What's new in Microsoft 365?

Microsoft have released a brand new design for their Copilot interface, described as being "cleaner, faster, and in the flow of your work." It includes more space in the prompt box, a completely refreshed UI, and a change to the 'web and work' toggles.

New filters in Find in chat and Find in channel have been announced, allowing users to narrow results by sender, date, attachments, or mentions.

Microsoft announce that you will soon be able to trigger an agent with the "/" command, ensuring you don't break the flow of work. 

Rolling out for general availability in June 2026, Microsoft Teams on desktop will show rich link previews when you share SharePoint pages. Links automatically expand into a visually appealing card with a thumbnail image and page description, making it easier to understand and engage with shared SharePoint content directly in Teams.

For users who wish to share videos in events and meetings, you can now upload videos directly into a Teams event or meeting from OneDrive from the "Manage view" options. This can only be done when an organiser has turned on Manage What Attendees See mode. This ensures a smoother high quality video playback with a more consistent experience for attendees.

Microsoft Edge is getting a makeover! The modern look and feel will include edits to spacing, corners, fonts, default colours and more. 

Soon, you will be able to see colleagues’ and direct reports’ calendars in the left navigation of Outlook by default, without manual setup 

A new Planner Agent is coming to Microsoft 365 Copilot. It will help you bring personal tasks, shared plans, email follow-ups, meeting notes, and chats together. Delivering intelligent work and task management directly into your Copilot experience. You will be able to ask questions such as 'Show me the tasks due this week,' or 'Help me summarise the urgent tasks in my Marketing launch plan.'

The popular engagement tool, breakout rooms, will soon be available for use in Teams events with up to 1,000 attendees. Microsoft say this is to enable more interactive sessions, smaller group discussions, and improved audience engagement without compromising scale or performance!

 

Rolling out from June 2026, Facilitator will automatically detect questions raised during a Teams meeting that haven't been answered, offer to help answer them using web search.

Soon, Microsoft Teams will roll out improved organisation of chats. Including muted chats appearing together in their own dedicated section, and meeting chats also together in their own section. 

 The meeting toolbar is getting a makeover! Coming soon, you will have the option to customise the meeting toolbar to match how you work best, by pinning, unpinning, and reordering controls. The Raise Hand feature will be grouped under Reactions to reduce mis-clicks, and Leave will be clearly separated on the right.

Before joining a meeting on your pre-join screen, users will be given the option to test your microphone and speaker to make sure others will hear you clearly when the call starts. Select Test mic and speaker to record a short audio clip and play it back.

Copilot Cowork is an agent that plus directly into your Work IQ. It is described by Microsoft as going beyond intent, and taking actions on your behalf. Copilor Cowork can organise your Outlook inbox, create entire meetings and plan for them, and create product launch plans with shareable assets. While still in preview and testing, we can expect more information released about Cowork at a later date.

Microsoft are now rolling out the ability to edit images directly inside PowerPoint for Windows, Mac, or the web. Saving the time and the hassle required to switch to a separate image-editing app. You will be able to make edits that include removing backgrounds, erasing or moving unwanted elements, enhancing image quality, upscaling resolution, or editing text that appears on an image. 

You can now create workflows and perform actions quickly and easily using slash commands, directly from the Teams compose box. This includes setting your status as do not disturb, adding a gif, or showing who is in the chat.

Rolling out soon, intelligent meeting recaps will now include video-based recaps. Video recap will create narrated video highlights from recorded meetings, featuring key takeaways and short clips that showcase important moments. 

Users can now easily copy tables created in Copilot. Leverage Copilot to make your content better and use it anywhere you need to!

Viva Engage communities are being brought directly into Microsoft Teams, now rolling out in public preview. Communities will appear in the default unified Chat app, visible and reachable throughout the workday...

Read more here | via Microsoft.com

When searching for files, Teams now offers a grid view that displays a thumbnail of files, allowing for a quicker way to access the files you need. 

Users will soon have the ability to hide their entire meeting controls toolbar during Teams meetings. This will help to create more space during calls.

Recently used emojis and reactions will soon sync across Teams on desktop and mobile.

Microsoft are introducing a reimagined SharePoint experience. It will integrate AI-assisted creation, include an updated information architecture and cohesive design language, and deliver a cleaner and more consistent experience.

Microsoft announced that you will soon be able to add watermarks for AI-generated video, audio, and image content.

Rolling out from March, you will soon be able to schedule meetings directly from Copilot chat in Outlook, or by clicking the "Schedule with Copilot" button.

Later this year, users will be able to sort by flag status, flag due date and flag start date within Microsoft Outlook.

Soon you will be able to edit your images directly in PowerPoint with Copilot, no need to switch apps or interrupt your flow.

To help bring clarity to AI use in the classroom, AI Guidelines is coming to Assignments in Microsoft Teams for Education. This will allow educators to set clear expectations for when and how students can use AI, directly within the assignment experience.

Microsoft have expanded support for additional formatting in Notepad, including strikethrough formatting and nested lists.

Colouring book is a new AI-powered feature coming to Paint, which will allow you to create coloring book pages from a text prompt. 

Microsoft have announced that Agents for each of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will be coming. Helping users get more done faster. 

You will soon be able to edit or enhance the lighting in uploaded or generated images directly in Copilot Chat and the Create experience.

Rolling out in February, the new =COPILOT function will be available directly in Excel formulas to generate, classify, and summarise text and data. 

Autocorrect is coming to Teams, which will automatically correct misspelt words in compose. 

