What is Microsoft Copilot? [+ how to access it] | Zapier

When I first heard that Microsoft Copilot was coming to Windows, I expected an AI agent that automates nearly everything, starting from the OS all the way up to the 365 apps. It’s not that: not yet, at least. 

Instead, Microsoft is rolling out slowly: small tools in Paint, a cool live AI screen-sharing tool, and chatbots everywhere you go. Cautious, yes—breaking Windows and Microsoft 365 for 1 billion users isn’t an option—but that caution is working.

Here’s what Copilot can do right now and where it’s headed, so you can jump in early and learn your way around the new tools before they become the standard for work.

Table of contents:

What is Microsoft Copilot?

Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s AI assistant: your “copilot” for work and daily tasks. Powered by OpenAI models, it’s a chat experience packaged as an app—and it’s directly integrated into Windows, Edge, Microsoft 365 apps like Word and Excel, and most of the software suite.

You interact with it using natural language to ask questions, draft text, summarize documents, or generate presentations. For organizations, Copilot draws on company data to respond (limited to what each user is authorized to access), while including privacy protections and defenses against prompt-injection and other common attacks.

Microsoft also added AI features to native Windows apps like Paint and the Snipping Tool. While not a part of the Copilot product itself, this guide covers them too, so you know where to find them and what they do.

How much does Microsoft Copilot cost?

Microsoft Copilot has three main pricing ranges: a free plan, paid plans for individuals, and a range of plans and add-ons for companies and enterprises.

• You can use Copilot for free on the web, via the Windows or macOS app, on mobile, and in Microsoft Edge. This includes the core AI chatbot experience.

• Microsoft 365 plans for individuals start at $9.99 per month, including everything in free and adding AI chat to Microsoft 365 apps, such as Word and PowerPoint.

• For businesses, the plans start at $21 per user, per month. They include the AI chatbot experiences in Microsoft 365 apps, and you can purchase add-ons to extend your account with extra features—such as Microsoft Copilot Studio, allowing you to create customized AI agents connected to your company data.

How to use the Microsoft Copilot app 

The Microsoft Copilot app is available for Windows 11, macOS, on mobile devices, and as a web app. In Windows, the AI chatbot experience is directly integrated into your computer. The dashboard lets you start a new conversation, use recent files as context for a prompt, or get guided help on the top apps you use.

Copilot supports text prompts, file uploads, and screenshots, and it has a voice mode so you can chat hands-free. But the coolest mode is screen sharing: you can choose an app or tab to share with AI, and ask questions using your voice. Copilot will analyze the video stream and help you find buttons or visual elements, while searching the web to help you troubleshoot issues.

You can select the AI’s capabilities when starting a new chat. The default Smart setting uses OpenAI’s latest model, which decides automatically whether to respond fast or think before doing so. Need a different behavior? Activate the Thinking mode to turn on reasoning, Deep Research to scour the web for references, or Study and learn to use AI as a guide.

When you’re writing notes and expanding them with AI, try creating a page: you’ll have a simple text editor with a connected side tab. You can ask questions about anything you’re adding, generate text, and even ask for changes.

Curious about what Copilot has in store for the future? Click the Labs tab at the top left of the screen to see what the team is working on. You can generate voices, create 3D images, or try Copilot Actions for having AI use your computer to complete tasks.

The Copilot app comes pre-installed in new Windows 11 PCs. If you don’t see it in your Start menu, head over to the Microsoft Store. Using it on a Mac? Search for and download it on the App Store.

Beyond the native app in Windows, you can access Copilot via the web app in your browser. You can’t share your screen with AI, but instead get entry points to explore today’s news and top stories with Copilot Daily in the Discover tab, a dashboard with AI-generated images, and a library with content you generated or searched for.

How to use Microsoft Copilot in Microsoft Edge and Bing Search’s AI Chat

Microsoft’s web browser, Edge, has a few tricks up its sleeve. The AI assistant in the sidebar can answer questions about what you’re viewing without you having to open another tab. It can also summarize content and rewrite any text you’ve written or highlighted.

