2024 has been quite the developmental year for Microsoft 365. From the growth of AI to the death of familiar apps, the productivity suite has undergone many changes over the past twelve months. Let’s review some of the most significant shifts that Microsoft 365’s 400 million paid users have seen.
1 Microsoft 365 Copilot Gains Ground
Unsurprisingly, the story of 2024 for Microsoft 365 has been dominated by Copilot, the AI tool which Microsoft claims “provides real-time intelligence that enables users to complete tasks more efficiently, enhance their productivity and skills, and improve their overall work experience.”
Personal users can use Microsoft 365 Copilot to create ideas and drafts in Word, manage folders and summarize email conversations in Outlook, perform complex tasks and draw insights from data in Excel, and much more.
In September, Microsoft rolled out Copilot Pages, “a dynamic, persistent canvas in Copilot chat” that lets you “turn insightful Copilot responses into something durable with a side-by-side page that you can edit and, when ready, share with your team to collaborate.”
It’s clear that Copilot is still in its infancy. Microsoft admits that Copilot’s “Large Language Models can occasionally generate content that is biased, offensive, harmful, or incorrect” and reminds users that “it is imperative to consistently review and validate the responses for accuracy and appropriateness.” What is for sure, however, is that it’s here to stay, and next year will undoubtedly see more significant AI developments and milestones.
2 Publisher Retirement Date Confirmed
I remember using Microsoft Publisher at school to make cool posters and personalized greetings cards, and millions of others have enjoyed using the program since it first landed on our desktops in 1991. However, Publisher has struggled to keep up with the times—it severely lacks the advanced features that designers want to use today, and its tools are available in more frequently used Microsoft productivity programs.
What’s more, Microsoft has focused its updates on more popular apps, like PowerPoint, Excel, and Word, meaning Publisher has suffered the consequences of developmental neglect in recent years. The final nail in Publisher’s coffin is the rise of Microsoft Designer, which Microsoft says is “a graphic design and image editing app powered by AI” for creating “eye-catching images with your words, crafting next-level designs that pop, and editing photos like an expert.”
As a result, in February, Microsoft announced that Publisher will be discontinued in October 2026.
3 New Outlook Disappoints
By August, the upgraded version of Microsoft Outlook had been rolled out to all Microsoft 365 customers. Well, I say upgraded. How-To Geek readers have not held back their thoughts on how the new Outlook is far less useful than its classic predecessor.
As well as the new Outlook’s many issues that I reported back in September, such as the absence of unified inboxes, the removal of Exchange ActiveSync Connectivity, and the lack of an option to move emails between inboxes, readers have complained that they can’t create complex rules, the calendar is less intuitive, and the interface is lousy.
Microsoft proclaims that the new Outlook is “built for today, designed for the future” and “combines rich productivity features and the latest innovations” for us to “enjoy a familiar, more productive, and seamless way to work.”
However, the reality is that many Microsoft customers find the new Outlook to be a backward step that makes them less productive in their workflow. Let’s hope that by the time support for Classic Outlook for Windows ends in 2029, the new Outlook will have seen many improvements.
4 Office 2024 Released
Fast-forward to October 1, which saw the release of the highly anticipated Office 2024, a single-purchase selection of Microsoft’s desktop apps.
As the first one-off Office package since 2021, it gives people the opportunity to enjoy the latest versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote on one device without committing to a monthly or annual subscription. You also don’t need an internet connection to use it.
Many people have supported Microsoft’s decision to release this streamlined non-subscription offering, stating that the full Microsoft 365 package is unnecessarily clunky and hogs too much of a computer’s resources. Also, with Office 2024 being frozen in time, companies and individual users don’t have to spend time and money adapting to software upgrades.
I’m never sure whether Microsoft’s ideas will be well-received by customers. However, on this occasion, they seem to have got it right.
5 Copilot Added to Microsoft 365 Subscription
Despite Copilot’s progress, in November, Microsoft announced plans to pull the plug on its mandatory $20 Copilot Pro fee for users in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Instead, these customers now have automatic access to Copilot features once they update their package to the latest version.
But there’s a catch. Microsoft added to its announcement that subscribers in these regions would see a small increase in their subscription fees, even if they don’t plan to use Copilot at all.
Microsoft justified this U-turn by saying, “Productivity and creativity are at the heart of Microsoft 365, and with Copilot integration across our apps, you’re now equipped with an AI companion that doesn’t just make your work easier—it makes your work more effective and fun.”
On the other hand, skeptics (me included) suspect that Microsoft made this move because the company’s plan to charge an additional monthly fee for Copilot fell flat on its face, and not as many people were purchasing Copilot as Microsoft had expected.
We now wait to see whether this change will apply to other nations in 2025.
6 Significant Changes in Excel
Aside from Microsoft’s focus on Copilot, one of the tech giant’s priorities this year seems to have been the continuous improvement of Microsoft Excel. Some long-awaited updates were eventually rolled out to customers in 2024, including the ability to automatically sync data from Microsoft Forms to Microsoft Excel for the web, and the addition of checkboxes that can drive and be driven by existing Excel functions.
Microsoft Excel also gained some new functions, having passed Insider vetting either in 2023 or throughout 2024. For example, PIVOTBY and GROUPBY, which were introduced to Microsoft 365 customers in September, are powerful functions that allow you to perform data aggregations.
Two months later, Microsoft added Regular Expression (REGEX) functions, enabling spreadsheeters to “check if a string contains a certain pattern, extract substrings that match the pattern, or replace substrings that match the pattern.”
On a more technical level, Microsoft began its public roll-out of Python in Excel after introducing the public preview in 2023. Its aim is to integrate Python, one of the most popular programming languages, with Excel, filling the absence of the ability to “make those two worlds work together.”
The addition of Python to Excel means you can manipulate data in the familiar Excel environment using Python’s libraries and plots, before using Excel’s tools to refine the outputs.
Undoubtedly, Copilot will be at the center of Microsoft’s attention in 2025, with the company announcing that it is set to replace the Microsoft 365 icon with a Copilot-based design. However, only time will tell what’s in store.