How to Use Microsoft Copilot: A Complete Practical Guide

Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s AI assistant, powered by OpenAI models, and it runs across more surfaces than most people realize. We tested it across Windows 11, the Edge sidebar, the web app, and Microsoft 365 desktop apps to put together this practical walkthrough.

#Where Do You Find Microsoft Copilot?

Copilot shows up in more places than ChatGPT does, which is both useful and a little confusing. Here’s where each version lives.

copilot.microsoft.com is the main web app. No installation needed. Sign in with a Microsoft account for chat history and image generation, or use it without signing in for basic Q&A.

Windows 11 taskbar: Press Win + C and Copilot opens as a sidebar on your desktop. In our testing on a Windows 11 PC, this takes under two seconds and keeps Copilot alongside whatever app you’re already using. Microsoft’s Learn documentation confirms that the Win + C shortcut is the fastest access point for desktop users.

Microsoft Edge sidebar: Click the Copilot icon in the top-right corner of Edge, or press Ctrl+Shift+. to open it. This version is specifically designed to read the page you’re viewing, so you can ask questions about an article, summarize a PDF, or get definitions without switching tabs.

The Microsoft 365 Copilot mobile app: iOS and Android. Chat-first layout, redesigned in 2026.

Inside Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams: This is Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is a separate, paid tier. We cover the differences in the plans section below.

#How to Start a Chat and Get Useful Answers

The basics work exactly like any other AI chat tool. Type a prompt, press Enter, and Copilot responds. The quality of the answer depends heavily on how specific your prompt is.

According to Microsoft’s prompt writing guidance, a strong prompt has four parts: goal, context, expected format, and source material. All four aren’t always necessary. But skipping context is the most common reason a first-pass response misses the mark, so even a sentence of background helps. The format instruction (“give me a table” or “keep it under 100 words”) is the other easy win.

For web search answers: Copilot cites its sources inline with numbered footnotes. Click any citation to see the source webpage. That visibility makes it more useful than raw ChatGPT for research tasks where you need to verify where information comes from, not just read a confident-sounding summary.

For conversational tasks like brainstorming, drafting, or explaining a concept: just describe what you need. Copilot holds context across multiple turns in a session, so you can refine the output with follow-up prompts like “make this shorter” or “write it in a more casual tone.”

When we tried the follow-up flow on several writing tasks, each refinement updated only the relevant section rather than regenerating the whole response, which saves time compared to starting over.

#How to Draft and Rewrite Text

Copilot’s text generation is where most people spend their time. Here are the practical workflows that actually save time.

Quick drafts: Type “Write a [type of content] about [topic] that is [tone/length].” For email drafts specifically, the more context you provide (recipient, relationship, goal), the less editing the output needs. We drafted a project update email in about 30 seconds with a detailed prompt, compared to nearly 3 minutes writing from scratch.

Rewriting existing text: Paste your draft, then ask Copilot to “rewrite this to be more concise,” “change the tone to professional,” or “simplify the language.” The rewrite shows up as a new block, so your original stays visible for comparison.

Copilot in Word (requires Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription): Select text or open the Copilot panel, type what you want. According to Microsoft’s support documentation for Word, providing a reference file such as an existing document or meeting notes lets Copilot generate drafts that match your organization’s terminology and structure. That’s a meaningful difference from a generic blank-slate draft.

For more on how AI writing tools compare, see our ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Gemini comparison.

#How to Summarize Documents and Webpages

Summarization is one of Copilot’s strongest use cases, and the Edge integration makes it unusually convenient.

Summarizing a webpage in Edge: Open the page, press Ctrl+Shift+. to open the Copilot sidebar, and type “Summarize this page.” Copilot reads the current tab’s content and returns a structured summary with key points. In our testing on several long-form articles, the summaries captured the main argument without hallucinating details that weren’t in the source.

Summarizing a PDF in Edge: Open the PDF in Edge, open the sidebar, and ask for a summary. Faster than copying text into a separate window.

Summarizing a Word document (Microsoft 365 Copilot): Open the document and Copilot can auto-generate a summary at the top. Microsoft’s documentation states that documents need at least 200 words for automatic summary generation, and the document must be saved in OneDrive or SharePoint for the feature to trigger.

In the web app: Paste a chunk of text and ask “What are the key points from this?” or “Summarize this in three bullet points.” Works for any content you can paste in.

#How to Generate Images with Copilot

Copilot generates images using DALL-E through the Designer integration. The free tier includes daily image generation credits; paid plans raise the limit.

