How to Use Copilot in Word, Excel and PowerPoint (2026): Plans, Prices and 30 Prompts That Work

Copilot is now built into the Office apps most of us open every day. If you pay for Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, Premium or Pro, you already have Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, with different usage limits per plan. Used well, it drafts documents, rewrites paragraphs, builds formulas and pivot-style summaries, and turns a Word outline into a slide deck. Used badly, it produces generic filler. This guide explains which plan you need in 2026, how to switch Copilot on or off, how it works in each app, and 30 prompts that give useful results.

Which Microsoft 365 Plan Includes Copilot?

Microsoft folded Copilot into its consumer subscriptions and added two higher tiers. These are Microsoft’s US prices for individuals as listed on its Copilot pricing page in November 2026; prices differ by country.

For most people, Personal is enough if you use Copilot a few times a day in documents. Choose Premium if you hit limits, want the advanced research and analysis agents, or want everyone in a family to have strong Copilot access. Pro is aimed at heavy professional users. Businesses use the separate Microsoft 365 Copilot business add-on instead.

How to Turn Copilot On or Off

1. Update Office: in any app go to File > Account > Update Options > Update Now.
2. Sign in with the Microsoft account that owns the subscription (top right of the app).
3. Look for the Copilot icon on the Home tab, or the small Copilot icon next to your cursor in a blank line in Word.

To turn it off, open File > Options > Copilot and untick Enable Copilot, then restart the app. This is per app and per device, so repeat it in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. On Mac, the setting is under the app menu > Preferences > Copilot. If you are removing AI from Windows completely, see my guide to turning off Copilot in Windows 11.

Copilot in Word

Word is where Copilot is most mature. You can:

• Draft with Copilot: on a blank document, click the Copilot icon and describe what you need. You can reference up to a few existing files from OneDrive by typing / and picking them, so Copilot drafts from your own notes.
• Rewrite: select a paragraph, click the Copilot icon in the margin and choose Auto rewrite, or ask for a specific tone or length.
• Visualise as a table: select list-like text and ask Copilot to turn it into a table.
• Summarise and ask: open the Copilot pane on a long document and ask “What are the key risks in this contract?”

Always read the draft. Copilot writes fluent text that can contain invented details, especially numbers and dates that were not in your sources.

Copilot in Excel

Copilot in Excel works best on data formatted as a table (Ctrl + T) or a clean range with headers, in a file saved to OneDrive or SharePoint with AutoSave on. Open the Copilot pane and you can:

• Add formula columns: “Add a column that calculates profit margin as a percentage.” Copilot shows the formula and explains it before inserting.
• Highlight and sort: “Highlight rows where sales dropped month over month.”
• Summarise: “Show total revenue by region and month as a chart.”
• Analyse with Python: on supported plans, Copilot can write Python in Excel for deeper analysis like forecasting or clustering.

Microsoft has also been rolling out a =COPILOT() worksheet function that lets you call the model from a cell to classify or summarise text, and an agent-style mode that builds multi-step workbooks from a prompt. Availability depends on your plan and update channel.

Copilot in PowerPoint

• Create a presentation from a file: click Copilot > Create presentation from file and pick a Word document or PDF from OneDrive. Copilot builds slides with titles, bullet points, images and speaker notes.
• Create from a prompt: “Create a 10-slide deck introducing our new loyalty programme to store managers.”
• Add a slide or image: “Add a slide comparing last year’s and this year’s numbers.”
• Organise: “Organise this presentation into sections and add a summary slide.”
• Summarise a deck someone sent you, with key points and action items.

Apply your company or personal design template before asking Copilot to build slides so it uses your fonts and colours. Then fix layouts by hand; Copilot’s first draft is a starting point, not a final deck.

Copilot in Outlook

• Summarise a thread: click Summary by Copilot at the top of a long email chain.
• Draft with Copilot: describe the reply you want, then adjust tone and length.
• Coaching: ask Copilot to review your draft for clarity and tone before you send something sensitive.

30 Copilot Prompts That Work

Good Copilot prompts have four parts: the goal, the source, the audience and the format. Here are prompts I recommend as starting templates.

Word

1. “Draft a one-page project proposal using /MeetingNotes. Audience: finance team. Include budget, timeline and risks.”
2. “Rewrite this section in plain English for customers, under 150 words.”
3. “Turn these bullet points into a formal letter.”
4. “Summarise this document in five bullet points and list open questions.”
5. “Find every deadline mentioned in this contract and put them in a table.”
6. “Make this paragraph more persuasive without adding new claims.”
7. “Create an FAQ section from this policy document.”
8. “Suggest three stronger headlines for this article.”
9. “Check this document for inconsistent terms and tense.”
10. “Translate this summary into Hindi, keeping product names in English.”

Excel

11. “Add a column that shows days between Order Date and Ship Date.”
12. “Which five products had the highest return rate?”
13. “Create a chart of monthly revenue by region.”
14. “Highlight duplicate email addresses in red.”
15. “Explain what this formula does: =XLOOKUP(…)”
16. “Split the Full Name column into First Name and Last Name.”
17. “Show me trends or outliers in this data.”
18. “Add a column that categorises expenses as Fixed or Variable.”
19. “Build a summary table of sales by salesperson and quarter.”
20. “Forecast next quarter’s sales using Python in Excel.”

