How to Use Copilot with Microsoft 365 Personal Plans (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Copilot with Microsoft 365 can help you get detailed answers to questions. It can help with complex research projects. It can analyze your documents, or create documents, pictures, and more. And you can use the Copilot Assistant inside of productivity applications, like Word, Excel, and Outlook. Hi, I'm Nick. I'm working with Kevin to bring you videos and tutorials that will help you be more productive. This is my complete tutorial all about Copilot for people with their own personal Microsoft 365 account. It's a longer video, but it's broken up into sections. You can use the YouTube chapter markers to skip right to the section you need. Microsoft subscriptions and the different versions of Copilot can be confusing. So let's run through a few details just to make sure you're watching the right tutorial. There is a free version of Copilot, which is great, but has some limitations. Then there are upgraded versions that are included with Microsoft 365. You can buy a Microsoft 365 subscription yourself as an individual, or some people have a subscription that is managed by their company or similar organization. This tutorial is for people with that individual subscription. If you want to learn the free version, or if you have a subscription from your company, I do have separate tutorial videos on this channel that cover those. But this video covers the features that you have if you purchase your own individual Microsoft 365 subscription. Now, even with individual plans, there are different subscription tiers. Microsoft 365 Personal is the starting tier, and it is a full subscription, which includes Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, several online services like OneDrive, and of course, Copilot features. This subscription includes most of the Copilot features we'll be covering in this video. If you purchase a family subscription, only the primary account holder for the family will have the Copilot features. And there is a higher tier called Microsoft 365 Premium, which includes a few upgraded Copilot features, including access to pre-made agents. We will see how those work in this video, but most of the Copilot features you'll use, and most of the features covered in this tutorial are included in the Baseline Personal account. So if you don't have a subscription yet, that may be the best place to start. You can always upgrade later. Now, once you have your subscription, where do you go to access the Copilot tools? Well, we have another layer here that can be a bit confusing, because your Microsoft 365 subscription allows you to work with two different versions of Copilot. Some features work the same in both versions, but there are some things that work in one, but not in the other. You may find that you use both versions depending on what you need at any given time, or you may just settle on one and stick with it. In this tutorial, we will work with both versions. One option is to go to copilot.microsoft.com. This is actually where you would go to access the completely free version of Copilot. And the official name of this version is simply Microsoft Copilot. But you can also sign in with your Microsoft 365 personal account. Click the sign in button on the left, choose continue with Microsoft and sign in. This site is a great way to work with the Copilot chat and it offers a very friendly, easy to use interface. We're mostly seeing the same features that you would see if you sign in with a free account, but your Microsoft 365 subscription does remove some usage limits and it enables a few extra features. Now, let's look at the other version. To access most of the additional features that you're paying for, you may want to go to the Microsoft 365 website instead and make sure you sign into your account. You can access your Microsoft 365 apps and services here, but it's also your main portal for Copilot. If you select chat on the left, you will see the Copilot chat interface. The official name for this Copilot version is Microsoft 365 Copilot. This site is more focused on features that may relate to your work or job. So one is Microsoft Copilot and the other is Microsoft 365 Copilot. And I think the most confusing thing about this is that there are very useful features that work on one site, but don't work on the other. But with your Microsoft 365 subscription, you can work on either site whenever you want. And of course, there are other places to work with Copilot, including the Copilot tools inside of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, which we certainly will cover as well. But when we do get to those apps, there is another detail that you may need to consider. Starting from the Microsoft 365 site, click your account button in the bottom left and go to view account. From this page, go to the subscriptions category. Then in the section for your Microsoft 365 subscription, click manage. Each Microsoft 365 subscription comes with a certain amount of AI credits that you can use each month. Now these credits are not required for every Copilot task. They're used whenever you make a Copilot request inside of apps like Word, Excel and Outlook. These credits reset every month and how many credits you have depends on which subscription you have. One reason people upgrade to the premium subscription is because they need lots of Copilot credits each month. So my recommendation for most people is to start with the Microsoft 365 personal subscription. Most people will never hit that limit. And if you do, Copilot will tell you. And if that happens, then you may consider upgrading to Microsoft 365 premium. And as we get started, I do want to stress that things will change in Copilot. Microsoft is constantly making changes. So as you go through this tutorial, keep an eye out for small interface changes or new features. And with that in mind, the core features that you'll learn here should help you for quite a while. So let's start by learning the core features of the Copilot chat assistant. You can ask questions and Copilot will answer. But there's so much more you can do. So let's start simple and build up until you're using the Copilot chat like a pro. As we start, you can be on either the Microsoft Copilot website or the Microsoft 365 Copilot website. There's a chat field on the page and I'll start with a simple question. I'll ask, what is the time difference between California and Italy? Type your question and click the send button or hit the return key. And in a moment, Copilot answers the question. And it gave me some important information about how time zones work. After that, you can continue the conversation. You can ask follow up questions and Copilot will remember the context. So I'll ask, what's the difference in August? It remembers that we were talking about time zones. So it answers with that context. This means that Copilot is not just a question and answer machine. You can start with a broad question. Then by asking more questions, giving more context and steering Copilot in different directions, you can have an ongoing conversation and find the information you're looking for. I'm just using simple questions for now, but you can build on this later with more complex topics. I'll ask another follow-up question. I'll ask, what's the difference between Europe and the UK? And again, it answers that in the context of time zones. But at some point, you will want to start a new conversation without this existing context. On the Microsoft 365 Copilot site, you can click the new chat button up in the top right. Or if you're on the Microsoft Copilot website, you can open the navigation panel on the left and click the new chat button there. And now I'll ask that same question. And since this is a new conversation with new context, it does not refer to time zones. It answers that in a broader context. So there's information about geography, governments, currency, and more. So you can start with a new chat whenever you want. But Copilot also saves previous chats. On the left, there's a button to open or close the navigation panel. And with that navigation panel open, you'll see a list of your previous chats. You can select any of them and continue where you left off. So by selecting this chat, I could ask more questions in the context of time zones. If you ever want to remove a saved conversation just to clean up, you can point at it, a button with three dots will appear, and you can click that to open a menu, and there's an option to delete that chat. Next, it's very important to remember that Copilot finds information from the Internet, which may not always be completely accurate. For simple questions about things like time zones, you generally don't have to worry about it. But as you get into more important requests, you may need to fact-check Copilot's responses, or at least check where the information is coming from. Let's start a new chat and ask a slightly more robust question. I'll tell Copilot to describe the primary differences in import-export regulations between Europe and the UK after the UK left the European Union. I'll send that prompt and wait for the response. Not always, but usually you will see citations in your responses. These show where it found each piece of information. You can point at a citation to see the website that Copilot used, or you can click on the citation, actually go to that website, and review the original information source. Or you can go down to the bottom of the response, where you'll see a full list of all of the sources used in the response. And you can close that panel when you're finished. Next, let's start another new chat. And instead of typing prompts, you can actually talk to Copilot. There's a microphone button in the chat field. You can click that, and it will use your computer's microphone, and you can simply ask a question. How does a cantilever bridge work? Is it the strongest, most reliable system for large span bridges? You will need to click the send button, and then Copilot responds as if you had typed the prompt. But if you like voice prompts, this is one situation where you may prefer the other Copilot website, Copilot.Microsoft.com. Here, we still have the chat field. And of course, we can click the button to open or close the navigation panel on the left. Citations work here as well. But here, instead of a microphone button, we have a talk button in the chat field. And with this, we can talk to Copilot much more naturally. As I do this, I want you to see that Copilot will respond with a synthesized voice. But you can also interrupt while Copilot is responding.

