Microsoft Copilot, the artificial intelligence-powered assistant integrated into the Microsoft 365 suite, continues to evolve at a rapid pace. If you manage PowerPoint, Excel, Planner or SharePoint environments, several recent updates are changing the way your users produce content. This article breaks down six standout features, with context, how they work, and concrete usage examples for each.
Interactive slides generated by Copilot in PowerPoint
The most spectacular update concerns PowerPoint. Copilot can now transform a static slide — a table, a list, a chart — into an interactive object that the audience can manipulate directly during a presentation.
This capability is based on what Microsoft calls a skill: a set of preconfigured instructions that tells the language model (LLM, for "Large Language Model", the AI engine that generates text and interprets requests) exactly which task to perform. In practice, in the Copilot pane at the bottom right of PowerPoint, a "Manage skills" menu lists several predefined actions, including "Create interactive slides".
Vocabulary
A Copilot "skill" is not a plugin in the traditional sense: it's a structured prompt, invisible to the end user, that frames the model's response to achieve reliable and reproducible results.
In practice, you just need to invoke the skill with a simple instruction like "Create interactive slides and create a new slide based on slide 1". Copilot then generates a slide where data responds to mouse hover: scenario changes (baseline, degraded scenario at 15%), clickable filters, etc.
The result goes up another notch with detailed prompts. An example given in a demo: transforming a raw marketing table into a dashboard with filters by campaign channel and audience segment, and a complete view of the conversion funnel (impressions → clicks → leads → conversions → revenue), including ROAS ("Return On Ad Spend").
Beyond reporting, the same mechanics works for playful or educational uses: transforming a list of languages into a clickable multilingual explorer, or changing a slide about planets in the solar system into a solar system explorer with animated orbits. Perfect for easily building a Jeopardy-style quiz for a team meeting, or an interactive course material.
Practical Reference
If the generated output doesn't match your presentation's visual theme, specify it in the prompt: "keep exactly the same visual theme as the rest of the deck" avoids color surprises.
Translate an entire presentation in one click
Still in PowerPoint, Copilot can now translate an entire presentation — text, tables, financial data included — into another language in a single command, for example "Translate this entire presentation into Norwegian Bokmål". The operation executes in seconds across the entire file, without needing to process slide by slide.
This feature is particularly useful for multinational organizations that need to quickly duplicate sales materials or internal communications in multiple languages, without always relying on an external translation service.
The Planner agent in Copilot: from planning to automated summarization
The third update concerns the Microsoft Planner ecosystem, Microsoft 365's task and project management tool. An agent — in Copilot vocabulary, a specialized assistant capable of executing concrete actions within an application, rather than just answering questions — dedicated to Planner is now accessible from microsoft365.com, in the agents pane, and can be pinned for quick access.
The Planner agent can notably:
- Generate a complete plan from an existing document: by providing it with a project report containing milestones, workstreams and deadlines, the agent automatically proposes buckets (task categories), objectives and a list of tasks sorted by priority and urgency, which you validate before final creation in Planner;
- Draft a status report for a given period (for example the last 14 days): executive summary, risks and blockers, progress, upcoming commitments — all directly exportable to Word format with formatting and timeline;
- Modify tasks in bulk via chat: by mentioning the agent directly in Copilot Chat with "@Planner", you can for example request to reclassify all tasks marked "urgent" as "important" on a given plan. The agent identifies the tasks involved, proposes the change, then applies it after validation.
This two-step process — proposal then explicit validation — deserves to be highlighted: Copilot never modifies a production plan without user confirmation, which limits the risk of silent errors on shared data.
Point of Caution
Before validating an automatic plan generation from a document, systematically review the proposed tasks: the agent interprets the source text, but the prioritization of priorities remains an estimate that should be confirmed.
Enriched answer cards in Copilot Chat
Fourth update, more subtle but very practical in daily use: Copilot Chat now displays interactive answer cards for certain categories of common requests, instead of a simple text response.
Concrete examples: asking for the weather in Redmond, Washington displays a graphic card with the temperature; querying the Microsoft stock price brings up an interactive financial card, even with typos in the request; asking for a sports match score returns a scorecard that allows you to jump directly to Bing for more details.
This evolution transforms Copilot Chat into a quick entry point for occasional information — weather, finance, sports — without leaving the chat interface.
Excel Copilot: identify who changed what
Fifth update, on the Excel side: Copilot can now analyze a workbook's history and answer the question "Show me the most recent changes made to this spreadsheet". The assistant then lists recent changes, identifies the most significant ones (for example deletion of a summary table) and indicates who made them.
This feature doesn't replace Excel's native version history, which remains the restoration tool properly speaking, but it makes it easier to read: rather than manually browsing through a long version log, you get a prioritized summary of relevant changes.
Generate a new file from an existing file, in OneDrive and SharePoint
Final update: from the file list of OneDrive (and, behind the scenes, SharePoint, which shares the same document infrastructure), it's possible to select a raw Excel file, open Copilot, and request the creation of a new derived file — for example "Create a new executive dashboard from this workbook".
Copilot then generates a separate workbook, with conditional formatting (red/green), trend charts and data summary, without touching the source file. The same principle works the other way: transforming one or more Word documents into a PowerPoint presentation, or a presentation into an Excel workbook.
| Feature | Application | What it brings |
|---|---|---|
| Interactive slides | PowerPoint | Transforms tables and lists into clickable and animated objects |
| Full deck translation | PowerPoint | Translates an entire presentation, data included, in one command |
| Planner agent | Microsoft Planner / Copilot Chat | Generates plans, status reports and bulk task modifications |
| Answer cards | Copilot Chat | Displays weather, finance and sports as interactive cards |
| Change tracking | Excel | Summarizes and prioritizes recent changes in a workbook |
| Derived file creation | OneDrive / SharePoint | Generates a new document (dashboard, deck, workbook) from an existing file |
What you need to know
These six updates illustrate a fundamental trend in Copilot's evolution: the shift from an assistant that answers questions to an assistant that acts directly within applications, through specialized skills and agents. For an IT administrator, this means integrating a few reflexes now:
- Test PowerPoint skills on non-critical content before rolling them out to commercial production, as rendering varies depending on prompt complexity;
- Train project managers on the Planner agent by emphasizing the validation step before applying bulk changes;
- Check active Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses in your tenant, as these features are primarily aimed at users equipped with a Copilot license;
- Monitor Excel version history in addition to the new change summary, which remains an analysis tool rather than a restoration tool.
If your organization prepares multilingual materials or recurring project plans, these features deserve a quick pilot with a pilot team before broader rollout.
