Microsoft 365 Copilot Tutorial – Beginner’s Guide (2025)

I'll be showing an end to-end tutorial

of the Microsoft 365 C-pilot. There's

been a major revamp recently replacing

Office.com and I'll be covering Copilot

Chat, search AI creation and design

agents, plus the big announcement that

Copilot Chat is now coming directly into

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the other

apps at no extra cost. So, this video

applies to any M365 subscriber. So,

let's get started. The first step is go

to microsoft365.com.

This used to be Office.com. It's the

same thing. And we're just going to sign

in. This is like signing into the old

office.com. And you're greeted with the

M365 Copilot app. This is the redesigned

office.com is how you can think about

it. You land on our chat page here. On

the lefth hand rail, you're going to see

search agents conversations pages

create, and apps. And I'm going to go

through all this stuff in detail to show

you just how it works. In the upper

right, you've got some of the options

about chats and trying GPT5.

If you want to collapse the pane, now

you've just got a pure co-pilot chat

experience and I will expand it. Now,

some of you might be asking, hey, where

did all of my apps go? Word, Excel,

PowerPoint, OneNote. I'll first just

show right here as apps. All of your

apps live right here. Now, if I want to

pin some of them, they're going to show

up on the left here. So, for example, I

want to pin Outlook. I want to pin

Teams. We'll pin Excel. And if I want to

say, hey, where's OneNote? I'm going to

go into all apps. Got all the apps right

here. Clipchamp, calendar, forms, lists,

and there's my favorite friend, OneNote.

We're going to pin that as well. So,

it's really easy to have all your apps.

If you want to go down here, you can

find even more, and there's different

categories utilities education etc.

So, lots of fun to explore in the apps.

Now, also, if you go to install apps,

this is where you download all your

Microsoft 365 desktop apps. You also

have a co-pilot desktop app, and I'm

going to download this one and show what

it looks like briefly. So, there's a

whole Copilot app that looks just like

this one here. So, here's my Windows

taskbar and I've actually downloaded it

and I've pinned this is a Windows app.

When I click it, you're going to see it

looks very similar. So, this is just the

Windows version. If you want to have it

pinned and always accessible right in

your taskbar, you can rightclick and pin

that right there. But I'll just go back

to the web app. Now, lastly, I can

download the Copilot mobile app. So,

right here, if I click this, I've got a

QR code. I can easily get that for both

iOS and Android. And we'll just close

this. Now, let's go back into chat. So,

this is our Copilot chat experience. And

this is similar to things like chat GPT,

but this is the M365 work version of

that chatbot. It's powered by OpenAI's

leading technology. And I'll show just

in a second how you can even turn on

GPT5. But one of the nice things about

Copilot Chat in the upper right, you're

going to see this little shield and that

is enterprise data protection. That

means all the prompting, all the

information that goes on here is not

trained on the big models out there.

This is safe and secure and compliant.

We don't train on your data. We don't

train on your information. Now, I can

even say try GPT5. This is the latest

OpenAI model. GPT5 is the supercharged

large language model. And Copilot Chat

really just is a large language model

that we're integrating right into all

your M365 experience. There's a bunch of

starter prompts right here that it's

got. I can even see more. So, if you're

wondering, what are the types of things

I can do with Copilot Chat? Lots of

great options here. I'll see less. Well,

here's an example. Help me prepare for a

review. And I click this. Now, there's a

forward slash. So, start typing to

search. Here's a bunch of different

documents that I already have. And if I

didn't see it in this list, I could

start typing.

It's going to search. Oh, that's the one

I'm looking for. DG2000 product

overview. So, it adds that Word

document. And here's a nice little

prompt. Help me prepare. I'll just hit

go. Now co-pilot kicks into gear.

Great. Structured response, potential

concerns from business leaders. Lot of

great information right here. So that

was pretty nice. Now I have sources. So

this is the source that it got from. So

it's always going to source what it just

talked about. Create a polished summary

document. So it gives me some other

suggestions. But what I'm going to do is

I'm going to start a new chat and click

this. This time I'm going to expand and

I'm going to say list key points from a

file. Okay. And again it gives me a

forward slash right here. And you can

always type forward slash to search for

a document. Lots of more recent

documents. I'm going to say from the ad

goals QT series list the key points.