[00:10:33] Speaker 2: Hey there, Nick.

[00:10:34] Speaker 1: Hi. How does a cantilever bridge work?

[00:10:37] Speaker 2: Sure thing. A cantilever bridge basically uses structures that project horizontally into space, supported only at one end. So each side kind of...

[00:10:45] Speaker 1: Wait, only at one end? It has to connect over a gap, right?

[00:10:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, you got it. It's a bit of a balancing act. Each cantilever arm is anchored at one end on solid ground or a pier, and then it stretches out over the gap.

[00:10:57] Speaker 1: Eventually, these are... You can stop the conversation at any time by clicking the X, and it shows the entire conversation in text form. And this is so much more natural. If I'm working on something where I need my hands, but I need Copilot's help to troubleshoot a problem, I'll just start a voice chat and talk to Copilot as I go. Obviously, we're starting with very simple requests here, just so you can see how the Copilot chat works. We'll build on these concepts and get into much more complex requests as we go. But we're off to a good start, and you should be able to start asking questions and having conversations with Copilot. By default, Copilot can find information from the internet, but you may want to provide different specific information for Copilot to analyze. So let's see how to use your own documents or pictures with Copilot. And we have different options on the two different Copilot sites. If you start at the basic Microsoft Copilot site, you can start a new chat and click the plus button in the chat field and choose Add Images or Files. Choose a file from your storage drive, and you can even select multiple files. Then click Open, and it uploads that file to the chat. Or if you're working on the Microsoft 365 website, you can also click the plus button in the chat field. But here you should choose Upload Files. The option to add content works differently, as we'll see soon. So I'll choose Upload Files, choose the file that I want, click Open, and it adds it to the chat. Then I'll ask Copilot a question based on this spreadsheet. Copilot analyzes the document to find that information and gives me important actionable information that I need right now. I don't have to spend the time reviewing that entire document to find this information. But what about pictures? Well, at the time of this recording, the Microsoft 365 Copilot site will not let you upload and analyze pictures. That could change in the future. But for now, if you do want to work with pictures, you can do that on copilot.microsoft.com. I'll clear everything here to reset. And in the chat field, you can click the plus button and choose Add Images or Files. Then navigate your storage drive and find the picture that you want and choose that. Or you can even choose multiple pictures. Click Open to upload those to the chat. Then ask your question. I'll ask Copilot to describe common construction techniques used for these structures. We'll give it a little time. And by analyzing the pictures and finding supporting information online, it was able to give me a description of historic construction techniques and how they still may be used today. So you can click the plus button and upload a file or you can drag files directly to the chat field. I'll start a new chat. Then I'll open up File Explorer and I'll drag a file from File Explorer directly to the chat field in Copilot. I've uploaded a document, but I can go back to File Explorer and navigate to where I have some pictures. I'll choose these pictures and I'll drag those over as well. I'll ask a question related to all of these files. And now Copilot has helped me identify some options that I can bring to this client. Another way I use this myself is when I need help troubleshooting a problem on my computer. I can take a picture of my screen, then share that picture with Copilot. So first I'll start a new chat. Then I'll go to a screen where I need some help. On Windows, you can hold the Shift and Windows key, then tap the S key to take a picture of your screen. And I'll use this panel to take a picture of the full screen. To find that saved picture, you can go to File Explorer, to the Pictures folder, then to the subfolder called Screenshots. Or if you're working on a Mac, you can use Command-Shift-3 and it will save a picture directly on your desktop. Once you have the picture, you can drag that picture to the Copilot chat and ask a question. So Copilot can help you troubleshoot pretty complex issues. And uploading pictures of your screen can make that process even easier. So you are not limited to information that Copilot finds on the Internet. Asking Copilot to analyze your own documents or by referencing pictures, you can focus Copilot exactly on the information that you need to work with. In addition to analyzing documents that you upload, Copilot can also access documents that are already stored in your account, as well as information from your email messages and your calendar. Of course, we're talking about the Microsoft account that you use to sign into Copilot, but there's also an option to connect Copilot to your Google account. This does work differently between the different Copilot websites. So let's start at the Microsoft 365 Copilot site. In the chat field, of course, you can click the plus button. And earlier we saw how to upload files from here. But if you instead choose the option for add content, this will let you search through files that you have stored on your OneDrive. OneDrive is an online file storage tool that is included in your Microsoft account. You can choose a file from this list or you can type something in the search field to narrow the options down. Or there's an even faster way to do this. So I'll click outside of that panel to reset. So if you're typing something in the chat field and you type the slash key, it opens the search panel so you can search through your OneDrive files there. Immediately after the slash key, you can start typing in a few letters and it will filter down the list. I see the document that I want here. So I'm going to select it and then I can ask a question about this file. So I was able to quickly get Copilot to focus on one specific document that is stored on my OneDrive. So at this point, you can select specific files from OneDrive. There is a feature in Microsoft 365 for Business where users can also identify specific email messages. That feature is not here at the time of this recording, but maybe it will be added in the future. However, you may not be able to identify specific email messages, but you can still ask Copilot to review email messages in your prompt. So I'll start a new chat and I'll ask Copilot to tell me if I have any outstanding action items from my email messages with Liam. Copilot is able to search through my emails in Outlook and was able to find the answer I needed. When I click the sources button to see where it found this information, I can see that it is citing an email message. And when I click that, it will actually open that email message in Outlook. For now, I'll just close this and go back to Copilot. And Microsoft 365 Copilot can also answer questions about events on your Outlook calendar. So this version of Copilot is designed with a focus on getting work done. Using it to analyze or answer questions about your documents on OneDrive, your email, and your calendar is a valuable tool set for work. Now, if we switch over to the Microsoft Copilot website, there is a system that lets Copilot access your files and your email. However, before you get too excited about this, I suggest you test it first. As I'm recording this, the feature is still very new and has limited functionality. It does not work quite as smoothly as the feature we just saw. Of course, Microsoft does update features over time. So let's see how it works so that you can test it. First, you can click your account icon in the bottom left, then go to Settings, then to Connectors. And to start, you can simply enable access to your files on OneDrive and your email and calendar in Outlook. But you can also choose to connect a Google account. I'll do that starting with the Google Drive service. So I'll click Connect, and I will need to sign into my Google account. When you sign into your Google account, you will have to approve some connections so that Copilot can access information from your Google account. But I want you to see, once you set up one Google connection and go back to Settings, back to Connectors, we'll see that that one connection is there, but you will have to connect all of the others separately if you want them. So I'm also going to connect my Gmail. Once you've enabled the connectors you want, you can start a new chat, and in the chat field, you'll find the Connectors menu. You can turn each connector on or off for each individual prompt. And if you happen to turn all of them off, you'll see that Connectors menu will go away. But you can get back to those easily by clicking the plus button, then go to Use Connectors Here, then enable the connectors that you do want to use. With the Gmail connector enabled, I would expect to be able to ask a question about information in my Google emails. But the functionality is limited here, partly because of privacy protections. If I ask, which restaurants did Liam recommend I check out after the conference in May? It does not find anything. So instead, you have to use keywords from the subject or the body of the email you're looking for and phrase your requests in a very specific way. I'll try to tell it to search my Google mail for messages with conference in the body. From those messages, which restaurants did Liam recommend? So I have to tell it to specifically search in my Google mail. I have to give it specific keywords to look for, then tell it what information I'm looking for. And it did find the message that I want. So I could click on that to open it in Gmail. So at this point, the functionality feels fairly limited. But you can see how the system works. If you do need to find information from your files on OneDrive or email messages in Outlook, I