Microsoft has got the internet confused, again. Over the past couple of days posts on Reddit, Hacker News, and X have claimed Microsoft has rebranded Microsoft Office to Microsoft 365 Copilot. As much as Microsoft loves to shove its Copilot branding everywhere, Office hasn’t been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app.”
The confusion comes from Microsoft’s own Office.com domain, which for the past year has acted as a way to push businesses and consumers to use the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. This app is a hub app that provides access to Copilot, as well as all the Office apps. Microsoft used to call this app simply Office, before the company rebranded Office to Microsoft 365 in 2022.
If you visit Office.com you’ll see a big welcome to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, and a note from Microsoft that would confuse anyone not following the company’s confusing branding: “The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office)…”
That mention of “formerly Office” is Microsoft referring to the very old Office app that launched in 2019 as a way to try and convince people to use online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Until a year ago it used to be called the Microsoft 365 app. Microsoft then announced it was rebranding its Microsoft 365 app in November 2024 to a Copilot one, which I and everyone else were very confused at. The new app icon and name — Microsoft 365 Copilot — then rolled out on January 15th last year to Windows, iOS, and Android users.
I’m not sure why the internet has only just discovered these changes a year later, but the actual suite of Office apps is still a subscription plan called Microsoft 365. Nothing has changed with this branding since 2022. Heck, if you want to be even more confused by Microsoft’s branding choices then you can go ahead and purchase Microsoft Office 2024, a standalone version of the Office suite without all the cloud features and latest updates you get with a Microsoft 365 subscription.
“We have not made any recent naming changes to our Office apps. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint — the Office apps within the Microsoft 365 productivity suite — remain unchanged,” says Gareth Oystyk, senior director of marketing for Microsoft 365, in a statement to The Verge. “In November 2022, we renamed only the Office ‘hub’ app for web and mobile to the Microsoft 365 app. In January 2025, we updated it to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app to reflect its role in bringing Copilot and Microsoft 365 productivity experiences together in one place.”
Now that you’re up with all of Microsoft’s latest Office branding, I’m sure it won’t be long until the company rebrands Copilot again in the most Microsoft way possible.
Update, January 6th: Article updated with a statement from Microsoft.
