Overview
This post shares 10 practical Microsoft 365 Copilot tips for Outlook, Teams and PowerPoint in 2026. It also explains which licence you need and how to write prompts that work.
Key Takeaways
- Microsoft 365 Copilot helps most with summarising, drafting and catching up, so start there.
- Tips that read your emails, meetings and chats need a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.
- Copilot Chat comes at no extra cost with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions, but it works from the web and files you upload.
- Specific prompts get better answers, so say who, what, when and in what format.
- A UK government trial found a self-reported saving of 26 minutes a day on average.
- Always check Copilot’s output before you send or share it.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Tips: What Has Changed since 2025
The original post gave ten tips and four statistics. We kept the tips, because they still work, and we updated the detail.
Statistics that named no source, such as “12% faster” and “30 minutes less per week”, came out. The UK government trial stays, because it has a named source. We also added the licence rules and a prompt guide, and we replaced the old closing wording.
What You Need Before You Start
Not every tip works with every version of Copilot. Microsoft’s own pricing page shows how the products differ.
| Product | What it does | Licensing |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat | Web-grounded chat with enterprise data protection | Included at no additional cost with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | AI in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, grounded in your work data | Paid per-user add-on, so check Microsoft’s current price |
Tips 1 to 10 below read your emails, meetings, chats and files, so they need the paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. Copilot Chat can still help with web research and files that you upload. See Microsoft’s pricing page for current details.
1. Summarise Long Email Threads in Outlook
The Tip: Do not waste time scrolling. Select the Summarise button in Outlook to see key points and next steps.
Tecvia’s Deep Dive: Copilot identifies decisions, questions, action items and different viewpoints in a long conversation. Each point links back to the original email, so you can check the full context in seconds. This helps when you return from leave, join a project midway or prepare for a meeting that people discussed by email.
2. Recap Teams Meetings Even If You Join Late
The Tip: Join a meeting in progress and type “What did I miss?” for an instant summary.
Tecvia’s Deep Dive: This removes the awkwardness of interrupting the flow to ask for a recap. Copilot summarises the key points, decisions and questions raised so far. For this to work, your meeting needs transcription or recording turned on, because Copilot uses it as its source. Your organisation controls that setting.
3. Summarise Your Week
The Tip: Ask Copilot to pull your recent emails, meetings and chats into a weekly wrap-up.
Tecvia’s Deep Dive: Try this prompt: “Summarise my last week, with key emails sent, meeting decisions and pending actions”. Copilot scans your activity across Outlook and Teams, and builds one report. That gives you a clear view of your priorities, which suits Friday reflection or Monday planning.
4. Generate Meeting Notes in Teams
The Tip: Stop taking notes while you talk. Let Copilot capture the meeting, then ask for a summary afterwards.
Tecvia’s Deep Dive: You can be fully present in the discussion. After the meeting, ask “What were the main decisions?” or ask Copilot to draft a follow-up email listing the actions.
5. Draft Emails in Outlook
The Tip: Give Copilot a short prompt, and let it write the first draft of repetitive emails.
Tecvia’s Deep Dive: Be specific. Instead of “apology email”, try “Draft a friendly email to client ABC apologising for the report delay and promising delivery by Friday”. More context gives a more accurate draft, so you avoid a blank page.
6. Start Each Day with a Daily Brief
The Tip: Begin your day by asking Copilot, “What do I need to know today?”
Tecvia’s Deep Dive: Customise the request. Ask, “Show me my top three unread emails, today’s meetings and any overdue tasks”. This helps you prioritise before the day’s interruptions begin.
7. Find What Someone Said Earlier
The Tip: Ask Copilot to find a specific message, comment or file.
Tecvia’s Deep Dive: Copilot understands natural language, so it handles questions that a keyword search cannot. Try “Find the message where Sarah confirmed the Q3 budget”. Copilot shows the message, the date and the context around it. A search that once took an hour now takes seconds.
8. Brainstorm Smarter
The Tip: Ask Copilot for ideas for a report, blog post or training session.
Tecvia’s Deep Dive: Use it as a springboard. For a sustainability presentation, you could ask for five creative angles on reducing your carbon footprint. You can also ask it to outline a project plan for an internal wellbeing initiative. Treat the results as a starting point, because your own knowledge makes them good.
9. Create Presentations from Documents
The Tip: Turn a Word document into a PowerPoint deck.