Wrap these up with image generation from a prompt, translating web pages with AI, and natural voices for reading pages aloud, and you have a decent AI-powered browser for casual web surfing. If these feel underwhelming for everything AI can offer, try out an AI browser instead.

When accessing Copilot via Bing (by clicking the Chat button), you’re taken to the Copilot web app, which I described above. Nothing more, nothing less.

How to use Copilot in Microsoft 365

You can now write with AI in nearly all your favorite Microsoft 365 apps: just look for the Copilot icon within each app at the top-right of the toolbar.

Copilot in Word

AI is really well integrated in Word, letting you:

• Move away from the blank page as fast as possible by drafting from a prompt or starting from an existing file, email, or meeting.

• Polish what you have until it’s ready to share with rewriting tools.

• Check if you should read the entire thing by reading the AI summary, with key points included.

The balance between the Copilot chat on the side for structural changes and the prompt input attached to the lines to add/edit text feels great to use. The writing experience feels more interactive than before.

On the go? Draft with Copilot on your mobile device to generate starting points to work on later when you sit down at your desktop.

Copilot in Excel

Data wizards get new toys with AI in Excel. When you open the Copilot side tab, click the tools icon in the prompt input box. Copilot has four modes:

• Copilot Chat for Q&A and help that doesn’t affect your workbook.

• Agent mode for complex multi-step tasks for creating worksheets, reshaping, or merging data. It can create tables, formulas, PivotTables, or charts.

• Researcher for generating detailed reports based on web research or by diving into existing documents.

• Analyst for getting insights from your data. It can analyze attached files, compute stats, and identify trends/outliers.

Want to use AI directly in your sheet? The =COPILOT() function lets you run a prompt in a cell, where you can use other cells as a reference to add extra context. This is useful for summarizing multiple cells or analyzing data with AI.

More than that, Copilot in Excel will help in fixing messy data entries, applying consistent formatting and generating or explaining formulas.

Copilot in PowerPoint

AI is here to power up your PowerPoint presentations too. If your teams communicate a lot via decks, you can use the presentation summarization tool to get to the core ideas without scrolling through dozens of slides.

When you’re following a stream of ideas—or you’re just so pressed for time that you’re dumping everything onto each slide—Copilot can organize the presentation for you. Simply click on the prompt suggestion with that label. Your slides will be grouped by topic, and a few new ones will be generated to keep a coherent structure.

If you’re really out of inspiration or want a quick draft to get started, you can generate a new presentation from a prompt, attaching files for extra context if needed, and choosing how many slides you want. You can add or edit content with prompts—and, again, you can use the little book icon to access a prompt library for extra help. And if you add your company’s templates to PowerPoint, you can generate new presentations matching the visuals consistently.

Copilot in OneNote

OneNote gets smarter note-taking with Copilot. Open the Copilot pane from the Home tab, or click the on-canvas icon for quick access. Copilot handles four key tasks:

• Summarize notes into bullet points or outlines. Great for extracting key points from messy meeting notes or transcripts.

• Generate and refine content. Ask Copilot for event plans, meeting agendas, or brainstorm ideas. Already have content? Tell it to rewrite for tone, expand sections, or cut word count.

• Create task lists from your notes. Copilot pulls out action items, deadlines, and priorities automatically—no manual sorting needed.

• Take notes with Copilot. Click the on-canvas icon and prompt it with what you need: “Add a summary of my last meeting with Michelle” or “Create a to-do list for the product launch.” Copilot generates it directly on the page. Keep it or refine your prompt.

And then, you also have Copilot Notebooks in OneNote, an entirely different beast—it’s an AI-powered project workspace:

1. Create a notebook, then add reference files (Word docs, Excel sheets, PDFs, PowerPoint decks, OneNote pages) from OneDrive or upload directly.

