Microsoft 365 Blog

A monitor mockup showing a screenshot of the Create tab within Copilot Actions, set against a gradient purple and blue background.

6 min read

Introducing Copilot Actions, new agents, and tools to empower IT teams

Microsoft 365 Copilot is becoming a daily habit for people around the world—already, nearly 70% of Fortune 500 companies are using it. Dow anticipates that Copilot will save it millions of dollars on shipping operations in the first year; at Bank of Queensland Group, 70% of users are saving two and a half to five hours per week; Eaton is speeding up internal documentation processes by 83%; and Accenture is going big, rolling out Copilot to 100,000 employees.

An financial advisor works at a table in a shared office space. On the right side, the image is overlaid with icons of multiple Microsoft 365 apps and the Copilot icon.

4 min read

The latest on AI at work: November 2024

For Microsoft and our customers, work is changing at the speed of AI. To help you stay ahead, we’ll share monthly highlights of new Microsoft Copilot innovations, plus the latest from our customers on how they’re getting the most value from Copilot.

A person sitting at a table, smiling, working on a laptop. The photo is overlaid on a magenta and orange graphic design background.

3 min read

Streamline collaboration with the new chat and channels experience in Microsoft Teams

Working together can turn great ideas into reality and bring people together as a team. We’ve been paying attention to our customers’ evolving needs in the AI-powered workplace, which require faster, simpler, and smarter solutions to achieve more.

Product screen showing the Copilot Pages interface and collaboration between users in the Microsoft 365 Copilot web experience. The image background shows a dynamic visual of the Microsoft 365 app icons.

8 min read

Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: Pages, Python in Excel, and agents

We are introducing Wave 2 of Microsoft 365 Copilot innovation, with three key updates. From enterprises to small businesses, they help Copilot get better every day. Nearly 1,000 customers have given us direct feedback on Copilot, and we’ve made more than 700 product updates based on that feedback.

A laptop with the Copilot icon on screen on a blue desk with a vase of purple flowers, sewing cushion, and cell phone.

3 min read

New agent capabilities in Microsoft Copilot unlock business value

Microsoft Copilot is already helping individual employees boost productivity, creativity and time savings. With the announcements at Microsoft Build 2024, we’re delivering an entirely new set of capabilities that unlock Copilot’s ability to drive bottom-line business results for every organization.

Microsoft Copilot text boxes with meeting prompts and text screens in front of a background of three stacked books.

5 min read

Microsoft and LinkedIn release the 2024 Work Trend Index on the state of AI at work

For our fourth annual Work Trend Index, out today, we partnered with LinkedIn for the first time on a joint report so we could provide a comprehensive view of how AI is not only reshaping work, but the labor market more broadly.

Decorative image of Microsoft Copilot including the logos of Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Word, and OneNote.

4 min read

Bringing Copilot to more customers worldwide—across life and work

Continuing our vision for Microsoft Copilot to bring the power of generative AI to everyone across work and life, we’re expanding availability and purchase options for individuals and organizations and bringing new value to Copilot Pro subscribers.

6 min read

Introducing Microsoft Copilot for Finance: Transform finance with next-generation AI in Microsoft 365

We’re announcing the public preview of Microsoft Copilot for Finance, a game-changer for finance professionals and the newest role-based extension of Microsoft Copilot. Microsoft Copilot for Finance is a momentous leap forward, specifically crafted to revolutionize the daily grind of well-known financial processes.

5 min read

Expanding Copilot for Microsoft 365 to businesses of all sizes

We are updating our Microsoft Copilot product line-up with a new Copilot Pro subscription for individuals; expanding Copilot for Microsoft 365 availability to small and medium-sized businesses; and announcing no seat minimum for commercial plans.