That looks pretty good. Now I'm going to

have a little fun here. Pretend that

Bill Lumbberg from Office Space is

writing up this list. So I'm going to

formulate a little differently. Okay.

It's going to write it up in the style

of Bill Lumbberg and corporate flare. A

little uh pun there for those of you

that like office space. Yeah, we're

going to go ahead and keep riding the

success of the QT series. Brand loyalty

is kind of a big deal. So, it's made

this a little more fun. It says, "Hey,

do you want me to turn this into a memo

or an email in a TPS format?" Yes. Add a

TPS report section. I click that. It

adds it here. All right.

So, you get the idea. It's really easy

to reference your Office documents just

by adding a forward slash like that. And

if you want to upload a file, maybe the

file is not in the list, it's not on one

drive. I can just click upload from this

device and upload something directly in

there. We also handle images in co-pilot

chat. So I'm going to go up here, start

a new chat. Please create a cartoon

style image of Bill Lumbberg holding a

TPS report and a red stapler. Hey, check

that out. I'm really liking that Bill

Lumbberg. Now I'll just click on this to

open in a bigger view. Hey, there he is.

TPS report, red stapler. I can download

this. Add to pages. I'll show that in a

bit. Copy it. You can even give it a

thumbs up or down. So, I like this. Hey,

that's great. Send a little feedback to

the system. If you like stuff or you

don't like stuff, you can give it a

thumbs up or thumbs down. And we'll go

new chat again. Now, if I want to add

something directly from plus, I can

upload images. I can attach cloud files.

I can add my work content. Kind of like

we referenced before. This pulls it up

just like the slash. And the last thing

I'll show in the basic chat operations

is our prompt library. If you want a

full prompt library, you can view

prompts here. And I've got all sorts of

different prompts. So, these can give

you ideas on how to use chat and all of

your work data to be more efficient. And

you can save prompts as well. So, this

is our prompt gallery and our prompt

library. And we'll close this. All of my

conversations are stored on the left

right here. And if I want to go back to

a different conversation, I just click

and it'll switch to it. I can also

rename these chats or I can delete these

chats. So maybe I want to delete this

one right here and hit delete. Another

new feature is that Copilot now has

memory. So in this case I'm going to say

I work at Initech as the assistant to

the regional manager. I focus on TPS

reports. This is my job. So I'm going to

say please add to memory. And what's

going to happen is it's going to add

this to Copilot's memory. Okay, got it.

I've saved that info. And note there's a

little memory updated here. And if I

hover, it shows Alex Wilbur works at

Initech as the assistant the regional

manager. I can even manage my memories.

So right here, these are different

memories that it's going to add so it

can remember things about me. So I can

close this. If you want to get to this

normally, you can go up here and choose

settings. And you can see custom

instructions and co-pilot memory. So

custom instructions is provide copilot

with details on how you operate. So I'm

going to go here and it says include

details about your interest,

preferences, goals, or any other things.

So we can put that in here. I'm really

interested in TPS reports, red staplers,

and making my boss happy. Please respond

in the style of Bill Lumbberg for all

answers and throw in some office space

references. And we'll save this and go

back. And I'm going to add one more

thing to memory. We'll close this. My

birthday is November 5th. Please add to

memory. There we go. So, memory has been

updated. The last thing I'll show with

Copilot Chat is the big announcement

that it's come to Word, Excel,

PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. This

is going to be built into all the apps,

no matter what subscription you have.

That means anyone who has M365 and

commercial or education. Let's see how

that works. Okay, I'm here in Word and I

have a document. On the home tab, you're

going to see this co-pilot icon. If you

don't see it yet, it's still available

to insiders, so it might take a bit to

roll out, but I'll click here. And this

is that same co-pilot chat you saw

before. Got the enterprise data

protection. I have the hamburger menu

that'll actually show me all my chats

and other information like I had before.

Now I'm going to do a quick thing which

is please remember that I like things

concise and update memory. And it says

memory updated just like we saw in the

other chat and it's still using that

Bill Lumbberg. Okay, all my sources are

there and it has some suggestions. Now I

want to ask it to give an executive

summary of this document. Now, with the

Copilot chat that's available to

everyone, it can see the document, but

it can't go back and forth and insert

things automatically. That takes the

more advanced $30 subscription, but this

is the one available to everyone. So,

I'll hit go. Okay, there's that

executive summary. And at the bottom, I

can just say add to doc or copy. So, I'm

just going to say copy. We'll go right

here and paste. And there's my executive

summary. Let's go over to Excel. Okay,

I'm in Excel home tab. I already have

the co-pilot chat open. There's the

button right there. I'm just going to

paste. Can you generate three useful

charts for me? Don't need to tell it

anything else. It can see the Excel

sheet.

