Microsoft 365 Desktop Apps Are Getting a new Copilot Chat Sidebar

A new Copilot Chat integration is starting to roll out to the Microsoft 365 desktop apps. It will make Microsoft’s AI assistant for work available as a sidebar within Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is available with Microsoft 365 commercial subscriptions, and it doesn’t require a separate Microsoft 365 Copilot license at $30 per user per month. The AI assistant is aware of a user’s open content in Microsoft 365 apps, and it also supports multiple file uploads, image generation, and pay-as-you-go AI agents that are priced on a metered basis.

“The moment you need it, you can pull up Copilot Chat in a side pane of your file, and it will be ready to help right where you’re working—which means less copy and pasting, file uploading, and switching apps,” the company explained.

With a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, Office users will get access to the “premium” version of Copilot Chat. This enables the AI assistant to answer questions using all of the company’s work data instead of just the opened file or email. Subscribers will also enjoy faster response times and priority access to OpenAI’s GPT-5 model.

Lastly, licensed Copilot users also get access to project-specific Notebooks, the Create graphic design suite, and more AI agents. That includes pre-built Microsoft agents such as Researcher and Analyst, as well as custom agents built with Copilot Studio.