2. Now ask questions about that content: “Based on the budget spreadsheet and the contractor quote, how much do we have left for the design doc ideas?”

3. Copilot analyzes everything and gives you focused answers, summaries, and drafts. Share notebooks with your team for real-time collaboration. This is only available on OneNote for Windows for now.

Copilot in Outlook

Outlook can summarize entire email threads, attachments included. And once you have all the core information present in your mind, you can use AI to draft a response. If you need to write it yourself, Copilot also offers an option that analyzes the text to help you find the best tone, consider the reader’s sentiment, and improve the clarity of your message.

Meetings usually start from an email: Schedule with Copilot can turn an email thread into a meeting invite, filling out the title and agenda based on the content. Type a prompt in the Copilot tab or choose a suggested one, and then review the AI’s output: you can regenerate to make adjustments. Got invited to a meeting that you can’t attend? Click Follow when RSVP-ing, and you’ll get a recap from Teams, with:

• The meeting’s recording (if recorded) and transcript

• Shared files

• A summary, notes, agenda, and follow-up tasks

If you’re overwhelmed by a busy calendar and inbox, you can now ask Copilot about your schedule and messages. It has access to your and your organization’s data, and it can also search the web, making it flexible for handling advanced commands and questions. And, since it can also take action in Outlook, you can ask anything from “schedule a meeting with our product manager” or “draft an email update about customer support incidents” and get results.

Copilot in Teams

If you didn’t make it to the meeting, you can get a recap, accessible from a recorded event—the same you get if you chose to follow a meeting via the Outlook entry point described in the previous section. To top it off, this meeting recap also has a chat window, so you can ask further questions about the data and get AI-generated insights based on the transcript.

Find business data with Copilot Search

For companies with years’ worth of data across SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, or other platforms, finding information can easily balloon from a simple task to a complex project. Microsoft addresses this issue with Copilot Search: an AI-powered universal search tool that looks into your organization’s data and any connected third-party sources for answers.

Start from your organization’s Copilot Chat, click the Search tab, and type either a file name, a person, or a natural language question. The results line up in a list, with filters on the side to limit the search to a platform. When you tap details for each search result, you can see an AI summary of the content, great to check if this is what you’re actually looking for.

Build AI agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio

As you use Copilot inside Microsoft 365 apps and as an interface for your business data, you’ll want to customize behaviors and actions to save time prompting or streamline workflows. Microsoft Copilot Studio is an AI agent builder that helps you customize the way Copilot works through conversational and autonomous agents. You’ll be able to:

• Attach knowledge sources from Microsoft and third-party data sources to create Q&A chatbots grounded in your data.

• Set up actions, connectors, and workflows, so your agents can actually do things across systems, like updating a ticket status on Zendesk or creating a new contact in HubSpot.

• Deploy them to multiple channels, including websites, apps, or social platforms.

This is a low-code, developer-grade platform, with tight admin, security, and governance features to protect your data as you expose it to agents. If you’re interested in unlocking these capabilities, bear in mind that Copilot Studio has a separate licensing system, operates based on credits, and requires an active Microsoft Azure subscription (the cloud computing arm of this tech company).

More Copilots in other Microsoft apps

I covered the most popular Copilot entry points above, but nearly every Microsoft title is expanding with AI features. For example, enterprise users unlock even more possibilities in advanced apps such as SharePoint (generate/rewrite pages), Power BI (interact with reports, generate visuals), or Power Automate (design and troubleshoot automations with prompts).

If you’re deep into the software suite, check out the documentation for each product and your licensing terms, as you may have cool new tools waiting for you.

AI in native Windows 11 software

There’s more AI in Windows than just Copilot, with some tools getting AI-powered upgrades. The catch? Unlocking the best ones requires a Copilot+ PC: a computer with an NPU (short for Neural Processing Unit, AI-processing hardware) installed. Check your specs to see if you can use everything.

