Create Alt Text with M365 Copilot

Including detailed Alt Text in your Word and PowerPoint files greatly enhances accessibility for all users. Now, with the help of M365 Copilot, you can provide even better descriptions. Simply open your document and use the check accessibility feature. When Alt Text is missing, just click the button to have it created automatically. M365 Copilot will then generate a thoughtful description for your chart or image.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365insiderblog/richer-alt-text-in-word-and-powerpoint-powered-by-generative-ai/4466593

Microsoft 365 Apps Icons to be Refreshed

It was announced that all the Office Icons are being refreshed. I liked this picture showing the evolution of the Office icons since 2001.

Reference: https://microsoft.design/articles/fluid-forms-vibrant-colors/

M365 Copilot Chat now available in Office Apps

There was an important announcement this week.  M365 Copilot Chat is now available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote for all users without additional licensing.

Some important notes:

• This is for web-grounded chat only.
• This is the same Copilot Chat experience that all users have access to via a browser.
• If you want M365 Copilot Chat to return data from the M365 Graph with data from Teams, Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive, you must have a M365 Copilot add-on license for the user.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365copilotblog/copilot-chat-comes-to-the-microsoft-365-apps/4453349 

Co-Authoring Support for AIP Files

I was extremely happy to see we are now publicly releasing co-authoring for documents that have AIP policies applied to them.  This had been a highly desirable feature I have wanted for years.  Collaborating on sensitive internal documents was very cumbersome until this feature came along.  Please review link for more information.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-and-identity/co-authoring-on-microsoft-information-protection-encrypted/ba-p/2693718