Recent articles

Published December 14, 2012

7 min read

Making the most of SharePoint 2013 when you upgrade

Bojana Duke is a Program Manager on the SharePoint team. She’s been working on the sharing features along with the callout, performance and legacy features. We know that people often use SharePoint sites for mission-critical information and processes. So it’s extremely important that upgrades to our product and service are as quick and painless as

Published December 13, 2012

<1 min read

Update on Windows Live Mesh

Windows Live Mesh was first released in beta back in late 2008 and was used to keep files in sync and to remotely access a PC. A lot has changed since 2008—the cloud has become far more ubiquitous and capable of storing larger and larger amounts of data, usage of always-connected mobile devices with minimal

Published December 13, 2012

4 min read

Introduction to PowerPivot in Excel 2013

This blog post was brought to you by Diego Oppenheimer a Program Manager on the Excel team. Some weeks ago I introduced an important, new part of the Excel 2013 Data Model and how you could create relationships between different data sources right in your Excel workbook (http://approjects.co.za/?big=b/microsoft-excel/archive/2012/08/23/introduction-to-the-data-model-and-relationships.aspx). In today’s post I am going to

Published December 5, 2012

1 min read

Reorder your folders, any way you like ‘em

Sometimes, it's the little things that really make the day easier. We understand this really well. The Outlook team gets lots of suggestions for a convenience here or a shortcut there, to make the edges of your day go more smoothly. One thing we've noticed is that some people like their folders in a non-alphabetical order. This allows you to have important or frequent ones near the top of your list, or unimportant ones near the bottom. To achieve that in Outlook 2010's alphabetical world, we've seen folks like you play the special character game. You pick your favorite random character on the keyboard and put those characters in front to bring those folder to the top, like "___folder" or "***folder." Or the "ZZZfolder" game to get things near the bottom. But why can't you just drag a folder where you want it?

Published November 28, 2012

3 min read

Download the free Microsoft Visio Viewer

The Microsoft Visio Viewer is a free download that lets anyone view Visio drawings without having Visio installed on their computer. If you have Visio, you can still benefit from the viewer because it allows you to preview drawings in both Outlook and the Windows Preview pane. We recommend that everyone with Windows 7 or Windows 8 download the latest viewer to get the best experience viewing drawings. In this post, we explain the Microsoft Visio Viewer in more detail.

Published November 19, 2012

3 min read

Field List and Field Well in the Excel Web App

Excel for the browser has adopted a number of features that, previous to the 2013 release, only existed in the client application. In this blog I want to introduce you to one of those features: the field list and field well. This is one of the features that allows you to use the Excel web app as a first class analytic tool.

Published November 19, 2012

2 min read

Emirates Airline Serves Up New Inflight Experiences with Windows 8

Greetings from Dubai! I’m here celebrating the recent global availability of Windows 8 at an event with press, analysts, business customers and Microsoft partners. Antoine Leblond, Corporate Vice President of Windows Web Services, is keynoting today and highlighting an array of great Windows 8 apps, new devices and customer experiences. Emirates has joined us here

Published November 19, 2012

3 min read

Introducing BPMN 2.0 in Visio

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a standard maintained by the Object Management Group that allows businesses to document and communicate business processes uniformly using graphical notation. The new version of Visio supports BPMN 2.0, which is the current version of the standard, and corresponding Diagram Validation rules. Using these rules, a user can check the visual correctness of a diagram against logical rules specified in the standard. This article explains more about our new BPMN 2.0 support.

Published November 15, 2012

3 min read

Chart Styles in the new Microsoft Office

With Excel 2013, you now have a new default style and set of chart styles to apply to your chart. The new styles are designer quality and will make your chart beautiful in one click!

Published November 15, 2012

<1 min read

Download Microsoft Project Professional 2013 and Project Server 2013!

Following last monthâ€™s announcement: The New Microsoft Project reaches RTM! , you can now download the following trials for the following languages:

Published November 12, 2012

5 min read

SharePoint 2013 workflows in Visio

Visualizing processes is at the heart of Visio’s DNA and in Visio 2010 we took a big step forward in that area by including support for SharePoint workflows. This lets users create a workflow in Visio, import it into SharePoint Designer, and make it an executable workflow on SharePoint. In the new Visio we’ve added SharePoint 2013 workflows and made SharePoint Designer an even more integral part of creating workflows visually.

Published November 9, 2012

6 min read

What’s New with Information Rights Management in SharePoint and SharePoint Online?

by Barak Cohen, Lead PM Document Protection Services; Neil Wang, SDET Document Protection Services Document protection in the cloud The new Office is the version that brings document protection using Information Rights Management (IRM) services to the cloud for the first time. Office 365 users can get a service plan that includes IRM capabilities powered