To generate an image: Go to copilot.microsoft.com, click the image icon in the prompt bar (or type “Create an image of…”), describe what you want, and Copilot sends the request to Designer. You’ll get four variations to choose from.

Prompt tips that actually work: Be specific about style, subject, and mood. “A flat-vector illustration of a laptop with a glowing AI interface, dark background, teal accents” produces a more usable result than “an AI laptop picture.”

In our testing across a dozen image prompts, adding a style directive (“in the style of a watercolor painting,” “photorealistic,” “minimal line drawing”) consistently improved output relevance.

The Designer tool at designer.microsoft.com offers more controls (canvas size, background removal, and editing tools) if you want to go beyond the basic generation flow. Image generation with Copilot is also available in the mobile app via the same prompt interface.

#Is Microsoft Copilot Free? Understanding the Plans

This is the part that trips most people up. The three tiers are actually quite different in what they include.

Free Copilot (copilot.microsoft.com): Available to anyone, no account needed for basic use. Sign in with a personal Microsoft account for chat history, image creation with daily limits, and voice interaction. This is the tier most personal users will start with.

Microsoft 365 Personal and Family: Adding a Microsoft 365 personal subscription gives higher usage limits on advanced Copilot features and adds Copilot to the desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook for the subscription owner. For a person who already pays for Microsoft 365 for Office apps, this is what unlocks the AI layer inside those apps.

Microsoft 365 Copilot (business): The enterprise tier for organizations. It adds enterprise data protection, Work IQ, Copilot in Teams meetings, and IT admin controls. Check Microsoft’s pricing page directly since per-user pricing changes.

The free tier works well for personal tasks, research, drafting, and image generation within daily limits. The paid tiers matter most when you need Copilot to work with your own files and calendar inside Microsoft 365 apps at scale.

For comparison with other AI subscriptions, see our piece on whether ChatGPT Plus is worth it.

#Copilot vs. ChatGPT: Key Differences

Both run on OpenAI models (Copilot uses GPT-4 and GPT-5 series under the hood), but the experience differs in meaningful ways.

Copilot connects directly to Microsoft’s ecosystem. A business account gives it access to your OneDrive, Outlook calendar, Teams transcripts, and SharePoint content, so answers draw from your actual work data rather than just the public web. ChatGPT doesn’t have that Microsoft 365 integration built in, though it does offer its own plugin and tool-use capabilities for other services.

Copilot returns cited web sources by default. Ask a factual question, and you get numbered footnotes to click. ChatGPT’s standard mode doesn’t show sources unless you specifically use the search feature, which isn’t turned on by default for all users and subscription tiers.

ChatGPT’s interface is arguably simpler for pure conversational AI tasks, and ChatGPT Projects lets you organize conversations with custom instructions per project. We cover that feature in depth in our guide on how to use ChatGPT Projects.

Image generation is free in Copilot.

If you’re picking the right tool for your workflow, our overview of how to use Gemini Gems covers Google’s competing feature.

#What Can Copilot Do in Microsoft 365 Apps?

If you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, here’s what Copilot does inside the apps you already use.

Word: Draft new documents from a prompt, rewrite selected sections, summarize long documents, and ask questions about the document’s content. The Legal Agent in Word introduced in 2026 handles contract review and redlining for legal workflows.

Excel: Generate formulas from plain-language descriptions, highlight trends in your data, create charts, and answer questions about what the numbers mean. In our testing on a data set with several hundred rows, asking Copilot “which category has the highest variance?” returned a correct answer with the formula used, not just a number.

Outlook: Draft email replies, summarize long email threads, and flag action items from a message. The most time-saving use we found was summarizing a 40-email thread in a crowded inbox, done in about 10 seconds.

Teams: Copilot summarizes meeting transcripts, generates action items, and answers questions about what was discussed. It requires meeting transcription to be enabled.

For AI tools built specifically for technical work, see our guide to the best AI tools for coding.

#Bottom Line

Start with the free web app at copilot.microsoft.com if you want to try Copilot before committing to anything. The Edge sidebar is the fastest way to add AI to your existing browser workflow, and it works on any page you’re already reading.

If you’re already a Microsoft 365 subscriber, check whether your current plan includes Copilot access before buying a separate upgrade. Many users already have it and don’t know. The business tier makes sense when you need Copilot grounded in your organization’s actual files and communication, not just the web.

#Frequently Asked Questions