Learn Microsoft Copilot in 5 minutes.
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Web grounding or work grounding?
Public knowledge
Grounded in Bing and the model's training, like any consumer chatbot. Right for general questions, drafting from scratch, and anything that does not involve your company's data.
Your tenant
With Microsoft 365 Copilot, it can search your mail, chats, meetings, and SharePoint files. Ask what you missed yesterday and it can actually answer.
Copilot in Office
Inside Word it drafts and rewrites, in Excel it writes formulas and analyses tables, in PowerPoint it builds decks from documents. The prompt box is the same; the canvas changes what it can touch.
What you will do in the lesson
- Tell the two Copilots apart. You sort real prompts into web-grounded and work-grounded, and predict what happens when they go to the wrong one.
- Draft a document with it. You practise a Word-style flow: rough points in, structured draft out, then instructions that reshape tone and length.
- Interrogate a spreadsheet. You ask Copilot Excel-style questions about a table, from a formula you can never remember to a summary of what stands out.
- Recap a meeting you skipped. You work through a Teams recap scenario: decisions, open questions, and who owes what by when.
- Write prompts with references. You practise pointing Copilot at a specific file or thread instead of hoping it finds the right one.
Before you start
Is there anything to install before I start?
No. The lesson runs in the embedded frame on this page. Copilot itself is already in Windows and the Microsoft 365 apps if your organisation has it.
What is the difference between free Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Free Copilot is the web-grounded chat anyone can use. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the paid workplace version that sees your organisation's mail, files, and meetings and lives inside the Office apps. The lesson teaches both modes.
Can my employer see what I ask Copilot?
Work-grounded Copilot operates inside your organisation's tenant, and its admins control logging and policies, so treat prompts like anything else you do at work. It only surfaces files you already have permission to open.
I already use ChatGPT. Why learn Copilot too?
For open-web questions they are close, and Copilot runs OpenAI models under the hood. Copilot's edge is reach: it can quote your own mail, meetings, and documents where you work. If your company runs Microsoft 365, that is work ChatGPT cannot do.
