Microsoft Copilot Notebooks turns project files into working drafts. Check feature access, source accuracy, sharing permissions, and review time before adoption.
The post Copilot Notebooks Turns Project Files Into Drafts: What to Check appeared first on TechRepublic.
Microsoft Copilot Notebooks turns project files into working drafts. Check feature access, source accuracy, sharing permissions, and review time before adoption.
The post Copilot Notebooks Turns Project Files Into Drafts: What to Check appeared first on TechRepublic.
Excel automation used to mean macros and VBA. Today, three tools write the Python for you, from a spreadsheet-style notebook to an AI assistant built into Excel itself. Here is what each one does, what it costs, and who should use it.
Microsoft will remove eight OneDrive Copilot shortcuts from File Explorer starting in November 2026, changing how users access AI-powered file tools.
The post Microsoft Is Removing 8 Copilot Shortcuts From File Explorer — Here’s What Stays appeared first on TechRepublic.
Microsoft will remove eight OneDrive Copilot shortcuts from File Explorer starting in November 2026, changing how users access AI-powered file tools.
The post Microsoft Is Removing 8 Copilot Shortcuts From File Explorer — Here’s What Stays appeared first on TechRepublic.
Learn how to create, edit, present, and export PowerPoint decks with ChatGPT Slides, plus eligible plans, Windows requirements, and current limits.
The post How to Make PowerPoint Presentations With ChatGPT Slides appeared first on TechRepublic.
Learn how to create, edit, present, and export PowerPoint decks with ChatGPT Slides, plus eligible plans, Windows requirements, and current limits.
The post How to Make PowerPoint Presentations With ChatGPT Slides appeared first on TechRepublic.
Microsoft is coming out with new security tools that treat AI agents as potential insider threats, continuously assessing their risk and restricting their access when something changes.
The features, announced Monday, are part of Microsoft 365 E7, the company’s top-tier bundle of workplace software and AI tools, and its Project Perception security system.
They escalate the company’s competition with rivals such as Google, Amazon Web Services, CrowdStrike and Okta to become the system businesses use to control their AI agents.
Microsoft’s new features come amid a steady stream of news about AI agents doing things they weren’t supposed to do, including high-profile reports from Anthropic about test agents taking unauthorized actions on government websites, and from OpenAI about agents escaping test environments and stealing credentials.
The move builds on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s Oct. 10 blog post arguing that the controls on AI models need to come from outside the models themselves.
“The most trustworthy Super Intelligence system will not be the one with the model we trust most,” Nadella wrote. “It will be the one that enables us to trust the model the least.”
Microsoft’s tools include a continuously updated risk assessment for each agent, based on signals such as what data it can reach and whether its actions are starting to depart from the task it was given. When the risk level rises, the system can take away the agent’s ability to make changes while still letting it read data, require a person to approve a high-stakes step, or shut the agent down.
In addition, the company is expanding its ability to find AI agents running on employees’ computers, increasing the number of agent types it can detect to 60, up from 25. The list includes popular tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code, OpenAI’s Codex and GitHub Copilot.
Microsoft is also adding “Guardian Agents” to Project Perception, an AI security system it unveiled in July that uses AI agents to find and fix security problems. The new agents can investigate why another agent’s risk changed and recommend or take steps to contain it.
The company’s new features are in private preview, with broader availability planned for Microsoft’s Ignite conference, Nov. 17-19 in San Francisco.
The E7 licensing level, which launched in May, costs $99 per user per month. It also includes the Microsoft 365 Copilot AI assistant, the company’s E5 suite of productivity and security tools, its Entra Suite identity tools and Agent 365, a service for managing AI agents.
Charles Lamanna, the Microsoft executive who oversees Microsoft 365 and the platform behind Copilot, says most business software will end up running behind AI agents rather than in front of users. That’s bad news for a lot of apps.
“If my agent interacts with your app exclusively, the agent’s your customer, not the end user,” Lamanna said Wednesday morning, speaking with Madrona’s Matt McIlwain in the opening keynote at the venture capital firm’s annual IA40 Summit in Seattle. “And agents are very harsh customers.”
Agents will pick whatever service is cheapest, fastest and most reliable, he said, and they’ll move people to another one quickly. Apps that sit behind agents will have a hard time holding on to pricing power or customer loyalty.
Lamanna splits software into two groups.
Microsoft’s own apps aren’t exempt. Word, Excel and PowerPoint won’t go away, Lamanna said, but most people will use them inside Copilot, which can now run Office without switching apps. In his view, the standard setup for an office worker ends up as Copilot for AI and Teams for communication, “and that’s maybe it.”
He compared a headless app to a company that sells only on Amazon. It can be a business, he said, but prices get squeezed when buyers are simply choosing between “your pencils or those pencils.” A brand such as Nike has more leverage.
Amazon itself is resisting that role. Earlier this week it blocked Meta’s Muse agent from shopping on its site, saying Meta never asked permission and that the agent doesn’t identify itself and appears to store customer credentials. Meta has said Muse can’t see users’ passwords or payment methods. Amazon is also in a legal fight with Perplexity over that company’s Comet shopping agent.
Amazon is open to agents on its own terms. Days after blocking Muse, it opened its seller tools to Anthropic’s Claude, letting merchants manage inventory, prices and listings without going into Seller Central.
Lamanna brought up Muse himself onstage, predicting it will reach far more people than work-focused agent tools such as Copilot and Claude Cowork.
Microsoft is on the other side of the same question. Copilot depends on other companies’ software being willing to work behind it. In an August profile, Lamanna said Copilot uses connectors to pull data from services such as Salesforce and ServiceNow, so people don’t have to leave the app.
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