If you opened Word this week and wondered why Copilot suddenly looks different — or disappeared entirely — you’re not imagining it. On April 15, 2026, Microsoft turned off in‑app Copilot for anyone without a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license. No farewell tour, no big blog banner — just a quieter Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for millions of users.

The good news: Copilot didn’t leave your Microsoft 365 subscription. It just moved. Here’s exactly what changed, what you still get for free, and how to keep your workflow smooth without spending $30 per user per month.

1. What actually changed on April 15

Starting April 15, 2026, users on the free Copilot Chat tier lost Copilot features inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Those embedded capabilities — draft, summarize, generate, and rewrite right inside the document — are now reserved for paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license holders aka Copilot Premium.

If you already pay for a Copilot license, nothing changed. Everyone else is now on Copilot Chat (Basic) — the secure, work‑aware chat experience — with no in‑document assistant beside your cursor.

This isn’t Microsoft removing AI. It’s Microsoft splitting “basic chat” from “premium in‑app productivity” and putting a price tag between them.

2. What you still get for free (and it’s more than you think)

Before you panic, count what’s still in your plan at no extra cost:

• Copilot Chat in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and on the web — secure, data‑protected AI chat for drafting, summarizing, research, and brainstorming.
• Copilot in Outlook — draft emails, summarize threads, and catch up on conversations. This one survived the changes.
• Copilot Chat grounded in the email you’re reading — highlight a passage and ask Copilot about just that part (rolled out February 2026).
• Chat‑based agents inside the Copilot app for repeatable workflows. Word Agent, PowerPoint Agent, Excel Agent all using Anthropic models.
• A daily image generation allowance for commercial Copilot Chat users without a paid license (Microsoft hasn’t publicly disclosed the exact cap).

For educators specifically, the free Teach module in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app — with Align to Standards, Modify Reading Level, Differentiate Instructions, and the new Fill‑in‑the‑Blanks and Matching Game activities — is unaffected by the April 15 change. Microsoft Education customers keep those features at no additional cost.

3. Three moves to make this week

Here’s your simple action plan — no license purchase required:

1. Bookmark the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. This is now your front door for free AI. Pin it in your browser and in Teams. That’s where Copilot Chat lives and where most of your old prompts still work.
2. Shift your “in‑document” habits to “paste‑and‑prompt.” Instead of clicking Copilot inside Word, highlight the paragraph, paste it into Copilot Chat, and ask. It’s two extra clicks — and it’s free.
3. Audit who really needs a paid Copilot license. Most teams have 2–5 power users who genuinely need in‑app Copilot across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Buy licenses for them, not everyone. Microsoft’s own promo discounts (30–40% off through June 30, 2026) make targeted rollouts cheaper than a blanket purchase.

Quick example: the Excel rescue

Say you used to highlight a column in Excel and ask Copilot to explain a formula. That embedded flow is gone for free users. The free workaround: copy the formula and a few rows, paste into Copilot Chat in the Microsoft 365 app, and ask, “Explain this formula and suggest two ways to make it more readable.” You get the same answer — just in a different window. For a teacher grading with rubrics or a small‑business owner tracking inventory, that’s a workflow change, not a workflow loss.

Next step

Spend 20 minutes this week mapping which of your top five weekly tasks actually required in‑app Copilot. If zero or one of them did, Copilot Chat (Basic) is enough. If three or more did, one targeted license is probably cheaper than the productivity tax of doing it the old way.

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