Microsoft published four sets of Microsoft 365 Copilot release notes between 11 August and 6 October 2026, and the public roadmap moved a further batch of Copilot items to launched or rolling out in the same window. Read together they are long, repetitive and organised by Microsoft's product groups rather than by what a business will notice on Monday. This note reorganises them by surface, marks each item with its roadmap status and general availability month, and ends with the three changes Frontrow would brief a team on first.
A reading note. 'Launched' and 'rolling out' are Microsoft's roadmap labels and the GA month is the one the entry carries; a tenant can see a feature well after that month because release rings and platform builds stagger delivery. Items that appear only in the release notes are marked 'released' with the notes date.
Copilot Chat and Copilot Search
The largest cluster of changes is in the Copilot app itself, where Microsoft has folded search and chat into one view and given users more control over the answer they get.
| Change | What it does | Status | GA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search and chat in one view | Copilot Search embeds chat beneath the results, so a user can run a query, then ask follow-up questions or generate content from those results without switching tools. Builds on the August change that put Copilot Chat in a side pane during search (roadmap 537281). | Released, 6 Oct notes (512429) | Oct 2026 |
| Regenerate a response | A 'More options' menu at the end of a response offers Try again and Switch model, so a user gets an alternative answer, or a different model's answer, without re-entering the prompt. Web. | Released, 6 Oct notes | Oct 2026 |
| Rich answer cards | Model-driven cards for weather, sports, finance, images, video, places and news, placed dynamically in responses, for Entra and personal accounts on all surfaces. | Rolling out (567008) | Sep 2026 |
| Scanned PDF matching | Copilot Chat better matches search results from scanned PDFs in a user's working files. New and updated files only, so the back catalogue is not reprocessed. | Rolling out (559613) | Oct 2026 |
| Domain exclusion for web grounding | Admins specify a limited set of sites to exclude from web grounding in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat. | Rolling out (503144) | Sep 2026 |
| Session and response sharing | Share a whole chat session, or one response, by link. The recipient gets a read-only view and can continue from it in their own Copilot chat, inside organisational controls. | Rolling out (562353) | Aug 2026 |
| Work IQ button | Web chat and work chat are one interface. A Work IQ button at top left toggles access to work data, on by default. | Released, 25 Aug notes | Aug 2026 |
Word
Overview of recent comments and changes (roadmap 489825) is launched, GA September 2026, on Windows, Mac and web in Current Channel. Ask Copilot in the chat pane for a summary of the latest comments and tracked changes and it returns one, which is the practical answer to reopening a contract or policy draft that six people have touched since you last looked. Word on the web also lists Anthropic models alongside OpenAI models in the editing model menu (11 August notes), with Sonnet 5 the default for higher-reasoning drafting and edits (25 August notes); the subprocessor side of that choice is covered at /insights/copilot-model-providers-subprocessor-change.
PowerPoint
| Change | What it does | Status | GA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reference an email with Work IQ | When using Edit with Copilot to create a presentation, reference an email by subject, sender or date and Copilot uses it as source material. Mac is roadmap 555886 (updated 8 October); the Windows equivalent, 555888, is in the 25 August notes. | Launched (555886) | Mar 2026 |
| Attach and reference an image | Attach an image when creating a presentation in Agent Mode. Mac is roadmap 555890 (April 2026); Windows desktop is 555881 (July 2026). | Launched (555890, 555881) | Apr and Jul 2026 |
| Reference SharePoint and OneDrive files by name | Mention a file by name or owner in the prompt and Copilot uses it, with no attach step. Mac (roadmap 555897). | Launched (555897) | Jun 2026 |
| Custom skills | Users define their own commands and workflows for Copilot in PowerPoint, inside Microsoft 365 security and compliance standards. Web (23 September notes) and Windows (6 October notes). | Released | Sep and Oct 2026 |
| Web sources, enterprise images, faster start | Reference live web sources while creating a deck (555898); use the organisation's images from a connected Adobe Experience Manager library (516038, 516039); start a Copilot deck from the PowerPoint web app home (560537). | Released, 11 Aug notes | Aug 2026 |
OneNote and Copilot Notebooks
- Multimodal capture on Android (roadmap 567895), launched, GA September 2026: transcribe audio, take images and type notes in one session, and Copilot turns the lot into a structured Copilot Page saved to a chosen Notebook. Already generally available on iPhone and iPad; the entry still carries a Preview tag.
- Suggested artifact creation (roadmap 566870), rolling out, GA August 2026: Copilot Notebooks in OneNote suggests Word, Excel and PowerPoint outputs to create from the notebook's content and generates them on selection. Desktop and web.