recommend you use the Microsoft 365 Copilot website. But the fact that the other Microsoft Copilot site supports connections to a Google account makes me hopeful that Microsoft will expand the connectors feature in the future. So Copilot can answer questions and analyze data, but it can also create content. We are working with generative AI after all. The main things that people usually want to create with Copilot include pictures and drafts of text. We'll start with those, but there are other types of content you can generate. In a new chat, I'll ask Copilot to generate a draft of an email that politely but firmly informs a client that they are late with a payment. This works the same in pretty much every version of Copilot. Later in this video, we will see how to use Copilot inside of Outlook. But since not all users have Copilot inside of Outlook, this can be a great way to get a draft that you can copy and paste into an email message. Of course, if something isn't quite right, you can follow up and ask for changes. You can ask Copilot to add specific information or change the tone. So I'll tell Copilot to change the tone to be more friendly and remind them that they have not missed a payment in over 10 years. And in a moment, we'll see that revision. But what if you actually need a document, a Word, PowerPoint, or Excel file that you can download? I'll start a new chat and I'll ask Copilot to make a draft of a PowerPoint presentation that explains the cultural differences between the UK and mainland Europe. Any version of Copilot can take a prompt like this and give you an outline or a draft that you could copy and paste. But I want to add a little more to this prompt. So I'll tell it to give me that as a PowerPoint file that I can download. Asking it to give you an actual Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file that you can download is only supported here on the Microsoft 365 Copilot site. I have seen situations where this has worked on the normal Microsoft Copilot, but I wouldn't depend on it. And here's that file. I can click on that to download it or open it from here. In my experience, this is a good way to get a starting point to a presentation, giving you ideas for organization and structure. You could go back to Copilot and ask it to add a design theme, but it's probably better to do the design work yourself in PowerPoint. For now, I'll close this and go back to Copilot. Let's generate a Word document, but this time let's give it some source information to work from. So I'll start a new chat, and as we saw earlier, I can type the forward slash key, then search for a file on my OneDrive related to a project that I'm working on. I found it here, so I can select that. Referencing files from my OneDrive like this, of course, only works on the Microsoft 365 Copilot site. From here, I'll tell Copilot to generate a Microsoft Word document that summarizes and categorizes the materials that need to be ordered. Of course, this will take some time, but it generates a Microsoft Word document that I can download and read or send to the client. So you can ask Copilot to generate drafts of text from either of the Copilot tools that we worked with. But if you wanted to actually generate files that you can download, you should work at the Microsoft 365 Copilot site. Next, let's make a picture, and there are a few ways to do this. The quick way would be to go straight to the chat field and ask for a picture. So I'll tell Copilot to make a picture of a suburban house with solar panels on the roof on a bright, sunny day. This will take some time, and then it gives me a picture. And the ongoing context works here as well. So I can ask for changes to the picture as a follow-up request. So I can ask it to add an electric car in the driveway. Once you have a picture you like, you can point at it for more options. You can copy it so you can easily paste it somewhere else, and you can download the picture as a file. One feature that we only get here on the Microsoft 365 version of Copilot is the Edit button. When we click that, we can make quick adjustments like cropping the picture or adding text. Or you can click the Designer button to open the picture in Microsoft's image editing tool called Designer. And here you can use several tools to make more changes manually. And I want you to notice that the Create tab is now selected on the left. But for now, I'll click the chat option on the left to reset to Copilot. Next, Copilot has additional ways to create pictures, as well as other types of content that we haven't seen yet. Here on the Microsoft 365 Copilot site, you can click the Create button on the left to get a dedicated interface for creating content. At the top, you can set it to make a picture, a poster, a banner, or other types of pictures. There's a More menu where you can set it to make an infographic or even tell it to create a document. All of these are things you could ask for in the chat field, but this gives you an interface to help guide your choices. I suggest you take some time and experiment with the different things you can create here with the help of Copilot. I'll stick with the option to create an image. And looking at some of the controls here, we could set a specific style for the picture, and you could also select the dimensions. So you can choose whether you want a square or a wide or a portrait picture. Then you can use the chat field to describe what you want. I'll ask for a collection of office buildings with solar panels. And I'll click Create. This takes me to the designer interface as it generates the picture. And when that's done, if you want to make changes, there is a chat field. But there are also manual controls to change the style or the size, as well as additional tools to add text or other elements. Of course, the controls to copy the picture or download it are here. And when you're finished, you can choose the Copilot chat on the left to reset. So that's the Microsoft 365 Copilot site. But once again, things work differently if you work at copilot.microsoft.com. Here, if you click the plus button in the chat field, you can set Copilot to create a picture. But there are other options here as well. The podcast option creates an actual audio show that you can listen to, which is a great way to learn about a topic. You can generate research reports, and it can also generate a quiz on a topic you choose to help you study. Choosing one of these will start a prompt, and you just have to add what you want to finish the prompt. These options are available even for people with a free account. But those users have a limited number of podcasts or research reports that they can generate. Those limits are removed with a Microsoft 365 subscription. Another difference is that in this version of Copilot, you do not have the create section on the left. Instead, we find the library section. This shows pictures and other content that Copilot has generated for you in the past. There's a section for pictures. There's a section for research reports. In the podcast section, we can see podcasts that I've generated in the past, and I can go back and listen to them here. Now, we have not seen the pages feature yet. That's something that we're going to be covering a little later. But you can also generate new content from the library. Each section has a create button up at the top. So once again, these two versions of Copilot work a little differently. Remember, if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you can access all of these features, even if you have to work between the two different sites. As you're learning how to work with the Copilot chat, short, simple requests can be very useful. But Copilot can also handle much more complex questions. And as a beginner, it can be hard to know which questions to ask or which prompts to use. Now, there's a popular concept known as prompt engineering, which is a set of strategies for writing robust, focused requests for AI chat assistants. I'm not going to go over prompt engineering in detail here, and I do recommend you do some research to learn a little more about it. But we can explore a few basic prompt engineering techniques that you can use right now. To start, I'll ask a question that might seem to be fairly straightforward. I'll ask, what's the best 4K camera I can buy right now? Copilot can search through reviews on the Internet and can give me recommendations for popular cameras. But these are very broad results. It doesn't take into account the type of video I want to shoot, the environment I'm working with, the budget, or anything else. I could ask follow-up questions and revise the request, but it helps to start with a much more focused prompt. One way to do that is to visualize different components for a good prompt. So here are some common components. Role, goal, context, expectations, and sources. These are just some of the components people use for prompt engineering. But let's start with these and see how I might rewrite the question. To start, I might write, you are a professional videographer that will help me build out my home recording studio. I'm giving Copilot a role. I want it to answer questions the way that person would answer questions. Next, I'll tell it, I am converting a room in my home into a video studio. I need you to help me choose the right equipment for this setup. My equipment will mostly stay in one location. This is my goal. The more detail you can offer in the goal, the more likely Copilot will find information to achieve that goal. Next, I can tell Copilot, I want to produce image and sound quality that is consistent with popular education channels on YouTube. This is important context. If I wanted to shoot adventure travel videos, I would probably need different equipment. If I wanted to produce different types of video, that would affect the results. Next, I'll tell Copilot that explanations and reasoning are welcome, but when recommending specific equipment, give me a list of the five most relevant products. Include price, the year each item was released, a brief product summary, and links to two websites where I can purchase it. These are my