Microsoft Copilot Prompting (Word, Excel, Teams, Outlook)

Microsoft Copilot is the version of generative AI that lives inside the tools most knowledge workers already use all day. Each app — Word, Excel, Teams, Outlook — has its own surface, its own prompting style, and its own quirks. Learning them well changes how quickly you can move through a working day.

Note: Microsoft Copilot's features differ across plans (Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Pro, free Copilot) and evolve quickly. Confirm current behaviour in the official Microsoft Learn documentation.

1. Introduction

Microsoft Copilot's biggest leverage is grounding. Inside Microsoft 365 it can read your documents, your meetings, your emails, and the files your colleagues have shared with you — then use that context in its answers. The prompting style is less about being clever and more about pointing Copilot at the right files and the right time window, then asking a clear question. This tutorial walks through the four apps where Copilot makes the biggest day-to-day difference.

2. The /Reference Pattern (Used Everywhere)

Across Copilot in Microsoft 365, you can type / in a Copilot chat to attach a specific file, person, meeting, or email. This single habit turns vague prompts into grounded ones.

• /file — attach a Word, Excel, PowerPoint or PDF file.
• /people — reference a colleague (Copilot can include their recent shared files in context).
• /meeting — reference a past Teams meeting (transcripts and recap).
• /email — point at a specific Outlook thread.

Using /file Q3 Marketing Plan.docx and /file Q3 Revenue Forecast.xlsx,
draft a 1-page executive summary suitable for board distribution.

Structure:
- One paragraph: where we stand
- A table: top 3 risks and 3 opportunities with revenue impact
- One paragraph: requested decision from the board

3. Copilot in Word

Copilot in Word has two main modes: draft with Copilot (generates a first draft based on a prompt and optional references) and inline rewrite (select text → Copilot icon → instruction).

Good Word prompts always include audience, length, structure, and tone. Word is forgiving — but extra specificity pays back twice over in editing time saved.

Draft a 2-page client proposal using /file Brief.docx and
/file Past Case Study.docx.

Audience: marketing director at a 200-person retail brand.
Tone: confident, practical, no jargon.
Structure: Problem → Approach → Deliverables → Timeline →
Investment → Next steps.

Use British English. Keep paragraphs under 3 sentences.

For long documents, ask Copilot to generate only the outline first, approve it, then ask for one section at a time. Quality jumps and you avoid spending tokens on a draft that goes in the wrong direction.

4. Copilot in Excel

Excel Copilot's superpower is converting plain English into formulas, charts, and structured analyses. It works best on data that is already in a proper Excel table (Ctrl+T) with named columns.

• Formula generation: "Add a column that calculates the 7-day rolling average of Sales."
• Insights: "Show me three insights about this data with supporting charts." Copilot scans the columns and proposes ready-to-insert visuals.
• Conditional formatting: "Highlight rows where the discount is over 20% and the margin is below 10%."
• Cleanup: "Add a column that standardises the country names to ISO 3166 two-letter codes."

Using the Sales table:

1. Add a new column "Quarter" derived from the Date column
   (Q1 2026, Q2 2026, etc.).
2. Add a pivot table on a new sheet showing total Revenue
   by Region by Quarter.
3. Insert a clustered column chart of the pivot table.
4. Highlight any quarter where revenue dropped more than
   10% versus the previous quarter.

Always sanity-check generated formulas on a few rows before relying on them. Copilot is fluent but not infallible — especially with date arithmetic and currency conversions.

5. Copilot in Teams and Outlook

In Teams, Copilot is at its most useful as a meeting layer. During or after a call it can summarise the discussion, list action items, and answer questions about what was said. The key is to ask narrow, time-windowed questions.

From this meeting:

1. List every commitment made and who made it.
2. Summarise the two decisions reached, and the reasoning.
3. List any open questions that were raised but not answered.
4. Draft a 5-line follow-up email to send to the attendees.

In Outlook, Copilot can summarise long threads, draft replies with a chosen tone, and convert messages into to-dos. The drafting prompts are simple but the tone instructions matter — Copilot defaults to a slightly formal voice and will adapt only if you tell it.

Reply to this thread.

Tone: warm but firm. We can't accept the new timeline.
Confirm we can deliver the original Phase 1 scope on time
and propose moving Phase 2 by two weeks instead.

Length: 5–6 sentences. Sign off as "Karan".

6. Patterns That Work Especially Well in Microsoft Copilot

• Reference, don't restate. Attach files with /file instead of pasting their contents. Copilot reads them with full fidelity.
• The pre-meeting brief. Before a Teams call, ask Copilot for a one-pager based on the meeting's invitees and recent shared files. Two minutes to prepare beats walking in blind.
• The Friday digest. "Summarise everything I missed in /people Aanya and /people Karan this week. Group by project. Flag anything that needs my reply."
• The Excel two-step. Ask Copilot for the chart you want first, then ask for the underlying formulas. The chart prompt forces it to think about the data shape; the formulas usually come out cleaner as a result.
• Tone tags. In Outlook, three-word tone instructions ("warm but firm", "brief and professional", "apologetic but not grovelling") move the draft more than a paragraph of guidance.

7. Practice Exercises

8. Key Takeaways