Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 3 announced: New agentic features for Word, Excel, and Outlook

Microsoft is launching "Wave 3" of its 365 Copilot suite with several "agentic AI" features across the Office apps, including Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint.

OpenAI and Anthropic are growing exponentially, thanks to their AI applications that take full advantage of their models' capabilities. OpenAI's ChatGPT is growing among consumers and enterprises, while Anthropic's Claude is dominating with developers and startups. Despite having access to the models powering both these products, Microsoft has neither been able to convince enterprises to adopt Microsoft 365 Copilot nor attract general consumers to Copilot.

Despite the poor product execution, thanks to Microsoft's enterprise reach, Microsoft 365 Copilot's paid seats grew more than 160% year-over-year and daily active usage is up ten times. While this may sound great, Anthropic's revenue growth has been exceptionally rapid, with its annualized revenue run rate climbing from $14 billion earlier to nearly $20 billion in 2026.

To catch up with OpenAI and Anthropic, Microsoft today announced Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 3. In addition to several new experiences announced today, Microsoft promises a commitment to continuous innovation going forward.

One of the main innovations of Wave 3 is the new Copilot Cowork, powered by Claude Cowork technology, which will allow users to not just chat but instead get things done using agentic AI. You can learn more about it here.

Copilot is also getting several powerful features inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

Word:

Copilot in Word is getting a new agentic drafting experience that can take a simple prompt and generate a full document while asking clarifying questions about tone, structure, and audience. Users can refine documents by asking Copilot to shorten text, restructure sections, or add new content. Copilot can also pull context from related files, emails, and meetings to update reports automatically. In addition, Copilot can now apply formatting and style guidelines to documents. These features are generally available today in Word on Windows, web, and Mac for Microsoft 365 Copilot users.

Excel:

Excel is gaining a new agent mode that allows Copilot to perform multi-step data analysis on a dataset. Copilot can now plan and execute tasks such as building formulas, generating charts, and creating new sheets. Users can also view Copilot's reasoning steps behind the analysis. These features are now generally available today in Excel for Windows, web, and Mac for Microsoft 365 Copilot users.

PowerPoint:

PowerPoint’s new Copilot experience allows users to generate complete presentations directly from a prompt after answering clarifying questions about the topic, audience, and desired structure. Copilot will also match an organization’s templates and themes by using approved colors, layouts, object styles, and images. These features are rolling out to PowerPoint web for Microsoft 365 Copilot users.

Outlook:

Copilot in Outlook is getting new agentic capabilities for email and calendar management. It can analyze email threads and automatically schedule meetings by identifying suitable time slots across attendees’ calendars. From an email conversation, users can ask Copilot to create the meeting, draft an agenda, and send invites. Copilot can also summarize long threads, draft responses, and organize messages to help users stay on top of busy inboxes. These features are available now in English to all Microsoft 365 Copilot and Outlook users.