expectations. Telling Copilot what I want and how I want it formatted. Some people would identify the format and the tone as separate components, and that can be helpful, but I kind of have that all mixed in here. Finally, consider sources, if you have any. If you just want Copilot to find whatever information it can find from the internet, you don't have to worry about sources. But if there are specific websites you want it to refer to, then you can tell Copilot that in the prompt. Or if you have specific documents or pictures you want Copilot to use, be sure to add those to the prompt. Back in Copilot, I've started a new chat and I've typed in that full prompt. I've got all of those components here, and I finished with the same question. What's the best 4K video camera I can buy? Obviously, this is a much longer prompt. It also took more time to write this prompt. And maybe I put in a little too much detail, but I wanted you to see how the components can work. And I'm sure to get results here that are much more focused on what I want or need. So let's see what I get. After a moment, I get a clear and organized explanation of several options, which are formatted exactly how I wanted, with a brief summary for each, the price, and links to websites where I can buy them. Now, to be clear, you do not always have to use every component. Just use the components that you think will be the most helpful for each task. Another benefit here is that I have established valuable context in this chat. As long as I keep this saved chat, I can go back to it and ask more questions, and all of this context will already be set. I might do that when I'm ready to buy lighting or audio equipment. So prompt engineering, or simply using components to write your prompt, is one way to learn how to write better prompts. But there are more resources. I'll start a new chat, and you should see suggested prompts below the chat field. These are common tasks that Microsoft knows Copilot can help with. Using these suggested prompts, or even looking through them, can help you learn what works in Copilot. You can also click the See More button to see more suggested prompts. And you can just click on one to give it a try. Some suggested prompts will need you to add more information. Then you can send the prompt. Copilot also offers suggested follow-up questions after many responses. So even if you start a chat, Copilot can help you explore additional angles. If we start over with a new chat, then click See More under the suggested prompts, we'll see an option here for the prompt gallery. This is a huge library of suggested prompts. And there are filters up at the top that you can use to filter down to specific types of tasks or prompts related to specific types of jobs. And if you find any that you really like or that you want to take more time to explore later, you can click the bookmark icon on it to save it. Then you can switch over to the Your Prompts tab at any time to try those saved prompts. You should not feel obligated to do all of this work for every one of your Copilot requests. Sometimes a quick question is all you need. But for detailed research, especially if it relates to your work, it can be important that you learn to write robust, detailed prompts. Agents expand the capabilities of AI tools, allowing you to use customized AI assistants for a specific job or purpose. Agents can accomplish tasks within preset specifications, follow specific rules, or refer to specific information. Different AI assistants like Gemini, Claude, and Copilot have their own systems for using agents. And of course, independent developers create their own agentic systems. Since we're focusing on Copilot, I do want to introduce some agents that Microsoft offers. But at the time of this recording, individual subscribers will only be able to access agents if you have the higher subscription tier, the Microsoft 365 Premium subscription. And these features are only there on the Microsoft 365 Copilot website. If you have the Premium subscription, you will find a section for agents on the left. It's very possible that you will see different agents listed here, considering how quickly these features are updated. When you want to use the normal Copilot chat, you should make sure to choose the chat button on the left. But when you want to use an agent, you should select that agent on the left. Then when you ask a question, Copilot will answer according to the parameters of that agent. Or here's another option. You could start in the main Copilot chat, click the plus button in the chat field, go to chat with an agent, and choose the agent there. We can see the agent is referenced above the chat field. And if you want, you can click the X to clear that. Now consider the techniques that we just saw for writing long, effective prompts. Most of the agents that are included here have detailed context, goals, and special instructions already programmed into them, so they can save you time. If you find an agent that's designed for what you're working on, you can use shorter prompts without establishing additional context. So what are these agents designed to help with? Well, the Word, PowerPoint, and Excel agents are designed specifically to help you create documents. So in your prompt, you don't have to tell it to generate a prompt. You can just describe the document that you want. That will be the primary goal that the agent will work toward. Let's take a look at the Researcher agent, which is designed to do deep research, comparing many sources on the topics that you ask about. But there are some trade-offs. For example, the researcher cannot generate pictures or images. And that's important to know as I ask my starting question. Now, I'm also going to reference a file in this prompt. That's not required, but referencing a file is a great way to focus the research topic. Of course, you could drag a file to the prompt field, or you can type the forward slash, then find a file from your OneDrive. I'll find a document that has my bid for an office renovation project. I'll choose that to add it to the prompt field. Then I'll tell it to compare this plan with other modern construction and renovation plans in the U.S., and tell me how everything compares. Consider compliance, regulations, and building standards. Then I'll hit Return to send the prompt. Now, the Researcher agent is designed to ask one round of follow-up questions to clarify my needs. I'll answer those questions and hit the Return key. And you should be ready for the Researcher agent to take a very long time. And if you want, there's a button you can click where you can see the agent describe what it's working on as it goes. For now, I'll skip ahead. When you get the response, all of the normal rules of Copilot apply. You can ask follow-up questions. You can and should look at the citations to check the sources. But this response is basically a detailed research report that I can use to understand how my bid for this project compares with other projects of this type. When you want detailed information where accuracy is vitally important, the Researcher agent is pre-configured for those needs. Next, let's take a look at the Analyst agent. I'll select that from the sidebar on the left. And basically, the Analyst is built around getting insights from actual data. It's great for analyzing documents or spreadsheets full of information. This agent can generate images and will do especially well generating images based on defined data. It can also generate charts and graphs. To give the Analyst a try, I'm going to refer to a product inventory sheet. Then I'll ask it to compare this inventory with market trends to help me understand how much money I'm losing by not offering back-ordered items. The Analyst agent will also take a long time to generate responses. And to be clear, you do not need to use the Analyst agent for a question like this. However, the Analyst agent is already designed with parameters that make it very effective for these types of tasks. This saves you the time and effort of writing those parameters into a normal Copilot prompt. The results include some actionable strategies for helping me decide when we should restart production. Now, based on what I've seen in Copilot, I would not be surprised if you're seeing a different list of agents when you're watching this video. But I think you've got an idea of how they can work in general. You may need to experiment a bit if you see new agents that did not appear in this video. As people start working with Copilot, a common question is, what does Copilot remember about me? And I have to say, I think the answer to that question is likely to change as new features roll out. So as we explore this, I recommend you check the settings in your account just to see if things have changed. But at the time of this recording, Copilot's memory of you works differently depending on which website you use to access Copilot. Let's start at the Microsoft Copilot website, copilot.microsoft.com. As we saw before, Copilot keeps your previous chats so you can go back to them later. But we're more interested in general information Copilot retains about you. Click the account button in the bottom left, then go to memory. Here you can see that Copilot can retain some information about your past conversations to customize future responses. How it does this is organized into two categories. If you don't want Copilot to remember anything about you, you can turn off the main switch and that will disable both categories. Or you can leave the main switch on and control each of the other two separately. Also, you may want Copilot to forget everything that it's learned about you so far. For that, you have the option to delete all memory. But let's look at the two subcategories. The facts you shared section is where Copilot stores specific information you tell it to remember. When I go there, I see that Copilot remembers I work on a Mac and I prefer to use Mac keyboard shortcuts. So if I ever ask Copilot a question about how to do something on my computer, it will offer keyboard shortcuts for the Mac, but not for Windows, unless I ask for that. But Copilot only saves information to facts you shared if you explicitly tell it to. So I'll close this and I'll go to the chat field and I'll tell Copilot, remember, I am based in the U.S. and work for U.S.