ask it can get you up to date with all the unread emails in a short summary too.

If you are too busy to respond to a mail, you can ask the copilot to draft a response mail to particular mail. It is capable of understanding the context and create the response and you just have to read it and press send.

Furthermore, users can even create a party invite for colleagues or family members for a party. He/she just has to give the context to the Copilot and it can do the rest of the things.

Must read | Taking a shine to ChatGPT, Apple begins testing generative AI concepts

Microsoft Business Chats
With ChatGPT 4.0 Copilot, Microsoft plans to overhaul the boring Business Chats app. Corporates can use this app to chat with clients and share a progress reports with visual graphs and statistics in simple terms.

With in-house Microsoft Graph, Copilot will be able to bring together data from across a wide range of sources in multiple formats such as documents, presentations, emails, calendar, notes, and contacts.

This can help the client to understand the latest development in the product and if there is a need, he/she can engage with the service provider for changes.

Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech.