Copilot in Office
Microsoft's AI assistant built directly into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
By Thiago Lourenço Martins
An expert colleague who lives inside your Office
Copilot in Office is Microsoft's AI assistant integrated directly into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Think of it as a highly capable assistant sitting right next to you: you describe what you need in plain language and it writes, analyzes, summarizes or formats — without opening any other tool. The key difference from a standalone chatbot: it reads the document or spreadsheet already open on your screen and acts directly inside them.
Important note: Copilot at copilot.microsoft.com is free but works as an independent chat. Copilot inside Office apps — the one that reads your spreadsheet and writes in your document — requires a paid Microsoft 365 subscription.
The 3-hour reconciliation that took 20 minutes
Finance professionals spend hours every week summing cells, writing formulas and formatting reports that are needed immediately. One decimal point error and the report comes back. Start over.
With Copilot in Excel, you describe what you want in plain language — "sum by category and create a summary table with percentages" — and it formulas, organizes and formats. You review the result, you don't build each step manually.
How professionals in different fields use it
Opens the transactions spreadsheet, activates Copilot and asks: "classify expenses by cost center and flag those over budget". Gets the analysis without writing a single formula.
Before a difficult meeting, asks Copilot in Outlook: "summarize this email thread and list the open action items". Arrives fully briefed — without reading every message.
In PowerPoint, pastes a results report text and asks: "turn this into a 5-slide presentation with the key data highlighted". The deck is ready to edit.
From opening Office to your first result
- Confirm your subscription includes Copilot
Go to microsoft365.com and sign in with your account. Copilot inside apps requires Microsoft 365 Personal, Family or Business — it is not available on the free plan.
if unsure, go to Account → Subscription to see what's included - Open the app: Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook
Available via the web at microsoft365.com or through the installed desktop app. Copilot features are the same in both versions.
- Click the "Copilot" button in the ribbon
In Word and PowerPoint, the button is on the "Home" tab, usually on the right side of the ribbon. In Excel, the Copilot button appears in the "Home" tab and also in the lower-right corner of the spreadsheet. In Outlook, it appears in the reading pane and in the email compose window.
if the button is missing, check Microsoft's official support for how to enable it - The Copilot panel opens on the right side
You will see a text field and suggested ready-to-use actions. This is where you type your request in natural language.
- Type what you need in plain language
In Excel: "Sum the values in column C grouped by category in column A." In Word: "Summarize this document in 5 bullet points." In PowerPoint: "Create a presentation on cost reduction with 6 slides."
in Excel, format your data as a table first (select the data and press Ctrl+T) for better Copilot analysis - Review and accept (or adjust) the result
Copilot shows the output and usually offers buttons like "Insert", "Keep" or "Try again". You decide what goes into the document — nothing is changed without your confirmation.
A ready-to-use request for Copilot in Excel
In this transactions spreadsheet, sum the values by category and create a summary table showing the total per category and the percentage of the overall total. Highlight in red any categories representing more than 15% of the total.
You get a formatted summary table with calculated percentages and high-impact categories already flagged — no formula writing required.
Tips & common mistakes
Do this
- In Excel, format your data as a table (Ctrl+T) before calling Copilot — without this, data analysis is limited or unavailable.
- In Word, select a specific section before opening Copilot — it works only on that text, keeping the rest of the document untouched.
- Use Excel's Chat mode for questions and analysis without risk of modifying your original data.
Avoid
- Copilot inside Office is not on the free plan. The version at copilot.microsoft.com is free, but it doesn't read your spreadsheets or documents — they are different products.
- There are monthly usage limits, even on paid plans. Very repetitive requests or processing very large files can exhaust your quota before the month ends.
- Copilot does not access data outside the open file — it won't browse the internet or look through other documents saved locally (unless they are on OneDrive/SharePoint).
A tutorial in Portuguese to go further
* Independent suggestion, chosen for content quality. We have no relationship or sponsorship with this channel.
Try it now with a spreadsheet you already use
Open Excel with a spreadsheet from your daily work. Format the data as a table (select the data and press Ctrl+T). Click the Copilot button and ask: "What are the 3 largest values in this column and what percentage of the total do they represent?"
You succeeded if you get the answer without writing any formula, in under 20 seconds.
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