-based clients, but I have teammates and co-workers who work from Scotland and Italy. I'll send that prompt and it tells me that that memory has been saved. I'll start a new chat conversation and I'll ask Copilot, what's the best time for scheduling a meeting that all of my teammates can attend? Copilot remembers that I have teammates in the UK and Europe and uses that information to customize the response. And if I go back to the Copilot memory settings, then back to that facts you shared list, I can see that information is stored there and you can delete these individually if you want. And for now, I'll click the back button to take a step back. So the facts you've shared feature is pretty straightforward. Copilot does not just automatically learn about you from your chat conversations. I can't guarantee whether that will change in the future. But for now, if you want Copilot to remember something, you have to tell it to remember it. The other option is a little less clear. You can choose whether Copilot can store information about your activities on other Microsoft services. It doesn't really explain how it gathers this information or how it uses it, but you can always turn it off if you're not comfortable with it. And we can close this panel. Now, we've seen all this on the Microsoft Copilot website, but it works differently on the Microsoft 365 Copilot website. It's different, but it's actually pretty straightforward. Aside from the chat conversations that Copilot saves, Copilot does not remember any information about you here. It does not learn details about your preferences and personality from your chats, and you are not even able to tell it to remember something. If I ask Copilot here, where are my teammates located? It does not have that answer stored. It can try to find information from your email, but if it doesn't find that information there, it cannot answer the question. And it certainly will not have that information on hand for your other prompts or questions. Now, I could start a new chat and I could tell Copilot, remember, my favorite color is blue. And it will remember that, but only in this chat conversation. When I start another new chat and ask it, what is my favorite color? It will try to find that information from my email or meetings, but if it can't find it there, it does not have that information. But remember, this could always change in the future. For people who use Microsoft 365 Copilot in a business or enterprise account, it does have features for remembering information about you. So I wouldn't be surprised if some of those features work their way over here. So whether you want Copilot to remember information about you may be one of the main deciding factors for whether you use the Microsoft 365 Copilot website or the more consumer-focused Microsoft Copilot website. OK, one last thing about memory. We know that Copilot saves your chat conversations. We see those on the left. And next to each chat, we can click the button with three dots to open a menu. And there's the option to delete each chat individually. But what if you want to completely clear your entire list of saved chats? For that, it's easier to start on the Microsoft 365 Copilot website. Click the account button in the bottom left, then click view account. On the account page, go to the privacy section, then scroll down and go to Copilot. And here there's a section for Copilot apps. If you choose to delete all activity history here, it will clear your chat history on the Microsoft Copilot website. If you go to the category for Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps and delete the activity history there, that will clear your chat history on the Microsoft 365 Copilot page. So they are handled separately. So now you can manage what Copilot is able to remember about you and you can clear your list of saved chats. But in the future, I do recommend you double check these settings. As you start to get useful information from Copilot, you may want to share your research with teammates or you may want to organize material from Copilot along with information from other sources. There are two features, notebooks and pages that can help you organize and share research material from Copilot. Once again, we have different features available in the different versions. So let's start at copilot.microsoft.com. And we'll start with the pages feature, which works on both Copilot sites. I'll ask Copilot a detailed question about solar panels and home battery systems. At the bottom of every Copilot response, you will find some controls. The share button will generate a link you can send your teammates that will show them the same Copilot results. Or you can click the copy button to copy the text of this response. So you can simply paste it somewhere else, like in a document or an email. But let's see the option to edit this response in a page. You can also think of this as saving the response in a page. And now we're seeing a Copilot page. Pages give you a place to save, modify or add to information you've researched in Copilot. It's a good idea to go to the top and give this page a better name. And you can edit the content of the page. I don't need all of this information, so I'll delete what I don't want. And I could type new information to add my own notes or anything else I want to save on this page. You can copy and paste content on a page. You can add pictures. And one of the biggest benefits of pages is that you can easily share them. Click the share button at the top and you can create a link to this page. You can click the button to copy that link so you can paste it into an email or anywhere else. And with that link, your teammates can get to this page and can see the research you've organized. OK, so sharing is a big part of this. But another great thing is that you can save multiple pages and go back to them whenever you need to. I'll click the back button near the top left to reset. And then I want to select the library in the navigation pane. And in the library, I'll go to the pages section. And here you will be able to see all of the pages you've saved. Or you can start a new page here if you want to start with a blank page and add your own content to it. So if you're working on copilot.microsoft.com, you can go to the library to work with your existing pages. But if we go to the Microsoft 365 Copilot website, there is no library category. Instead, in the navigation panel on the left, under chats, there's a button to access your pages. You can select an individual page here or you can go to all pages to see your full list. The interface here, of course, is a little different, but you can still create a new page here or open one of your existing pages. You can make changes to the page or you can share it. And when you're finished, you can just open the navigation panel on the left and go back to the normal Copilot chat. So we've seen pages which work on both Copilot sites, but the next feature, notebooks, are only available here on the Microsoft 365 Copilot site. I'll choose the notebook option in the navigation panel on the left, and then I'll click the button to make a new notebook. Now, if you're wondering, Copilot notebooks are not the same as OneNote, but they are similar to a product made by Google called Notebook LM. I'm going to name this notebook Colvento Project. In this scenario, I'm a building contractor working on a renovation project for a client called Colvento. I'll use this notebook to manage information about that project. And to start a notebook, you choose information sources. You can choose from this list of recent files you've used, including any Copilot pages you may have. You could upload files from your computer or choose a file from your OneDrive. You could even drag files here. I'll start by choosing some files related to this project. As I click each one, they are added to the list below. You can always add more later. So for now, my notebook has a name and some sources, and I'll click Create. And the notebook is a place where you can perform research based on those sources. With the References tab selected, I can see all of my sources. There's a plus button you can click if you want to add more, or you can open any of your source files from here just by clicking on it. And you could also add a page to your notebook if you want to manage your own manual notes here. And of course, you can use the Copilot chat field. Now, we know that the Copilot chat can get information from the Internet, but in a notebook, it focuses on the sources you provide. It may still find supporting information from the Internet, but the main source of knowledge are the documents that you've provided. So I can ask, what's the next thing we should be working on for Electrical? It gives me a lot of information about inspection status and work that's currently being done, all based on information from the documents I provided. And just like in any Copilot chat, you can continue with follow-up questions. Or to reset, you can click the New Chat button at the top, or open the Project menu and go back to the main page. On the main page, we have that References tab, or we can go to the Chats tab to see the list of saved chat conversations. Or you can use the Audio Overview option. This generates an audio discussion related to the information in your sources. It's a lot like a podcast. You can choose the format, the style, or duration. And there are a few different synthesized voices you can choose from. You can get a general overview, or you can also write a prompt to give the conversation a specific focus. Just be aware, the Audio Overview will not pull information from Excel or PowerPoint files. But I do have a Word document in my References, so it will pull from that. So I'll tell it to focus on what needs to be done in the first week of this project. This will take some time to generate, but I'll skip forward in time. And let's hear a bit of this Audio Overview.

