Once again, Microsoft has proven its knack for rebranding and sometimes complicating its product lineup. They recently announced that they’ll be rebranding the Microsoft 365 app to Microsoft 365 Copilot. And today, we noticed that “Microsoft 365 Office” is now called “Microsoft 365 Copilot” after the update.
Microsoft’s rebranding efforts are now beyond control. We went from Office > Office 365 > Microsoft 365 Office to Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft previously said that this change aligns with the company’s goal to make AI an integral part of its ecosystem. And with Copilot in the focus, Microsoft is moving forward with its AI-first strategy.
The Microsoft 365 Copilot rebrand is now rolling out on Windows 11 devices. According to Microsoft, doing so was necessary as the current naming structure is confusing. The only solution, according to them, was to add the “Copilot” tag to every Enterprise product.
They are also changing the Microsoft 365 Copilot URL to M365Copilot.com and redirecting office.com and Microsoft365.com to m365.cloud.microsoft.
Windows Latest recently spotted a roadmap and saw an idea of what’s coming with the rebrand. Some major changes include:
- Upon clicking the Copilot keyboard key in the Microsoft 365 app, the Copilot page will automatically launch.
- The top header has been retired, giving the UI a cleaner look. This will migrate all the account-related options to the bottom of the left side menu.
- The organization name header is also being retired; this used to appear in the top header.
- All the AI features, including Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Copilot Pages, will be moved to the left sidebar, and a Back button will be added.
- The search bar will appear on the homepage, allowing you to search for content across different sections.
All these changes are applicable to both the web and desktop versions of the newly rebranded Microsoft 365 Copilot. As of now, everything is live, and these changes shall be reflected or will soon be on your device.
Hands on with the new Microsoft 365 Copilot
In our tests, Windows Latest observed that these changes are live in the stable channel, and we are not signed up for the Windows Insider Program.
As soon as you open the new Microsoft 365 Copilot app, it will greet you with a “Welcome to Microsoft 365 Copilot” pop-up, and then you’ll land on the homepage.
We don’t think the redesign is terrible. In fact, it’s really well thought out. For example, the default tab is the Home, which lets you create a new Word, PowerPoint, Excel and other Microsoft 365 stuff. You can also view the recently accessed items.
Below Home, we’ve the Copilot button, which simply loads copilot.microsoft.com but is more deeply integrated into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, so you can ask it to look up something on your cloud storage and interact with it.
Right now, it’s not available for Personal and Family subscribers, but the option has still been added.
Then, we have a create tab with links to Word and other 365 products. Next up is My content, which is essentially OneDrive’s synced files and pictures.
The next tab is “Apps”, which has all your apps created by Microsoft. This includes those beyond Microsoft 365, such as Bing.
Finally, there are dedicated links to Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook. The integration is so bad that the Outlook button loads Outlook.com in your default browser instead of redirecting to the Outlook app.
Was this rebrand required?
Probably not, but Microsoft has always had trouble sticking to a name for long. Previously, Copilot was Bing Chat, and now Microsoft has changed the Microsoft 365 app to Microsoft 365 Copilot.
For users with an Entra account, Microsoft Copilot has been renamed to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. This name is too long and was definitely not needed. All these changes came after Microsoft’s decent decision to remap the Copilot key on PCs running the Enterprise version to open the Microsoft 365 app.
Look at the above screenshot of the taskbar with two apps open – Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot. Which one is what? Of course, if you’re a tech-savvy person, you might understand it easily, but someone who is new to Microsoft and Windows ecosystems can be confused.
Worse, Microsoft 365 Copilot’s Copilot section can do pretty much everything the dedicated Copilot app can.
The rebrand of the Microsoft 365 app to Microsoft 365 Copilot was unnecessary, but here we are.
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