All right. There are some charts.

Department distribution, approval

requirements by department, card type

usage. Hey, those are all pretty

interesting. In this case, I'll just

copy. We'll go on to Excel. And there,

there's my card type usage. Let's go

over to PowerPoint. I'm here in

PowerPoint, and I have a deck all about

the office space. But I have a slide

here about Bill Lumbberg's management

style. And I need to have a nice image

for him. So, let's just ask PowerPoint

to do that. A fun image of Bill Lumbberg

holding a TPS report and his coffee cup.

Hey, there's Bill Lumbberg. He's got his

TPS report and his coffee cup. Now, I'm

just going to go here and drag it onto

my screen. Looking good. I could design

it up and have lots of fun. But it's

very easy to do things like that. I

could even say generate speaker notes

for this slide. So, I've got a bunch of

speaker notes here. I can just copy

those and add them right into speaker

notes below. Copilot Chat is also

available in the new Outlook as well as

OneNote, but I'm not going to show those

today. We'll switch back to the main

M365 Copilot app. Now, let's go check

out search. This is just like the search

from office.com in the past, but now

it's supercharged with AI. So, here's a

bunch of great files and documents that

I've been working on. What's nice here

is these are little suggested prompts

next to any of these. So, for example,

if I say list action items out of this

branding elements PowerPoint, Copilot

Chat pops that in right there. It

analyzes the document and now it gives

me my Bill Lumbberg response, which is

kind of funny cuz I put that into my

instructions. And here are the action

items right here in a nice list that

came directly out of this branding

elements PowerPoint deck that I didn't

even have to open. Now, let's say I want

to track these. I've got a little option

right here. Drop this down. Add to

recent page. So pages, which are over

here on the left, these are basically

loop pages. They're copilot pages, but

they're loop behind the scenes. I'm

going to add this list to one of my

recent pages. So I've got my

brainstorming page here, and now it

opens up this page, and it pops

everything right there. So these are

actual loop tasks. So I can go through

and check these off when they're done.

So super handy. Copilot chat is over

here on the left. And then the top, if I

want to say, open this in Word, I can do

that. I can share this page with someone

else. So since it's loop, I can share

the page link or copy the component.

This can be embedded anywhere. It can be

in word and oneote and outlook and teams

or I can just say share this whole page

with another person. Okay, so the link

is copied and I can mail this to

someone. Now when I close this page,

copilot chat's going to pop back into

place. And now over here on pages, you

can see I've got my brainstorming page

and I have a different page here. And if

I want to see all pages, I could go

there. So back in search, I can search

for a file. We'll search for marketing.

I see marketing to your audience. And it

opens up that document really fast.

Let's go to the create module. Create

allows you to use AI to create all sorts

of images and designs. It's based on the

designer technology, but it's pulled

right in here into create. So I could

create an image, make an infographic,

poster. We even got forms creation. And

if you click more, there's a bunch of

options right here. So you can explore

some images and what you might want to

create. So in this case, we're going to

go simple. I'm going to do a product in

a scene. Place the product from the

reference image into a and instead of a

grassy meadow, we're going to change

this to alpine meadow scene with snow

and a vista in the background. And

there's some other options here. We're

just going to go click create. Okay,

it's added some snow into this meadow.

There's snow here. I could say transform

with AI. Maybe I say add more snow.

Maybe I make it cloudy. I have different

style options. If I want to edit right

here, it has some background removals,

object transformation, a ton of things

that are in the designer app that we

have. Cropping and rotating adjustments,

and all these other options. There's

some more AI suggestions that can be

made. You could add text on top. You can

mark it up. There's even layers. And

then you can download that image. But

for me, I'm just going to go right now

and hit back to the main create area.

And there are some filters on all these

different suggestions right here.

Teamwork celebrations. Maybe I want to

design an infographic. And I'm just

going to hit describe right here. Create

an infographic showing the TPS report to

stapler ratio in the office space. And

for the pallet, we're going to use this

one right here and click create.