[00:51:03] Speaker 3: Hey, welcome. Today, we're diving into what it takes to kick off a major renovation with...

[00:51:08] Speaker 1: I'll skip forward a little bit and listen to a bit more.

[00:51:11] Speaker 3: Let's get into what actually happens right when the crew shows up and everyone's wondering, wait, are we...

[00:51:16] Speaker 1: And you get the idea. You can listen to that overview here, or you can save it to your OneDrive to check out later. If you close it here, you can always get back to it by clicking Play Audio up at the top. Or if you want to set different parameters for the overview, you can click the Customize button. But for now, I'm just going to close this. And when you're finished, you can go back to the normal Copilot chat from the navigation panel on the left. But that notebook is still there, waiting until I have more research questions about that topic. When you need to get back to your notebooks later, just go over to the Notebooks section. And from here, you can make a new notebook or open existing notebooks. So now, research in Copilot is much more useful because you have ways to store, organize, add to, or share the information you've collected. So far, we've been working with Copilot on the web. And later in this video, we'll see how to work with Copilot inside of apps like Word and Excel. But for the normal chat assistant that we've been using, there are apps that you can install on Windows, on a Mac, or even on your mobile phone. So you can use Copilot without going to the website. Now first, let's make sure we're using the right names for the two versions of Copilot we've been working with. Whenever we work at copilot.microsoft.com, the official name for this is simply Microsoft Copilot. But when we work at the Microsoft 365 website, this is known as Microsoft 365 Copilot. And when it comes to installing a separate app on your computer or mobile device, there are different apps and they use those same names. If you go to the App Store on an iPhone or Android device and search for Copilot, you will see an app called Microsoft Copilot and another app called Microsoft 365 Copilot. You can use either of these apps with your personal Microsoft 365 account, and they generally match the feature set that you would find on the two websites. The Microsoft Copilot app has the voice control as well as the ability to upload pictures. There's a button in the top left to open the navigation panel where you find your saved chat conversations as well as the library. However, if you install the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, even when you sign in with the same account, you get the more work-centered tools that we've seen on the Microsoft 365 website. So if we open the navigation panel here, we see buttons for the Create tool and for Notebooks. In both of these apps, you can find your account information at the bottom of the navigation panel. This is where you can sign in or make sure you're signed into your Microsoft 365 account. Now back on your computer, if you're using Windows, you can install those same apps. I'll go to the Start menu to the list of all apps. And once again, I have an app called Copilot and a separate app called Microsoft 365 Copilot. You may find one or both of these already installed on your Windows computer. And if you're missing one, you can just go to the Microsoft Store, search for Copilot, and make sure to install the one you need. If you're working on a Mac, you can go to the macOS App Store. But as I'm recording this, the Microsoft 365 Copilot app is not available on the Mac. But of course, you can still use it on the website. But here on Windows, if you prefer to use an app rather than the website, you can choose the one you want. Of course, the Microsoft 365 Copilot app has the more work-focused features. However, the app that's simply called Copilot contains some direct integrations with Windows itself, which are worth looking at. So I'll open that version. And we see an interface that's a little different from the Microsoft Copilot website, but we have the same features here. We can use the voice chat. We can click the button on the left to open the navigation panel. And of course, you should make sure to sign in here. But we also see a panel showing documents that you've opened recently in Windows. And if you click on one of those, it will add it to the Copilot chat prompt. Then you can ask a question about it or ask Copilot to analyze that file. But for now, I'm just going to clear that. Now, one thing we have here that we have not seen in Copilot on the web is the Vision feature. In the chat field, you can click the Vision button. And from here, you can allow Copilot to see your entire screen or an individual window. Then you can ask Copilot to help with what it sees. I'm going to leave the voice interface enabled. And then I'm going to click Screen 1, which will share my full screen. And then you'll see that Copilot can help me through problems as I'm working on my computer. Hello, Nick. Hi, I'm working in settings and I can't figure out where to go to set my default audio device.

[00:55:55] Speaker 2: Absolutely. I can help you out. So in the Settings app, what you want to do is head over to the System section first. And from there, you'll find an option called Sound. That's where you can choose your default audio device.

[00:56:07] Speaker 1: Where's the System section?

[00:56:09] Speaker 2: So on the left-hand side of your Settings window, right in that sidebar, you'll see an option called System toward the top.

[00:56:15] Speaker 1: I see it. Now, where do I go?

[00:56:18] Speaker 2: All right. Perfect. So now that you're in the System section, just look for the Sound option in the list there. Once you click on Sound, you'll find the settings to set your default audio device. Give it a click and you should be good to go.

