On Monday, the finance manager asks Copilot in Outlook to summarize a 40-email thread with a supplier, and it works. On Tuesday she opens Excel, looks for the same button to analyze a spreadsheet, and it isn't there. A colleague in another department has it. Nobody in the company can explain why.
That confusion is normal. AI in Microsoft 365 now comes in separate layers, and what each person sees depends on their license and on how the tenant is configured. This article sorts out what's included in your subscription, what the Copilot license adds, and what to do first. If you're after licensing details and how to run a pilot, we covered that in Microsoft Copilot for business: licensing and how to start.
First, the names (they changed again)
Microsoft has renamed its business AI products. According to its requirements documentation, what used to be Microsoft 365 Copilot is now Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now Microsoft Copilot Chat. During the transition you'll see both names in the admin center, on invoices and in articles like this one.
Past the naming, this is what you need to understand:
- Copilot Chat is included at no extra cost with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions. It answers using the web and whatever you give it.
- Microsoft Copilot is the per-user add-on license. On top of the web, it searches your work data: emails, meetings, chats and documents you already have permission to see.
Three experiences, not two
This is why Excel shows Copilot on one laptop and not on another. On its Copilot overview page, Microsoft describes three tiers and labels each one inside the apps:
| Label the user sees | Copilot license? | Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote | Work data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copilot Chat (Basic) | No | No | Only what the user uploads, pastes or has open |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot (Basic) | No | Yes, with standard access | Same as above |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) | Yes | Yes, full experience and priority access | Automatic, through Microsoft Graph |
Standard access depends on service capacity and can vary during the day. Priority access, which comes with the license, stays faster at peak hours. Microsoft also notes that the in-app experience varies by tenant, so the quickest way to know which tier someone is on is to check the label they see.
What you can do today without paying for the license
More than most teams use. For users with standard access, Microsoft lists these in-app features:
- In Word, draft, rewrite and summarize documents.
- In Excel, analyze data, build formulas and create charts.
- In PowerPoint, build a deck from a prompt or existing content, summarize it, or apply formatting changes across the whole file.
- In Outlook, draft emails, summarize threads and get coaching on tone and clarity.
- In OneNote, draft plans, ideas and lists.
- In Forms, suggest questions for surveys.
Outlook deserves its own paragraph. According to the Copilot Chat privacy documentation, Copilot Chat in Outlook can read your emails, calendar, meetings, chats and some files (your OneDrive, files shared with you, and files from SharePoint sites you visit often). You can ask it what's pending or have it help you prepare for a meeting. It does this with a simpler index than the licensed version, though. Full semantic search across all your data is still a Microsoft Copilot feature.
All of this runs with enterprise data protection when the user signs in with their Microsoft Entra work account. Microsoft commits to not using prompts and responses to train its models, and files you upload to the chat are stored in your OneDrive. You can tell it's on by the green shield next to the new chat button.
What the Microsoft Copilot license adds
The big change is that Copilot stops waiting for you to hand it information. With the license, you can ask "summarize what we agreed with this client in meetings and emails over the last month" and Copilot finds it on its own, within your permissions. That relies on Microsoft Graph, Work IQ and semantic indexing.
The license also adds:
- Priority access and the full experience in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
- Agents that work with organizational data without extra usage charges. Without the license, agents that only use instructions and public websites are included, and the rest are pay-as-you-go.
- Admin tools: SharePoint Advanced Management to find overshared content, Microsoft Purview controls and more detailed usage reports.
For Teams, the admin documentation says the license is the foundation for Copilot in meetings and chats, Facilitator and the channel agent. If your team lives in meetings, that's where you'll notice it most.
Two things are new this year. Microsoft 365 E7, generally available since May 1, 2026, includes Microsoft Copilot along with E5, the Entra suite and Agent 365, according to Microsoft Learn. And for small and midsize businesses there's Microsoft Copilot Business, added on top of the Business Basic, Standard or Premium plans. Prices vary by plan and payment terms, so check Microsoft's official pricing page before you build a budget.
Where to start
For most companies in Chile, we suggest starting with what you already pay for. An order that works:
- Check what each person sees. Ask three or four users from different areas to open Word and Excel and tell you which label appears. That tells you whether your tenant has standard access or just Copilot Chat.
- Write simple usage rules: what can be uploaded to the chat, what can't, and who reviews anything that goes to a client. With Chile's Law 21.719 on the way, it's worth having this in writing.
- Train with real cases: summarizing an email thread, cleaning up a sales spreadsheet, drafting meeting minutes. One hour on each team's own work beats a generic demo.
- Look at the numbers. The admin center has a Copilot Chat usage report with active users and prompts per person. Use it to find who's already getting value.
- Consider the license only for those people. If someone spends the day between meetings, email and internal documents, and keeps running into the limit of uploading everything by hand, they're a candidate.
Before assigning licenses, review your SharePoint and OneDrive permissions. Copilot doesn't bypass permissions, but it makes badly shared content very visible. We wrote about that in Copilot data security.
Frequently asked questions
Does Copilot Chat cost anything?
No. It's included with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions. What you pay for separately is the Microsoft Copilot license and any agents billed by usage.
Why does one user see Copilot in Excel and another doesn't, if neither has a license?
There are two unlicensed experiences: one with standard access inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and one that only includes the chat. It depends on the subscription and the tenant configuration. The in-app label tells you which one each person has.
Can I turn off Copilot Chat in my company?
Yes. Copilot controls in the admin center let you remove access, limit web search or decide who can create agents. There's also an AI Administrator role to delegate this without granting global admin rights.
How we can help
At Disrupsoft we assess which scenarios in your company gain the most from Copilot, activate and configure it in your Microsoft 365, train users on their own work and support adoption afterwards. If you want to know what AI in Microsoft 365 can do with what you already have, take a look at our Copilot and Microsoft 365 service and let's talk.