Okay, here it is. It's my TPS report to

stapler ratio. I can edit this

infographic. I can do all the things

that I showed before over on the right

hand side, but for now, we're just going

to go back to the main create module

homepage. There's so much more to

explore in the create module. I just

gave you a quick tour designing posters,

creating stories, creating forms,

quizzes, all sorts of stuff. You can

even launch basic templates for all the

different Word, Excel, PowerPoints, etc.

But that should give you a good start.

Now, we'll flip over to agents. Now, I'm

here in the Windows version of the M365

Copilot app just to mix it up a bit. And

I've got agents over here on the left.

I'll expand this. And you can explore

agents or create agents. Let's go to

explore agents first. Now, what are

agents? They're powered to really help

you focus on specific tasks right here.

Complete complex tasks. So, you can see

researcher, analyst, idea coach,

learning coach, surveys, and there are

lots more you can explore. Some of these

you need the Microsoft 365 license, the

$30 a month license. That's things like

researcher and analyst to go very deep.

But I'm going to create my own agent

that's grounded against the web. So

looking at web data doesn't cost any

extra license. And we're going to go

here and click create agent. This

launches C-Pilot Studio. You have some

templates you can create right here. But

we're going to create our own agents.

And you can start by describing what you

want your agent to do. We'll go down

here. Please create an agent to help me

answer questions about Microsoft

Education. I work on the Microsoft

Education product team. And I get a lot

of questions. So, I hit go and it's

going to go and create some defaults for

me to start out with. Okay, it's set up.

Let's choose a name. I suggest the name

Microsoft Education Assistant. Would you

like to use this name? I actually want

to call it Ask Mike about edu. And we'll

hit go. Now, over on the right, it

updated it right here. And all these

default prompts got suggested by

Copilot, which is kind of nice. And you

can test this out as we'll do in a

second. Now, we'll refine what it does.

Well, I actually want to go in and

configure it myself. So, I'm going to go

up here and say configure. So, there's

the name. I've got details. I can go in

here. I can upload an icon. I can set

the accent color, etc. There's also the

description. So, answer in a clear and

professional manner. Maybe I want to

change it to that sounds like Dwight

Shroo from the office. Here are the

instructions that were defaulted by my

prompt. It says always communicate in

English. Maybe I change this to a

different language like Spanish or

Norwegian. I can customize those

instructions. Also, knowledge. So, I can

enter public website URLs that really

enhance that agent. And I'm going to add

a couple URLs here. Here's information

about the learn center for educators.

We'll add that as a URL. And I'll also

add the main Microsoft education site.

Now, both of these websites are right

here. And I'm going to say prioritize

the knowledge sources that I added when

my agent answers. So, that's switched

on. If you want to allow image

generation, I can turn that on. And here

are all the suggested prompts. So,

product details, general info, etc. And

those show up here. Maybe I say, tell me

about learning accelerators.

And it updates it right here. And I can

reorder these and how I want them to go.

So, maybe want to change this. And it

updates it immediately here. And I could

add more prompts or I could remove

prompts, but we'll just leave it like

that. You can even test it out before

you publish it. So, tell me about

learning accelerators. Let's hit go.

AskMike.edu. My agent is processing.

Great. A bunch of good information about

learning accelerators. You can see these

are sourced and it comes from the

Microsoft Education site. Okay, this

looks pretty good. This is my agent

asking Mike about edu. I think this is

ready to go. Let's click create. Okay,

my agent was successfully created. This

link only works for me. If I want to

share this link, I can change the

sharing settings. So maybe I want to

make this available to other people in

my org. sent them a link to my ask Mike

about edu agent publish it internally.

So hopefully that gets you started on

the basics of how agents work. I'm not

going to be going deeper into them. I'm

going to have a separate video on that

in the future. So watch for that.

Wrapping up, I hope that gives you a

nice tour of the full M365 co-pilot.

This is all the latest and greatest. And

again, this is available to all

commercial education and consumer

subscribers. You don't need to have the

extra upsell. Also, watch this channel.

I'm going to be putting out a lot more

co-pilot videos in the future. If you

want to keep up with all the latest

Microsoft updates and tips and tricks,

subscribe to my channel and then just

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