How to Use Microsoft Copilot in Teams, Word and Excel

A project manager I work with used to spend every Monday morning reading through a week of Teams chats and meeting notes to write her status report. Now she asks Copilot what she missed, lets it draft the report in Word, and checks the numbers in Excel with Copilot’s help. The report takes 20 minutes instead of two hours.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to use Microsoft Copilot in Teams, Word and Excel, step by step: which license gives you what, where to find the Copilot button (it moved in 2026), prompts that work well, and what to check when Copilot doesn’t show up.

Quick answer: In Teams, select Copilot in the meeting controls or Open Copilot in a chat to summarize and ask questions. In Word and Excel, select the Copilot button in the lower-right corner of the document (or press Alt+C) and describe what you want. Copilot in Teams chats and meetings needs a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license, while many business plans include basic Copilot in Word and Excel.

Which Copilot do you have?

Start here, because the license decides what you’ll see. In 2026, Microsoft renamed the Microsoft 365 Copilot app to Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat to Microsoft Copilot Chat. Some screens and licenses still use the old names.

To check yours, sign in to the Microsoft 365 home page or copilot.cloud.microsoft with your work account and look at the label under your name:

Label	What you get
Copilot Chat (Basic)	Secure, web-based Copilot Chat. No Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote.
M365 Copilot (Basic)	Copilot Chat plus standard access to Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
M365 Copilot (Premium)	The paid add-on: priority access, Copilot in Teams chats and meetings, and answers grounded in your emails, files, chats and meetings.

Without the paid license, Copilot Chat answers from the web and from files you give it. With it, Copilot can find the information itself, but only content you already have permission to open.

Copilot in Microsoft Teams

Teams is where most people feel the difference first. Copilot in meetings, chats and channels needs the paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Everyone with Copilot Chat can still use the Copilot chat at the top of the Teams chat list, but without the license it only answers from the web.

Use Copilot during a meeting

Copilot works in scheduled meetings, channel meetings, Meet Now and calls. It needs something to listen to, so the meeting usually has to be transcribed or recorded. It isn’t available in meetings created by someone outside your organization.

1. Join the meeting and select Copilot in the meeting controls.
2. If transcription is off, Copilot asks you to turn it on.
3. In the panel on the right, pick a suggestion under More prompts or type your own question.

Questions that work well:

• “What questions are unresolved in this meeting?”
• “Where do we disagree on this topic?”
• “List the ideas, including people’s feedback, from the transcript and chat.”
• “What action items were assigned, and to whom?”

If you join five minutes or more late, Copilot offers to summarize what you missed. Long answers get an Open in Word button, and tables get Open in Excel, unless a sensitivity label blocks it. Your Copilot conversation is private; other attendees can’t see it.

Let Copilot work without a transcript

Some meetings shouldn’t be transcribed. The organizer can let Copilot work only while the meeting runs:

1. In Teams, open Calendar and select the meeting you organized.
2. Select Options and scroll to Copilot and other AI.
3. Set Allow Copilot and Facilitator to Only during the meeting, then select Apply.
4. During the meeting, select Copilot and then Turn on.

The other choices are During and after the meeting, which needs transcription, and Off, which also turns off recording and transcription. Keep in mind that your prompts and responses can still be kept under your company’s retention policies.

Review a meeting afterward

Open the meeting chat and select Open Copilot, or open the meeting in your calendar and go to the Recap tab. To ask about what was said, the meeting needs a transcript. Intelligent recap, with notes and action items, comes with the Copilot license or Teams Premium.

Catch up on chats and channels

Open a busy chat and select Open Copilot in the upper-right corner. When there are eight or more unread messages, you’ll see a Summarize what I’ve missed suggestion. Copilot looks at the last 30 days unless you name a different period, such as “What did we decide about the budget in the last week?”

In a channel, open a post’s replies and select Summarize thread. A thread needs at least 1,000 characters to summarize. Copilot can’t read images, Loop components or files shared in the chat, so open those separately.

Rewrite your messages

Type your message, then select Rewrite with Copilot under the compose box. Choose Rewrite for a cleaner version, or Adjust to make it shorter or longer, or more casual, professional, confident or enthusiastic. Select Replace to use it, or X to keep your original.

For Teams admins

Admins control the default in the Teams admin center under Meetings > Meeting policies > Recording & transcription > Copilot. The default, On with saved transcript required, means Copilot only works when the meeting is transcribed. With PowerShell, use Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy with the -Copilot parameter:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global -Copilot Enabled

Enabled makes Only during the meeting the organizer default. The other values are EnabledWithTranscript, EnabledWithTranscriptDefaultOn and Disabled.