AI in Clipchamp

The Microsoft video editing app Clipchamp offers a simple user experience to polish your content, and now you can start a new project with AI Auto Compose. Upload your source video, choose a style, and select a background song. You’ll get a video ready with transitions, jump cuts, and colorful backgrounds right out of the gate.

If you need a voiceover but aren’t up to recording it yourself, there’s a text-to-speech feature available, offering a range of controls for how the voice sounds. The result is decent, a good option if you’re tight on time to source it elsewhere. Keep polishing your video with silence removal, noise suppression, and editing a video by editing the transcript. While not as powerful as a fully-fledged AI video editor, it gets the job done for casual use.

AI in Paint

If you grew up in the ’90s, I’m sure you remember Paint. You might want to open it again after all these years. It now has Cocreator, an AI image generation tool: start with your prompt, pick a style from the dropdown, and the result is pasted into the canvas, ready for editing. It can also blur the background of images, a feature that it shares with Photos.

On top of these, you’ll find generative fill to enrich selected areas of your image with AI-generated content (and generative erase to do the opposite), background removal with one click, and object selection so you can copy, move, and erase them easily.

AI in Snipping Tool

Screenshotters rejoice: the Snipping Tool is smarter. It can extract text from screenshots, automatically redact sensitive information, adjust screenshot framing, and pick/copy a color from your screen.

AI in Photos

Polish your memories in Photos: erase objects or blemishes and blur/remove/replace the background. Copilot+ PCs get more: you can change photo lighting, restyle your photos into a different aesthetic, and upscale to increase resolution. Where’s that picture of summer 2018? Search through your library with a prompt—the engine detects image content to surface all matches.

Copilot in Notepad

Notepad punches up with generative writing features for adding, rewriting, and summarizing text, great for cleaning and upgrading those quick notes without running them through an AI chatbot.

Copilot features exclusive to Copilot+ PCs

Copilot+ PC owners get even more shiny toys. These show the potential direction that the OS can take once most computers on the planet are running their NPUs locally for light-to-moderate AI workloads. Here’s what to explore:

• Microsoft Recall captures everything on your screen as you go about your day, taking snapshots at time intervals. Then, when you wonder what the name of the website of that marketing platform was yesterday, you can either scroll through a timeline or use natural language to ask.

• Search Windows Settings by intent. I love this one: instead of searching by setting names (for example, Mouse and Pointers), you search by what you want to do or the problem you’re facing (“my mouse pointer is too small”).

• AI-powered troubleshooting: You have an AI agent at your disposal to recommend changes to settings based on any issues you’re experiencing—and actually making the changes for you, if you allow it.

• Live captions with real-time translation from +40 languages into English, for both pre-recorded and live audio.

• Windows Studio Effects, a set of camera and microphone enhancements for automatic framing, background blur, eye contact, and voice focus/noise suppression.

• Improved Windows Search: describe what you mean instead of exact file names, and AI finds it by leveraging semantic indexing.

• Click To Do, a system feature that suggests contextual actions based on text or images visible on the screen. For example, you can summarize or refine visible text, start a web search, or send it to Word for a new draft.

Automate your Microsoft apps

To add even more power to your AI workflows, you can automate them with Zapier—connecting your Microsoft apps to thousands of other tools you use at work. Zapier lets you orchestrate AI across those workflows, like summarizing emails with AI, enriching Excel rows with generated insights, or triggering smart follow-ups in Teams.

Learn more about how to automate Excel, Outlook, and Teams with Zapier, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

AI power everywhere

AI features are spreading across software like a web, connecting models to buttons and commands, offering you endless possibilities to complete each task—and it’s up to you to choose and tweak the best ones. As Microsoft develops new features and reworks its product line, we can slowly see how AI plays into the future of work: less searching, fewer blank pages, and more system-level integration and automation.

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This article was originally published in December 2023. The most recent update was in February 2026.