[00:56:31] Speaker 1: And I'll just go ahead and close that. And I'll go to the menu in the top left and choose New Conversation to reset. Microsoft has been focusing on integrating more AI and Copilot features into Windows itself. And as more of those features are added, I think the Copilot app is probably where you'll find most of them. Now, before we finish in Windows, you can open Copilot with a keyboard shortcut. Many Windows computers have a Copilot key on the keyboard. When you hit that key, it opens the Copilot app. In this case, on my computer, it's opening the panel related to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. We'll see why that's happening in just a moment. But if you don't have that key, you could also use the keyboard shortcut. So hold the Windows key on your keyboard and tap the letter C and it will open that panel or that app. But you can decide which Copilot app this keyboard shortcut launches. So go to the Start menu and open Settings. Then go to the Bluetooth and Devices category, then to the subcategory for Keyboard. And there's an option to customize what happens when you hit the Copilot key or use the shortcut. If you open that menu and choose Custom, you can choose whether you want the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, which actually opens that small panel that we just saw a moment ago, or you can set it to open the Copilot app. Then select that. And now when I hit the keyboard shortcut, it opens the Copilot panel. Now, finally, if you use Microsoft Edge, the web browser that comes with Windows, you'll see that Copilot is integrated into the browser. In the Edge web browser, there is a Copilot button in the top right. But before you click that, you should click the Profile button. You can sign into the Edge web browser with a Microsoft account. We can see that I'm signed into my Microsoft 365 account here. So when I click the Copilot button in Edge, it will work with that account. Now, as I'm recording this, the Copilot interface in Edge is limited to features that you would find on the Microsoft Copilot website. We see the option for voice control. And if you open the menu in the top right and go to My Conversations, this shows your saved chats and the features that you would find on the Microsoft Copilot website. If you need Microsoft 365 features, you would still need to go to the Microsoft 365 website. Of course, the interface and layout of this panel could change in the future. But this panel lets you use Copilot in the web browser without actually going to the website. So you can work with whatever website you want to in the main part of the browser, but still access Copilot tools in the Copilot panel. So if you are away from your desk and need a mobile solution, or if you prefer to keep Copilot separate from the work you're doing in your web browser, you may want to try one of these Copilot apps. One of the main reasons people purchase a Microsoft 365 subscription is because that subscription includes Microsoft's productivity applications, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. It also includes Copilot tools inside of those applications, which can help you draft content or analyze information in your documents. Let's start by looking at Copilot inside of Microsoft Word. If you start from the Microsoft 365 Copilot website, you can click the Apps button in the sidebar on the left, and you can open the Microsoft Word app on the web from here. Or you can launch the full Microsoft Word application on your computer. If you do launch the desktop application, it's a good idea to click the Account button on the left. And here you should make sure you are signed into Microsoft Word with the right account. I want to confirm that I am signed into Word with the same Microsoft 365 account that we've been using. Then I'll go to the homepage, and I want to open one of my documents. In this scenario, I am a freelance building contractor, and this is a document containing plans for a construction project. The first thing I want you to look for is the Copilot button near the top right. That will be there whether you're using Microsoft Word on the web or in the full desktop application. You can click that to open the Copilot panel right here in Word. But before you type in your prompt, there is a menu where you can choose whether Copilot can edit your document directly or only answer questions. Microsoft is clearly being cautious about giving Copilot the ability to edit your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. How they've handled that has changed multiple times in the past year. For a while, you could choose between the chat mode and the agent mode. This is just a new implementation of that idea. This interface may change again in the future, but I encourage you to look for the control that determines whether Copilot can edit your document or not. For now, I'll set this to chat only, and you can ask for a summary or ask specific questions about a document in Word. I'll ask it to describe safety precautions in place for this project. Are they adequate when compared to similar construction or renovation jobs? I can see it searching this document, and I can assume it will also find information from the Internet. Then it gives me the information I needed, along with some suggestions for next steps. So this is the cautious way to work with Copilot. I'll set it to chat only when I want to get some information but do not want it to make any changes to the document. Another way to use this is to ask for help learning how to do something in Word. If you need to set up a column layout in a document but don't know how to do that, you could ask Copilot for instructions on how to do it. But let's start a new chat, and this time I do want Copilot to add content to my document. For this, I do need to set it to allow editing. And you need to be aware that requests in this mode can change your actual document. So it may be a good idea to save a new version of the document before doing this. For now, I'll tell it to find all action items related to electrical work and add a new section to the document that lists those action items in a table. That takes more time than a normal Copilot chat request, but when it's done, I can see that new section has been added to the document. I can choose done to keep it, or I can undo it. I'll choose done. And let's try something that will require Copilot to do some research on the web, create a draft of text, and add that to the document. Once again, I'll start a new chat and make sure that it's set to allow editing. Then I'll tell Copilot to add a section with a proposal for a rooftop solar array to be included in this office renovation. Include price estimates. Based on research from the Internet, Copilot generated that content and added it to the document. I'll click the done button to keep it. Now, keep in mind, this should be considered a draft, not final information. Copilot found information on the Internet, and we're not sure that information is completely accurate. But if you need placeholder content or if you need a starting point to help you format something, this can be very helpful. Next, we can close the Copilot panel because there are several other Copilot integrations available outside of that panel. And I'll start with a new blank document. When you have a blank document, it starts with a Copilot prompt field at the top. This is where you can describe a draft that you need help with. I'll describe the draft I want, then hit the return key. It takes some time and Copilot generates the draft. At the bottom, there's a panel where you can decide whether you want to keep the draft, delete it completely, regenerate a new version based on the same prompt, or you can use this field to ask Copilot for changes. I'll tell Copilot to expand on this and give me a multi-page version with sections and a more formal tone. And after some time, it provides a revised draft. And again, you can keep it, delete it, or ask for changes. If you click keep it, then this text will be added to the document and you can start making changes. And again, this is only a draft. You should never consider this to be a final document ready for publication. Or in my case, I use this to generate sample documents for training sessions. Something that looks real, but the actual content isn't really important. Next, I'll close this and go back to the document that we already had open. And I want to select some text in this document. When you select text, you see a floating panel, which includes a Copilot button. And when you click that, you get a list of Copilot actions you could use to rewrite the selected text, change the structure, formatting, tone, or length. Instead of choosing something from the list, I'll use the prompt field and tell it to expand this with more detail and a formal tone. After a moment, it shows the rewrite with some controls at the bottom. If you choose keep it, it will add this new text to the document. If you click replace, it will replace the original text you selected with the new version. And you can also choose to delete the rewrite or describe any changes you want. I'll just discard the rewrite for now. So in Microsoft Word, we have the Copilot panel as well as Copilot drafting and rewriting tools directly in the document editing interface. Let's move on to Excel, which has similar Copilot tools, but now we want to use those tools for data analysis. I'll launch Excel on my computer and I'll open a spreadsheet. Now here's one interesting thing. Until very recently, there were many Copilot features in Excel that would only work if your file was stored on OneDrive or one of Microsoft's other cloud storage tools. But now they've made some updates and these features will work just fine even with a file stored locally on your computer. Still, if you have problems with any of these features, you may want to try uploading your spreadsheet to OneDrive, then opening it from there. But for now, I'll click the Copilot button to open the Copilot panel. And here in Excel, just like in Word, there's a menu where you can choose whether you want Copilot to be able to edit your document or if you just want to chat to ask questions without giving Copilot permission to make changes. I'll leave this set to chat only for now, and I'll start with a question about the data in this spreadsheet. I'll ask, which of the top five items with the highest profit margin? This spreadsheet contains a product inventory. It has to analyze the data in the sheet and decide on a way to calculate the profit margin. And it finds that answer. This is a great way to get insights or analysis from your spreadsheets. Let's try something else. I'll start a new chat and I'll tell it to sort by retail price. But since it was set to chat only, it cannot make that change directly to my spreadsheet. In this case, it actually generated a new spreadsheet that I could download that has the data sorted. Not really what I want. So let's start another new chat. And this time, I'll set it to allow editing. And I'll try that same request again. I'll tell it to sort by retail price. And as it's working, I want you to pay attention to column E, which contains the retail price. After a moment, it makes that change, sorting all of the data in the spreadsheet according to the retail price listed in that column. So Copilot can make changes directly to the workbook if allow editing is enabled. So be careful with this. And of course, you can always undo the change or ask Copilot for something else. I'll ask it to filter to only show accessories. Copilot prefers if you save changes to your spreadsheet before making more changes. But for now, I'll just tell it to continue without saving. The first column in this spreadsheet lists each item's category. One of those categories is computer accessories. Copilot identifies that and filters it. So now it's only showing inventory items that are identified as accessories. I'll reset by telling Copilot to clear the filter. And let's explore a few more things we can do. I want it to automatically label certain data. So I'll tell it, for each item with a profit value higher than $100, color the row in green. And in this case, Copilot asks a follow-up question. The profit for each item is not actually saved in this spreadsheet. But it offers some options for how to calculate it. This first option was exactly what I want. So I can just respond with 1 because I like option 1. It made that calculation. Then it applied conditional formatting, which is a tool for applying a color or other formatting element to specific cells based on specific conditions. But I didn't ask for conditional formatting. I didn't need to. It doesn't even matter if I know how to do conditional formatting myself, or even if I know what conditional formatting is. I asked Copilot to do a task using natural language and Copilot decided how to do it. We can see that the conditional formatting has been applied and the items with the highest profit value are now green. And