Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft's AI assistant integrated across Office apps, Windows, and Edge browser.
What Copilot adds to Office
Copilot's advantage over a general chatbot is that it is already inside the document. It can summarise the file you have open, rewrite the paragraph you are sitting in, or pull a long email thread into a few lines, without you copying anything anywhere.
What it can do depends on your licence and on which apps your organisation has enabled. If your training is being funded through Access to Work or an employer, it is worth confirming that before you build a workflow around it.
Getting Started
- In Word: ask Copilot to "summarise this document" or "rewrite this paragraph for clarity"
- In Excel: request "create a pivot table from this data" or "explain this formula"
- In PowerPoint: say "create a slide about [topic]" or "suggest better visuals for this slide"
- In Outlook: use "draft a professional email about [subject]" or "summarise this email thread"
- Access via Windows+C on Windows 11 or the Copilot icon in Office applications
Using Copilot with a screen reader
- Copilot opens in a side pane. In the Office apps, F6 moves between the document, the ribbon and any open panes. That is the reliable way back to your text after asking a question.
- Ask for structure, not prose. Summarise this document as five bullet points with a heading for each section gives you something you can navigate. One long paragraph does not.
- Insert, then read. Once you accept a suggestion it becomes ordinary document content and behaves like anything else you have typed. Reading it back in the document is easier than reading it in the pane.
- Point it at your own writing. Asking whether your headings run in a sensible order, or whether a table has a header row, catches structure problems you cannot see.
Common problems, and what to do
- The pane takes focus and you lose your place. F6 cycles back to the document. Noting which heading you were under before you ask saves hunting for it afterwards.
- Copilot is not there at all. It is licensed separately from Office. A missing button is usually a licence question for your IT department rather than a fault.
- The summary misses the point. It can only read what is in the file. If the document has no headings and no structure, it has very little to work with, and that is the real problem.
- It flattens your voice. Rewrites tend to come back blander than the original. Use it for a first draft and put your own wording back in.
Who we see using it
People who have to get through long documents quickly, and anyone whose job is mostly email. It is also a quick way to check your own files are structured properly before you send them on to somebody else.
Need more detailed guidance?
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