Copilot in Word

If you’re following an older tutorial that says to select Copilot on the Home tab, look in the lower-right corner of the document instead. Since mid-2026, Word, Excel and PowerPoint open Copilot from a floating button there, on Windows, Mac and the web. Press Alt+C on Windows or F6 on any platform. To put it back on the ribbon, right-click it and select Move to ribbon.

Draft a document

1. Open a new or existing document and select the Copilot button.
2. Describe what you want: the topic, audience, tone, format and length.
3. To base it on a file, type / and pick a document, email or meeting.
4. Select Generate, then keep the draft, regenerate it, or ask for changes.

For example: “Draft a one-page project kickoff summary for the finance team, using /Project Plan 2026. Keep it friendly and end with next steps.”

Rewrite, restructure or summarize

Select some text and choose Copilot on the mini toolbar. Pick Auto Rewrite or describe the change, such as “Turn this text into a table with columns for task, owner, due date and status,” then select Replace or Insert below.

To summarize, type “Summarize this document” in the Copilot pane. With the paid license, Word shows an automatic summary at the top of documents saved in OneDrive or SharePoint that have 200 words or more. If you only want answers without edits to your document, choose Chat only.

If you create Word documents automatically instead, see how to create a Word document from a template in Power Automate.

Copilot in Excel

Open a workbook and select the Copilot button in the lower-right corner. Excel’s Copilot has three modes, and it helps to know which one you’re in:

• Allow editing (the default) lets Copilot change the workbook: add formula columns, sort and filter, apply conditional formatting, and create charts and PivotTables. It used to be called Agent Mode.
• Plan shows the steps it will take before it changes anything.
• Chat only answers questions without touching your data.

Prompts I use often:

• “Add a column that shows the number of days between Order Date and Ship Date.”
• “Highlight orders over $5,000 in green.”
• “Create a PivotTable of sales by region and month for 2026.”
• “What are the three biggest trends in this data?”

For deeper analysis, such as forecasts or statistics, Copilot can run Python for you while editing and put the results and charts right in the workbook.

Tips for better results in Excel

• You no longer have to format data as a table first, but clear column headers help. Name the columns or ranges you want Copilot to use.
• Copilot can only edit when Calculation Options is set to Automatic.
• If a SharePoint library requires check-out, Copilot won’t work on the desktop app; use Excel for the web.
• Co-authors see Copilot’s changes, so use Undo or version history if something goes wrong.
• The =COPILOT() worksheet function was a preview and was retired on September 14, 2026. Cells that used it now show #NAME? when they recalculate, so use the Copilot pane instead.

Write prompts that get better answers

Microsoft suggests four parts for a good prompt: the goal (what you want), the context (why and for whom), your expectations (format and tone), and the source (which files, emails or meetings to use). Only the goal is required, but each part you add makes the answer more useful.

Compare “Summarize the project” with “Summarize the risks in /Project Status Report for our VP in five bullet points, and flag anything overdue.” The second one gets you something you can send.

Can’t see Copilot? Check these

• Look in the lower-right corner. The button moved off the Home tab in 2026.
• Check your license label. Copilot Chat (Basic) doesn’t include Copilot in Word or Excel.
• Refresh the license. After a license is assigned, go to File > Account > Update License and restart the app.
• Sign in with your work account only. Being signed in with a personal and a work account at the same time can stop the license from working.
• Check your update channel. Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel doesn’t get Copilot; Current Channel and Monthly Enterprise Channel do.
• Turn on connected experiences. Under File > Account > Account Privacy, both content-analysis and connected experiences must be on.
• In Teams meetings, check that the organizer didn’t set Copilot to Off and that the meeting is transcribed.

Is your data safe with Copilot?

Copilot follows your existing Microsoft 365 permissions: it only shows content you can already open. Microsoft says prompts, responses and the data Copilot reads through Microsoft Graph aren’t used to train its AI models, and your work conversations get the same enterprise data protection as your email and SharePoint files.

That also means oversharing is the real risk. If a SharePoint site is shared with everyone, Copilot can find its files for everyone. It’s worth reviewing site permissions before a rollout; see OneDrive vs SharePoint vs Teams for where each type of file should live.

These Copilot and Teams tutorials may help next:

• GitHub Copilot vs Microsoft Copilot: Comparing AI Coding Assistants
• How to Use Microsoft Copilot in Power Automate?
• Configure Public Website As a Knowledge Source For Microsoft Copilot Agent
• How to Send Teams Messages Using Power Automate?
• 5 Best Methods to Share Screen in Microsoft Teams [Complete Guide]

Frequently Asked Questions