Top 10 Copilot Prompts to Try
Which Copilot prompts actually save time? This infographic brings together practical prompts for everyday tasks across Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and more. Get the infographic to find prompts your team can start using today.
How can Microsoft 365 Copilot help me prepare for meetings?
Microsoft 365 Copilot can help you prepare for meetings by pulling together agendas, context, and summaries from across Outlook, Teams, and your documents.
Here are a few practical ways to use it:
- In Outlook: Ask things like, “I think I have a meeting coming up with <person>. What’s on the agenda and when’s the next instance?” Copilot will surface the next meeting and key details so you can get up to speed quickly.
- In Teams: Use prompts such as, “Draft talking points for the unresolved questions in this email based on the feedback from <meeting series>,” or “Develop project updates for our next status meeting.” Copilot will use your existing conversations and files as input.
- In Word: You can say, “Update the document with the latest information from my emails and Teams chat with my manager. Keep the structure intact and add a ‘Key outcomes, Risks, Next steps’ section.” This helps you walk into meetings with a current, structured brief.
- In PowerPoint: Ask Copilot to “Create an executive-ready PowerPoint summarizing the current state of our work in <Project Name>—what’s progressing well, what’s blocked, and what needs attention next—for the quarterly product review.” Copilot will reimagine your updates as a slide deck focused on the last quarter’s key changes.
Availability details to keep in mind:
- Copilot in Teams is generally available for Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users on desktop, mobile, and web.
- Word with Copilot is planned to be generally available in January 2026 for Windows desktop, Mac, and web (excluding EU and UK for Word).
- PowerPoint with Copilot started rolling out more broadly on the web from February (after an initial Frontier release in November 2025 on Windows), excluding EU and UK.
What can Copilot do in Excel for data analysis and reporting?
Copilot in Excel is designed to help you analyze and visualize existing data sets without having to build everything manually.
Here are some concrete examples of what it can do:
- Segment customers with clustering: Use a prompt like, “Analyze the customer data imported from my recent email attachment and group accounts by behavioral similarity using clustering. Create a summary table and charts showing the key characteristics of each segment.” Copilot will help you reimagine your raw data as clear segments with visual summaries.
- Build a revenue heatmap: Ask, “Build a ‘Revenue Heatmap’ sheet with a pivot table summarizing revenue by Geography and Industry. Add a heatmap with conditional formatting color scale, a top-10 table, and a chart to summarize the insights.” This gives you a quick view of where revenue is concentrated.
- Extract insights and visualize data: You can use prompts like, “Use the existing data set to extract key trends and visualize them with charts,” and then refine the output by asking Copilot to adjust fields, filters, or chart types.
In practice, this helps teams:
- Turn email-attached spreadsheets into structured analyses.
- Quickly identify top-performing regions or industries via top-10 tables and heatmaps.
- Share clearer, visual summaries with stakeholders without deep Excel expertise.
How does Copilot support content and asset management in SharePoint and Word?
Copilot can help you both organize content in SharePoint and refine written materials in Word, making it easier to manage projects and communications.
In SharePoint (AI in SharePoint)
- You can ask Copilot to “Create a document library for <program or project> assets. Include columns for asset type, product area, owner, review status, publish date, channel, and region. Create views for ‘Due this week,’ ‘Waiting on legal,’ and ‘Ready to publish.’”
- This helps you standardize how you track content, approvals, and publishing status across teams.
- A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required for AI in SharePoint, and some capabilities may only be available in Public Preview.
In Word
- For refining messaging, you can say, “Copilot, I need to practice my sales pitch. I’ll say it out loud, then tell me how I can be more concise.” Copilot will help you tighten your language and clarify your message.
- For status documents, use prompts like, “Update the document with the latest information from my emails and Teams chat with my manager. Keep the structure intact and add a ‘Key outcomes, Risks, Next steps’ section.” This keeps your reports aligned with the latest conversations.
- Word with Copilot is planned to be generally available in January 2026 for Windows desktop, Mac, and web for Microsoft 365 Copilot users (excluding EU and UK for Word).
Across both SharePoint and Word, Copilot helps you rethink how you manage content: from structured libraries and views to consistently updated, executive-ready documents.