PowerPoint and Outlook

21. “Create a presentation from /QuarterlyReport with an agenda slide and a conclusion.”
22. “Add speaker notes to every slide, 60 seconds each.”
23. “Turn slide 4 into a simple timeline.”
24. “Shorten all bullets to under 8 words.”
25. “Generate an image of a modern office for the title slide.”
26. “Summarise this deck in an email to my manager.”
27. “Summarise this email thread and list who owes what.”
28. “Draft a polite reply declining the meeting and suggesting Thursday.”
29. “Make my draft sound more confident but still friendly.”
30. “Write a follow-up email to the client with the three agreed next steps.”

Usage Limits and AI Credits

Personal and Family plans include a monthly allowance of AI credits for Copilot in the Office apps, Designer images and other features. Premium and Pro have much higher limits. Microsoft says usage limits reset over time, and you can see what is left in your Microsoft account under Services & subscriptions. If you regularly run out mid-month, Premium is usually better value than buying add-ons.

Privacy and Accuracy

For personal accounts, Microsoft says Copilot uses your prompts and documents to generate answers and offers controls in your privacy dashboard over whether conversations are used for model training. Do not paste passwords or highly confidential data into any AI tool. More importantly, check facts: Copilot can misread a table or invent a statistic. Treat every output as a draft written by a fast but junior colleague.

Copilot vs ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini for Office Work

Many people already pay for a chatbot and wonder if Copilot is worth adding. The key difference is that Copilot works inside your open file, while the others mostly work on files you upload or connect.

If you already pay for Microsoft 365 Personal, use its Copilot first before buying another chatbot. If you are a heavy writer or analyst, many people pair Microsoft 365 Personal with one chatbot subscription. See my ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini vs Grok comparison.

Worked Example: Monthly Sales Report in 10 Minutes

1. In Excel, click inside your sales data and press Ctrl + T to make it a table. Save to OneDrive with AutoSave on.
2. Open Copilot and ask: Add a column for profit margin as a percentage, then show total revenue and average margin by region. Review the formula Copilot proposes before inserting it.
3. Ask: Create a chart of revenue by month and highlight the month with the biggest drop.
4. In Word, open Copilot and ask: Draft a one-page sales summary from /Sales-Oct.xlsx with three key findings and next steps. Type / to reference the file.
5. In PowerPoint, ask: Create a 6-slide presentation from /Sales-Summary.docx. Then fix the design with Designer and check every number against the spreadsheet.

Always check numbers Copilot writes into documents. It is good at structure and formulas, but it can still misread a column header or round figures differently from your source.

Copilot Not Showing? Fixes

• No Copilot button: update Office, sign out and in with the subscription owner’s account, and confirm your plan includes Copilot.
• Family member cannot see Copilot: on Family, Copilot in the apps is for the owner only. Upgrade to Premium to share.
• Excel says Copilot cannot work with this data: convert the range to a table, save to OneDrive and enable AutoSave.
• Copilot greyed out in a document: the file may be local or in an unsupported format; save as .docx, .xlsx or .pptx in OneDrive.
• Reached limit: wait for your allowance to reset or upgrade.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Copilot in Word free?

Not on its own. It is included in paid Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, Premium and Pro plans. The free Copilot app and web chat do not include Copilot inside the Office desktop apps.

What is the difference between Microsoft 365 Personal and Premium for Copilot?

Both include Copilot in the apps. Premium gives extensive usage limits, Premium-only features and limited agentic research and analytics, and covers up to six people.

Does Copilot work in Office 2024 or Office 2021?

No. One-time purchase versions do not include Copilot. You need a Microsoft 365 subscription.

Can I use ChatGPT or Claude inside Word instead?

Some add-ins do this, but Copilot is the only built-in option. For a comparison of other assistants, see my DeepSeek vs Claude comparison.

Is Copilot available on Mac?

Yes, Copilot works in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook for Mac with a qualifying subscription, as well as on the web, iPhone, iPad and Android.

How much does Microsoft 365 Copilot cost for business?

Businesses buy Microsoft 365 Copilot as an add-on to an eligible Microsoft 365 business plan, listed at $30 per user per month on annual billing in the US. Smaller teams should check Microsoft’s current business offers, which change often.

Can Copilot read my whole OneDrive?

Copilot in the apps works on the file you have open and files you reference with /. It respects your file permissions, and Microsoft says it does not use your Microsoft 365 documents to train its foundation models.

Final Thoughts

Copilot in Office is most valuable on the boring parts of work: first drafts, summaries, formula columns and turning documents into slides. If you already pay for Microsoft 365, learn the prompt structure above and use it daily for a week; you will quickly see where it saves time and where you should write things yourself. If you hit limits constantly, Premium is the upgrade to consider.

Want AI in your other tools? See my guides to Gemini in Chrome and Canva AI 2.0.

Sources

• Microsoft: Copilot pricing plans for individuals
• ToolColumn: Microsoft 365 Premium vs Personal, Copilot limits by plan
• MyExcelOnline: Is Copilot in Excel free?
• Fello AI: Microsoft Copilot pricing 2026