- Voice notes in the Microsoft 365 Copilot mobile app (roadmap 498640), launched, GA August 2026: turns offline discussions into structured, searchable content. The entry ties it to a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.
- Outlook emails (roadmap 564910) and Teams meetings (roadmap 560706) as notebook references, both 25 August notes, so a notebook can be grounded on a thread or a transcript rather than files alone. A lighter Notebooks design in the Copilot app arrived in the 23 September notes (roadmap 562662), with the fuller experience staying in OneNote.
Excel
Excel had enough movement to earn its own article. Plan Mode for Copilot in Excel (roadmap 560338) is launched and outlines a step-by-step approach, and which data and capabilities it will use, before anything in the workbook changes. Excel Agent (roadmap 543422) is launched and available with or without a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, and the 23 September notes add links from the chat response to the exact sheets, tables and charts Copilot changed. Frontrow covers all of it, including how finance teams should review Copilot's edits, at /insights/copilot-in-excel-plan-mode-and-excel-agent-october-2026.
Outlook
Outlook also has a dedicated piece. The headline is that Copilot Chat in Outlook can now delete, move, copy and categorise mail and create folders and inbox rules from natural language, with a confirmation prompt before it touches more than five emails or changes a rule (23 September notes, all Outlook clients). Classic Outlook for Windows also catches up on scheduling (roadmap 542185) and meeting preparation (542186). The detail, and the governance note on bulk triage, is at /insights/copilot-in-outlook-whats-new-october-2026.
Admin, search governance and analytics
| Change | What it does | Status | GA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authoritative content for Copilot Search | In the Microsoft 365 admin centre under Copilot > Search > Authoritative content, add and manage up to 100 SharePoint sites whose content ranks higher in Copilot Search. Pairs with the SharePoint admin centre's 'mark as authoritative site' control (11 August notes, roadmap 561323). | Launched (503553) | Sep 2026 |
| Edit connector query strings and identity mapping rules | Under Settings > Search & intelligence > Data sources, a connection's query string and user identity mapping rules can be changed after setup without a support ticket. Confirm on the next crawl and spot-check an affected user. | Released, 6 Oct notes | Oct 2026 |
| Copilot Analytics power user insights | The Copilot dashboard in Viva Insights identifies the users building a Copilot habit, for targeted training and licence decisions. | Launched (560705) | Aug 2026 |
| Cowork adoption and impact | Cowork metrics in the Copilot dashboard and the Consumption dashboard's Microsoft 365 services tab, with export and analyst queries covering credit usage. | Launched (567005) | Jul 2026 |
| Policy link for a blocked Copilot Chat | Where Copilot Chat in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app is blocked by policy, admins can show a link to the internal policy that explains why. | Released, 23 Sep notes | Sep 2026 |
How to read the dashboard numbers, and what they do not measure, is at /insights/copilot-analytics-dashboard-australian-businesses. The Cowork items matter most to businesses that have turned on usage-based billing; the spending controls to set first are at /insights/copilot-cowork-spending-limits-before-enabling.
The three changes worth briefing your team on
- 1Sharing links. Copilot outputs that used to live in one person's chat now travel by URL, read-only but continuable by the recipient. Sharing stays inside organisational controls, but staff should hear that forwarding a link is now the same act as forwarding a document.
- 2Memory citations. A separate October roadmap item (574111, launched) adds a Personalisation tab under Sources showing which saved memories, learned memories and past chats shaped an answer. It raises Privacy Act questions that deserve their own briefing, which Frontrow has written at /insights/copilot-memory-citations-and-personalisation-what-to-set-first.
- 3Grounding controls for admins. Authoritative content, domain exclusion and editable connector rules decide what Copilot ranks first, what it will not quote from the web, and whose identity maps to which external records. All three are now self-service, which makes them the IT team's job rather than Microsoft support's.
What to do this month
- 1Nominate the authoritative sites, typically the policy library, the HR hub and intranet news, and add them under Copilot > Search > Authoritative content. The cap is 100, so choose deliberately.
- 2Draft the web grounding exclusion list with whoever owns legal and marketing risk: competitor pricing pages, sources the business has decided not to quote, known-bad domains.
- 3Open every Copilot connector and review its query string and identity mapping rule now that both are editable. Record an owner for each connection.
- 4Put session sharing and memory into the AI use policy before they reach staff, and point the blocked-app policy link at it.
- 5Pull the power-user insight and run the next champions session from it. If usage-based billing is on, read the Consumption dashboard the same day.
- 6Tell the people who build decks and documents about the Word comments-and-changes summary and the PowerPoint email and image references. Those are the two features a business user will thank you for.