Prompting in Microsoft Copilot

Copilot inside Microsoft 365 differs from a standalone chatbot in the one way that changes how you ask: it can see the document, the spreadsheet or the meeting you are working in. That material is its context, meaning everything the model can look at while it writes an answer. The general prompting basics and the prompt gallery still apply. What follows is the Copilot-specific part.

Point it at the right thing

Copilot is at its best when it is certain which file or thread you mean. In Word it acts on the document you have open. In the Copilot app it can reach anything you have access to, which is more choice than it handles reliably on its own. Name the file: type / and pick it from the list, rather than describing it and hoping the right one comes back.

The same goes for meetings and threads. “Summarise the Tuesday planning meeting” beats “summarise my meeting”, and it is quicker to type than the correction you would otherwise be typing a minute later.

In Word: draft, then shape

Ask for a first draft from a short brief (“draft a one-page project update from these bullet points”), then refine it where it sits: “make the tone warmer”, “cut it to half a page”, “add a risks section”. You are editing rather than starting from a blank page, which is where the time actually goes.

In Excel: describe the outcome, then read the formula

Copilot can suggest formulas and summarise data, and it can misread a messy column completely. Ask for what you want in words (“flag rows where spend is over budget”), then read the formula it produces before trusting anything built on top of it. Excel’s Copilot has grown into a proper analysis assistant, and it has a guide of its own for the heavier features.

In Teams and Outlook: catching up

The strongest everyday use is recall. “Summarise what I missed in this thread” and “list the decisions and who owns each” are quick to ask and easy to check against the source sitting right there. Meeting recap only works if the meeting was transcribed, and whether transcription happens by default is a setting your organisation made without asking you.

Copilot’s advantage is that it can see your work. Its risk is that it saw the wrong piece of your work. Check the file it acted on, not just the answer.

Mind the data boundary

Because Copilot reads real work files, it is worth knowing where that data goes before pointing it at anything sensitive. Your prompt and the file both leave your device to be processed, even while they stay inside your organisation’s own area of Microsoft’s cloud.