Tecvia’s Deep Dive: Open the Copilot pane in PowerPoint and tell it which document to use. For example, ask for a five-slide deck based on the Q4 marketing report, with an agenda, key achievements and challenges. Copilot pulls out the main points and suggests a design, and then you refine the story and add your personal touch.
10. Get Smart Follow-Ups After Meetings
The Tip: After a Teams call, ask Copilot to summarise action items and decisions.
Tecvia’s Deep Dive: Specific requests work best. After the summary, ask for a table that lists each task, its owner and the due date mentioned in the meeting. You can copy that table into Planner, a SharePoint list or a follow-up email, so everyone knows their next step.
How to Write Better Copilot Prompts
Microsoft advises building a prompt from four parts. Include them whenever you can.
- Goal: say what you want Copilot to produce.
- Context: explain why you need it and who it is for.
- Source: point to the email, file or meeting it should use.
- Expectations: state the format, length and tone.
For example, ask for “a short, friendly summary of the Q3 budget thread for the finance team, as five bullet points”. That beats “summarise this”.
Real Results from Real Users
The Government Digital Service ran a cross-government trial of Microsoft 365 Copilot from September to December 2024, with 20,000 civil servants in 12 organisations. Participants reported saving an average of 26 minutes a day. More than a third reported saving over half an hour, according to a UK Parliament statement.
These figures are self-reported. A later HMRC trial adjusted its self-reported savings down by about 20%. It found around 60 minutes a week per person, according to the GOV.UK evaluation. Treat any time saving as an estimate, and measure your own.
Use Copilot Safely
- Check every summary and draft before you act on it.
- Remember that Copilot only sees what you have permission to see.
- Keep sensitive customer and financial data to approved tools and policies.
- Ask your IT team which meetings it records or transcribes.
Our posts on common AI myths and why most teams are not using Copilot properly explain more, so read them before you roll Copilot out.
Make Copilot Part of Your Day
You do not need to master every feature at once. Start small, and build the habit.
- This week: ask Copilot for your daily brief each morning.
- Next week: use it to summarise one long email thread that you have been avoiding.
- The week after: have it draft a routine email.
Build these habits gradually, and measure what you save. If you also use Business Central, our guides to Chat with Copilot and ten ways Copilot helps SMEs show the same ideas inside your ERP.
What This Means for Your Business
Copilot rewards people who ask clear questions and check the answers. A licence alone does not change habits, so plan training, and agree where each AI tool fits.
Our comparison of Copilot vs ChatGPT helps you choose the right tool for each job. A separate guide to agentic AI in ERP looks at what comes next.
Get Help with Microsoft 365 Copilot
Getting value from Microsoft 365 needs more than a licence. Tecvia offers user adoption workshops, best-practice guides and ongoing support. Get in touch with Tecvia to discuss how we can help your team.
You can also explore our Copilot capabilities, meet our support team, or visit our page for IT Directors and Managers. See how Business Central supports your sector. We serve Manufacturing and Engineering, Food and Beverage, Distribution and Wholesale, Life Sciences, and Medical Devices and Technology businesses.
FAQs
Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI assistant built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. It uses your work data to summarise, draft and answer questions. You need a paid per-user licence.
Copilot Chat is web-grounded chat with enterprise data protection, and Microsoft includes it at no additional cost with eligible subscriptions. Microsoft 365 Copilot adds AI inside your apps and grounds answers in your work data, and it is a paid add-on.
Open the long thread in Outlook and select the Summarise button at the top. Copilot lists the key points, decisions and next steps, and each point links back to the original email. Check the summary before you act on it.
Copilot needs a transcript or recording to summarise a meeting. If your organisation has turned those off, Copilot cannot recap it. Ask your IT team which settings apply to your meetings.
A UK government trial of 20,000 civil servants reported an average self-reported saving of 26 minutes a day. HMRC’s later trial reported around 60 minutes a week after it adjusted its figures. Your results will differ, so measure them.
Copilot only accesses data that you already have permission to see. That is why access permissions matter. Review who can see sensitive files before you roll Copilot out widely.
State your goal, give context, point to the source and describe the format you want. For example, ask for a five-bullet summary of a named thread, written for a named team. Specific prompts get better results than short ones.
No. Microsoft 365 Copilot works in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. Copilot in Business Central works inside the ERP and comes with your Business Central licence. They are separate products with different licensing.
