Microsoft adds uninvited AI co-author to Word docs

Microsoft is giving Copilot the power to stop suggesting edits and start making them.

The company this week pushed its “agentic” Copilot features into general availability across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, turning the assistant from a sidebar prompt into something that edits documents, tweaks spreadsheets, and builds slides in place

“Copilot can now take actions on your behalf across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint,” Redmond said, pitching the update as a move toward software that doesn’t just respond, but gets on with the job. The feature is on by default, but must be activated by users through a very prominent prompt on the right side. As always, you can turn off Copilot completely by following the instructions on this page.

In practice, it’s the next step in a strategy that has already seen the AI assistant threaded through Windows, GitHub, and just about every product Microsoft can get its hands…