Table of Contents
Summary
- For tenants with more the 2000 users Copilot will no longer be available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
- Users without the license will see the “Copilot Chat (Basic)” label, while licensed users will see “M365 Copilot (Premium).”
- Copilot will continue to be accessible in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and Outlook for all users.
- No action is required for users without a Copilot license, but providing a license will enable full Copilot features in the mentioned applications.
- Changes have implications for both user experience and IT administrators.
Admin Impact: Low
User Impact: High
Release Start: 15 Apr 2026
Release End: 15 Apr 2026
Services: M365 Copilot, M365 Copilot Chat
Category: Plan for change
Tags: Feature Update, User Adoption, Admin Action
History
3/17/2026 Item Added to Message Center
Microsoft Message
This post describes changes we’re making for Copilot Chat users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. There are no changes for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
Starting April 15, 2026, Copilot will no longer be available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for Copilot Chat users. To ensure a high-quality experience, we are reserving the full Copilot experience in these apps—with advanced reasoning and model choice—for users with a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license. If you would like users to access these experiences, you can provide a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
There are no other changes for users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Copilot Chat still offers secure, AI web chat and the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint agents for chat-first content creation within the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Additionally, users still get Copilot in Outlook with inbox and calendar grounding.
We are also adding in-product labels to help end users and admins identify their user experience. We are labeling the experience for users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license as “Copilot Chat (Basic)” and labeling the experience for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license as “M365 Copilot (Premium)”.
If you would like to further discuss this change, please work with your Microsoft sales representative or Microsoft reseller to learn more.
When will this happen
These changes will go into effect starting April 15, 2026.
How this affects your organization
Who is affected:
- Affected users are those without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. There are no changes for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
What will happen:
- Copilot will no longer be available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. It will remain available in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and Outlook.
- Users will see the “Copilot Chat (Basic)” label in-product to help them identify their experience.
What you can do to prepare
These changes will take effect April 15, 2026. No action is required for this change.
If you want to enable Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for these users, you can provide them with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.