those are just a few examples. You can also ask Copilot to insert charts, graphs, or many other things. But Copilot is capable of far more powerful actions than these. In the past, you may have heard of the agent mode, which can go out on the web and perform research based on your requests, create spreadsheets based on research, project trends from your data, and generate dashboards full of graphs and metrics to help you analyze your data. But now all of those agent mode features are just part of Copilot, as long as you have the allow edit option enabled. As an example, I'll just start a new chat and make sure allow editing is enabled. And I'll ask Copilot to analyze my inventory spreadsheet and create a dashboard to help me understand how much profit we're losing from the items that are backordered, and offer advice to help me decide when we should restart production. A request like this can take several minutes, but it can be a great way to get insight and have Copilot build tools to help you review and analyze your data. You can see I now have a new sheet or new tab in this workbook with a detailed dashboard showing several different graphs and tools that will help me analyze my inventory, including recommendations for the goals that I described in the prompt. Of course, the original spreadsheet is still there in a separate tab. And if any of the values change in the spreadsheet, those changes will be updated in the dashboard. So if you have questions or need some insights about your data, Copilot chat can help you. But if you allow Copilot to edit your workbooks, it can make quick changes or add significant content based on research. Since Copilot is capable of making significant changes to your workbooks, you should use it with caution. Of course, you can always undo anything if it doesn't look right. Now let's move on to PowerPoint, where Copilot can generate presentations for you, help you modify existing presentations, or get insight into information from your presentations. I'll launch PowerPoint and I'll open a presentation. And in the home ribbon, I can click the Copilot button to open the Copilot panel. Now, as I'm recording this, I do not see the menu to set it to chat only mode or to allow editing like we saw in Word and Excel. Instead, I see this little indicator that tells me that edit with Copilot is enabled. I can click the X to clear that. And now I'm in the mode that is basically the same as chat only. If you want to give it the ability to edit your presentations, you can click the tools button here, then choose edit with Copilot. And now we see that indicator again, and you can always remove it. So this is a perfect example of how the Copilot interface changes regularly. When you're watching this, you may see the interface like we saw in Word and Excel. The point is to understand how these tools work in general and be prepared for the interface to change a little. For now, I do not need to give it permission to edit, so I can remove that. And I'm going to ask it to give me an overview of the project schedule. And it gives me a detailed assessment based on information from this presentation. Now, in the past, one of the most time consuming aspects of making a PowerPoint presentation was finding stock images for the slides. But with Copilot, you can select a slide, then ask it to make a picture. I'll tell Copilot to make an image of an office conference room and reception area. It will generate a picture, but this is all still happening in the Copilot panel. So we still do not need to give Copilot permission to edit the presentation. And when the picture is ready, you can always continue the chat and ask Copilot for changes. Or if you like a picture, you can point at it where you see some controls, including the insert button, which will insert that picture onto your slide. And at this point, you could move and resize it and get a position where you want. Or you may notice that the design suggestions panel also opened. You could just close this if you don't want to use it, but it actually does use Copilot to suggest new slide layouts. You can always open the design suggestions panel yourself. Or since it opened for me automatically, I may want to use one of these recommended layouts. So this is a great way to add a picture and even reformat the slide to fit the picture. So these are the types of things you can do in the Copilot panel. But there are other tools outside of this panel. So I'm going to close this presentation and launch PowerPoint again. So we're starting from the home screen and there's an option here to create a new presentation using Copilot. This gives you the option to describe the details of the presentation you want and Copilot will generate a draft. So I'll tell it to create a presentation about safety precautions required for an office renovation project. And I'll even describe the audience for this presentation. After a moment, it asks me to choose a style based on existing PowerPoint templates. So I'll choose one of these. Then I have to decide if I want Copilot to use AI to generate new pictures or use pictures from the Microsoft 365 stock image library. I'll leave it set to AI images and I'll choose an image style. Then I'll click generate slides. And again, this will take some time. Then Copilot shows the draft presentation. You can choose to keep it or discard it. And of course, it's important to stress that this is only a draft that you can use as a starting point or to help you unlock ideas. It should never be used as a finished product. For now, I'm going to discard this. And since we discarded that, it reverts to what we would see when we make a new blank presentation. Above the slide area, there is a Copilot button. It doesn't have the Copilot icon, but it has the sparkle graphics, which are another common way to identify Copilot tools. From this menu, you can go to that interface to create a new presentation with Copilot or you can just use Copilot to generate a single slide. But also in the home ribbon, there's a button to make a new slide with Copilot. So even if you have a presentation that's already been built, you can use Copilot to add more slides. Once again, I'm going to open an existing presentation. And with a full presentation open, we still have the option in the home ribbon to add slides with Copilot. And we have that menu above the slides. Now, one interesting option in this menu is the feature to translate a presentation. Word and Excel do not have a feature like this. I can choose that, then choose a language and click Translate. And it translates the entire presentation. I now have the Italian version in one window and the original version in another window. For now, I'll just close the Italian version and I'm not going to save it. So in PowerPoint, the Copilot panel doesn't really make new presentations or slides. It can generate pictures and it can draft text that you can copy and paste. But to create an entirely new presentation or just new slides, there are additional Copilot options that are outside of the Copilot panel. Now, let's look at one more application where we can use Copilot. Let's work with our email in Outlook. So I'll launch Outlook. And I'll click the Copilot button to open the Copilot panel. And I'll tell Copilot, you are my personal office assistant. I need you to review my email for the last two weeks and give me an overview of the topics that were discussed. Group topics by priority. Now, this is a fresh demo account, which doesn't have that many messages. But even with the limited amount of messages, we can see that this is a pretty powerful way to triage my inbox. The tasks I need to follow up on are organized by priority. And each of the citations in this response is a link directly to an original email message in Outlook. I'll close this and next I'll open a specific email thread. Now, I only have one thread in my demo account, but that will work. With this thread open, it will refer to this thread when I ask a question in the Copilot panel. So I'll start a new Copilot chat. And also, if you want, you can click the plus button and upload files that you might want Copilot to analyze. Or as we saw earlier, I can type the forward slash key and search for a file that is stored on my OneDrive. I'll select this punch list spreadsheet. So in addition to the email thread I have open, Copilot will refer to information from that spreadsheet. Then I'll ask if there is information from the punch list that will answer Ava's questions. And Copilot will help me identify whether I have the information I need in this file. And it turns out that some of the answers are there. So I'm going to ask Copilot to draft a response that includes the answers that are in the punch list and let Ava know that I'll have the other answers for her next week. It gives me a draft. And at this point, it's just a draft that I could copy and paste. But we'll see how to make a more direct draft in just a moment. So the Copilot panel inside of Outlook can help with requests related to a specific message. Let's close the Copilot panel for now. And when you have an email thread selected, there's a summarize button above the email thread. So Copilot can give you a quick summary of that entire conversation. This will work with any email message, but it's most useful for long threads with lots of replies. Next, since Copilot is able to write drafts of text, it can help us draft new messages or replies to messages. So I'll click the Reply All button to reply to this conversation. And in the email body, there is a Draft with Copilot button. When you click that, you get a prompt field where you can describe the draft you want, or you can choose one of the suggested prompts here. I'll tell Copilot to draft a response that acknowledges all of the requested items and lets them know that I'll have answers for them next week. Sometimes it's easier to describe your priorities to Copilot, then let Copilot give you a draft that you can use as a starting point for your response. Now, the Draft with Copilot field does not let me refer to other files, so there's a bit of a trade-off here. And here's that draft. I can choose to keep it or discard it or give Copilot instructions for how to revise it. I'll choose to keep it. So you can ask Copilot to write a draft for you, or Copilot can help you revise a draft that you've written. Of course, Copilot wrote this draft, but for the moment, let's imagine that I wrote it. As long as your cursor is somewhere in a paragraph of text within the draft, you can click the Write with Copilot button on the left, and there are various options to make this text longer, shorter, or change the tone. Or you can choose Get Coaching. This gives you a detailed analysis of the draft organized in categories like tone, reader sentiment, and clarity. You can read through these suggestions to help you decide if you want to make those changes. There is an option to apply all suggestions at once, but I don't think all of the suggestions will fit in every scenario, so it's best to take them one at a time. For now, I'll dismiss this and I won't make any changes. And finally, there's one more important option in Copilot Settings. So I'll click the gear button at the top to open Settings. Then I'll go to the Copilot category. You can completely disable Copilot here if you want, but more importantly, you can go to the Draft Instructions. And if you use Copilot to draft replies on a regular basis, you might want to establish some rules for the length, tone, or format of your replies. Maybe you work in sales and there are specific rules for how you communicate with sales leads, and you always want Copilot to follow those rules when it writes a draft. You may also think about prompt engineering components. You might establish a role, context, or constraints for Copilot to follow here. In the text field, I'll tell Copilot to use a friendly but professional tone, draft responses in a single concise paragraph, and include thank you somewhere in the message. Then I'll click the Save button. So whenever I ask Copilot to write a draft, I can skip those instructions or components and go straight to the main request. This only applies to drafts in Outlook, but it can be a big time saver. I hope you'll use some of these techniques to triage your inbox, get insights about your messages, or help you write drafts in Outlook. And that brings us to the end of this complete tutorial on using Copilot as an individual with a Microsoft 365 Personal or Premium subscription. Of course, the fact that there are two different versions of the Copilot chat that you can use with your subscription may be a little confusing, but I hope you're starting to identify the features that you want to use. And of course, you can also use Copilot inside of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. I think this will give you a good start to streamlining your work and becoming more productive. To keep learning and for more videos and tutorials like this, make sure to subscribe to this channel.