A new way to create branded experiences is coming, with new branded reactions. IT admins simply upload custom reaction icons reflecting brand elements or event themes, and these instantly become available for meeting participants. 

Coming early 2026, Microsoft Teams users will be able to select multiple messages and forward them all at once. 

Microsoft announce that Immersive Events are now generally available in Microsoft Teams. This brings tailored 3D environments where attendees join as avatars and can interact naturally with each other. The general availability of immersive events in Teams means Teams Mesh is now retired. 

Coming in February 2026, Teams users will be able to respond to Activity notifications from multiple different tenants without needing to switch between accounts. 

Microsoft unveiled Agent 365 at Microsoft Ignite in San Francisco. Agent 365 will act as a control panel for teams to manage agents. You can learn more about this here:

Agent 365 | Microsoft.com

Being rolled out for general availability in January, you will soon be able to apply a brand kit to content generated inside Copilot. Whether it’s a poster, infographic, or image.

Microsoft announced new capabilities for Copilot Pages. Now, Copilot can write code using the latest LLM models and let you preview it directly in a Copilot Page, enabling rich, immersive experiences. All with zero coding skills required.

Users will be able to schedule meetings directly from Copilot chat. Just ask Copilot to schedule a meeting with colleagues, and it will find available times, book rooms, draft agendas, and send invites, all without needing to leave the chat experience. This feature will roll out in phases.

Users will soon get the ability to schedule recurring prompts in the Web tab

Surveys Agent is an intelligent assistant for managing surveys end-to-end. It is now generally available to all commercial customers who have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Surveys Agent simplifies the entire survey lifecycle through a conversational experience 

At Ignite in San Francisco, Microsoft unveiled new Copilot and AI features coming soon to Windows.

Agents will become a seamless part of the OS experience, with agent capabilities embedded into core Windows services. Microsoft 365 Copilot, AI agents and Copilot search will also be added to the taskbar, bringing access to Copilot and agents into the flow of work. 

At Ignite in San Francisco, Microsoft unveiled that video generation would be coming to Copilot, and will be powered by Open AI's Sora 2 model.

Microsoft Forms will soon enable sensitivity labels, allowing organisations to control access and manage information protection directly within Forms.

Interpreter, already available in Teams meetings, is expanding to Teams calls. Interpreter enables real-time speech-to-speech interpretation in up to nine languages.

You will soon be able to 'pop out' even more core functions from within Teams. Including chat, calls, calendar, activity, and more.

Microsoft announce you will soon be able to resize the video gallery in Teams meetings, allowing you to see more people when content is being shared.

Microsoft announced some changes coming to how users can generate alt text in Word and PowerPoint.

Where alt text was previously automatically generated by Azure technology, it occasionally cause it to be generic or lack context. Now, Alt text is generated only when you choose to create it, and powered by generative AI models. This means alt text will now be higher-quality, and context-rich. A great step towards making content more accessible.

The Windows Insider Program announced that tables are coming to Notepad. 

Microsoft rolled out new, modern icons for all Microsoft 365 apps. Now available for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and the web.

Previewing from November, Chat in Word and PowerPoint now supports voice. Users can talk and interact with Copilot to brainstorm ideas, create content, and analyse information. 

You will soon be able to customise the AI generated notes from meeting recaps, transforming them into the format that works best for each person. Choose from built-in options like Speaker Summary or Executive Summary to quickly surface the details that matter most. You'll also be able to create and save your own custom templates with a simple prompt, so meeting notes always match the way you like to work. 

Many people use Copilot's capabilities to generate impactful images for their presentations. Now, you can edit your images directly in PowerPoint with Copilot, no need to switch apps or interrupt your flow. You can make edits like improving the resolution, removing the background, and more.

Using Copilot Connector, Copilot now seamlessly integrates with your favourite productivity tools and apps including:

• Trello
• Asana
• Monday.com
• Shortcut
• Miro
• Adobe Experience Manager
• GitLab
• Guru

You can now find your company’s official logos, icons, and photos directly in PowerPoint, removing the need to look elsewhere. This makes it easy to stay on brand and follow company guidelines by using approved images from your organisation’s library.

You can now use colons to quickly insert the emoji you want, in Teams Chats and Channel posts. Type ":" followed by the name of the emoji you want, then type : again. Once done, the emoji is selected and added to your text. The new shortcut aligns with industry standards and helps make emoji insertion intuitive and consistent. 

The Microsoft Teams Search experience has been updated to allow for searching of images. Search by message content, people, or where they were shared.

See results as you type, filter to show only images, or explore them in the dedicated Images tab, all from the search bar.

When a file is shared in a chat, this new feature will use Copilot to summarise it without the need for you to open it. Available in 1:1 and group chats in Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot can quickly summarise content from Microsoft Word documents so you can understand the main points without opening the file. This feature is also available on mobile.

Floating images in Microsoft Word for Windows are now accessible to screen readers. In the past, Word had trouble with floating images because screen readers couldn’t tell where they were in the document. Since these images weren’t tied to any specific spot in the text, screen readers couldn’t “see” them. Now, Word has improved how it handles these images. It links them more clearly to a place in the text, so screen readers can find them and read out their description (alt text) at the right spot.

Announced via the Windows Insider channel, Copy & Search is a feature that will allow you to search the text in your clipboard with a single click. When you copy text anywhere in Windows, a paste gleam will appear in your search box. Click on this gleam and your copied text will appear in the search field, allowing you to search instantly.