OpenAI has rolled out native ChatGPT integrations for Microsoft's Office apps, letting users tap the AI assistant directly inside Excel and PowerPoint through a sidebar, without switching tabs or copy-pasting content back and forth. The company has confirmed that ChatGPT for Excel and PowerPoint are now generally available.
Inside Excel, ChatGPT can build spreadsheets from scratch, analyse data spread across multiple tabs and formulas, update existing workbooks, explain how a calculation works, and set up repeatable workflows for recurring tasks.
In PowerPoint, the assistant can generate a full slide deck from notes or source material, improve an existing presentation, summarise a deck's overall story, and turn raw data into presentation-ready slides. Where supported, it preserves the deck's editable slide structure, meaning users can keep working on the output manually afterward rather than dealing with a flattened export.
Getting started is straightforward: install the ChatGPT app from the Microsoft Marketplace, open it from the Office Add-in sidebar in Excel or PowerPoint, and sign in using the OpenAI account linked to your ChatGPT plan. Once installed, the assistant appears as a persistent side panel that can be opened alongside the document being worked on.
The integration is available to Business, Enterprise, Edu and K-12 users globally, and also extends to individual ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro subscribers. Usage in Excel and PowerPoint draws from the same token-based credit system as other agentic ChatGPT features, with a typical task consuming anywhere between 20 and 110 credits depending on its size and complexity.
OpenAI has flagged some current limitations. Certain advanced PowerPoint features — including native chart editing, deeper shape and formatting controls, animations, complex templates and custom font handling — are not yet supported. The company has also cautioned users to review AI-made changes carefully, since ChatGPT can edit or delete existing spreadsheet and presentation content, and to independently verify important numbers, formulas, citations and claims before relying on them.
It's worth noting that conversations inside the Word, Excel and PowerPoint add-ins run separately from regular ChatGPT.com chats and don't sync with a user's broader chat history; memory features are also not available within the add-ins.
The rollout positions ChatGPT as a direct alternative to Microsoft Copilot. Unlike Copilot, which is built into Microsoft 365, the new ChatGPT add-in lets users access OpenAI's AI directly within Office apps without requiring a Copilot licence.
