Microsoft Adds Free Copilot Chat to Office Apps

Microsoft rolls out free Copilot Chat across Office apps

Microsoft announced that a Copilot Chat sidebar is now available inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote for Microsoft 365 business users at no extra cost. The feature is content-aware, meaning the chat tailors answers to the specific file you have open and can assist with drafting, summarizing, and analyzing content.

Think of Copilot Chat as an in-app assistant for immediate tasks: rewrite a paragraph in Word, generate talking points for a slide, or surface trends in an Excel sheet. It’s integrated directly into the Office UI so users don’t need a separate Copilot license just to get basic, contextual help.

• Drafting and rewriting documents
• Summarizing emails and notes
• Analyzing spreadsheets and generating slide content

That said, Microsoft keeps a higher tier: the paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license (about $30 per user per month) still provides deeper integration. Paid Copilot can reason over an organization’s full work data set, accept file uploads, generate images, and access advanced models like GPT-5 with prioritized performance and availability.

How the free chat differs from paid Copilot

• Scope: Free Copilot Chat is file-aware but limited to the active document; paid Copilot can reason across organization data and multiple documents.
• Capabilities: Paid users get file uploads, image generation, and the latest model access (e.g., GPT-5) with faster responses.
• Availability and priority: Paid Copilot users receive prioritized access during peak demand.

Microsoft previously brought Copilot features to consumer plans and adjusted pricing, but for businesses this update does not change subscription costs. Microsoft also plans to bundle sales, service, and finance Copilots into the Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription in October, which could lower costs for organizations using those tools.

What this means for IT and business leaders

The free Copilot Chat lowers the barrier to experimentation, but it also raises governance questions. Which users should get access to file-aware chat? How will sensitive data be protected? And when does an organization need to move from chat to the paid Copilot tier to enable cross-document analytics or priority access?

1. Pilot with power users to measure time saved and accuracy
2. Define data access policies and monitoring for file-aware AI
3. Estimate ROI for paid Copilot where cross-document reasoning or prioritized availability matters

For teams, the pragmatic approach is clear: start with the free Copilot Chat to remove friction for everyday tasks, then evaluate workload patterns and compliance requirements to decide where a paid Copilot license delivers measurable value.

QuarkyByte helps organizations translate this change into a clear adoption plan: we analyze usage signals, map sensitive data flows, quantify productivity gains, and build governance guardrails so businesses can adopt Copilot Chat safely and scale to paid Copilot where it makes business sense.