5 Quick Tips for Using Microsoft 365 Copilot

When you’re on a site like YouTube or reading a long article, click the Copilot icon in the top-right of Edge. Copilot automatically recognizes the type of content on the page and offers context-aware actions.

For videos, you can:

• Generate a short video summary
• See key points or chapters
• Jump to specific timestamps based on those key points
• Ask questions about what’s in the video

For text-heavy pages, you can:

• Summarize the article
• Ask for a list of main takeaways
• Get definitions or explanations of specific terms

In my experience, this is huge when you’re doing microsoft 365 compliance research or preparing for an m365 security assessment. Instead of reading an entire CIS benchmark microsoft 365 guide word for word, you can:

• Ask Copilot to summarize a section
• Get bullet-point explanations of specific CIS Microsoft 365 Foundations controls
• Extract just the actions you need to add to your m365 compliance checklist

It’s not doing the compliance work for you, but it reduces that “I’m buried in documentation” feeling considerably.

Here’s one simple workflow to try:

1. Open a Microsoft 365 security or compliance article (for example, about m365 security audit preparation).
2. Click the Copilot icon in Edge.
3. Prompt something like:

• “Summarize the key steps to prepare for a Microsoft 365 security audit.”
• “List the recommended controls related to CIS Microsoft 365 Foundations and explain them in plain English.”

4. Copy the output into OneNote, Planner, or your ticketing system.

You’ve basically turned a wall of text into a rough draft of an action plan. You’ll still validate the details yourself (you always should), but the time savings add up very quickly.

Here’s the basic flow:

1. Open PowerPoint and load a presentation that already has your corporate theme (logo, colors, fonts).
2. Click the Copilot icon on the Home tab.
3. Use (or type) a prompt like:

• “Create a presentation from /[document name]”

4. Use the forward slash (/) to search and attach the Word file from OneDrive or SharePoint.
5. Confirm that Copilot can replace existing slides (if this is just a template file, that’s fine).

Copilot then:

• Creates a slide deck based on your document
• Uses your existing theme and brand styling
• Generates titles, bullet points, and often relevant imagery
• Adds speaker notes summarizing the original content

You go from a text-heavy report to a meeting-ready presentation in a few minutes. It’s not always perfect, but it’s a very strong first draft.

This is especially handy when you need to brief leadership on microsoft 365 compliance status, CIS benchmark microsoft 365 gaps, or m365 security audit findings.

For example, you might:

• Draft your internal microsoft 365 audit preparation report in Word
• Use Copilot in PowerPoint to convert that report into slides
• Then lightly edit the slides to refine risk language, add charts, or insert links to automated compliance m365 tools

Instead of wrestling with formatting, you can focus on message accuracy, risk prioritization, and the remediation plan—which are the parts that actually matter.

In the Copilot app on Windows (or browser), you can type “/” in the prompt box to:

• Search people
• Search files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)
• Pick upcoming meetings
• Reference recent emails

Once you attach an item, you can ask targeted questions like:

• “What is the target audience described in this proposal?”
• “Summarize the key decisions from this meeting invite and related emails.”
• “Pull out the main risks and mitigations from this document.”

This is brilliant when you’re wading through multiple policy drafts, risk assessments, or CIS Microsoft 365 Foundations evidence docs. You can let Copilot surface:

• Stakeholders
• Requirements
• Open questions
• High-level recommendations

…without opening each file and scrolling around for 10 minutes.

Say you have a draft m365 security assessment document in Word. In the Copilot app you could:

1. Type “/” and attach the assessment document.
2. Ask: “List the main gaps against CIS benchmark Microsoft 365 Level 1 and Level 2 controls mentioned in this file.”
3. Follow up with: “Turn those gaps into a prioritized remediation checklist.”

You still verify the final list, but this workflow lets you move much quicker from draft to action plan, especially if you’re juggling many customers or business units.

Instead of diving into Outlook’s rule wizard and clicking through endless options, you can describe the rule you want in plain language.

For example:

1. Open an email in Outlook.
2. Click the Copilot icon.
3. Type something like:

• “Create an inbox rule to pin and mark in red any emails from [manager name].”

4. Copilot generates the rule configuration for you.
5. You review and save.

This is useful when you’re dealing with important security notifications, compliance alerts, or automated m365 compliance assessment reports. You can:

• Highlight messages from your security operations mailbox
• Pin alerts from your compliance automation tools
• Route audit-related messages into a dedicated folder for evidence collection

It’s a small thing, but it removes friction—and people are more likely to actually set up the rules they need.

When you’re sending messages about policy changes, audit findings, or access revocations, tone really matters. Copilot’s coaching feature will analyze what you’ve already written and give feedback on:

• Professionalism
• Clarity
• Empathy and appreciation
• How direct or aggressive the tone feels

You can:
1. Draft your email as you normally would.
2. Click Copilot, then select the coaching option.
3. Review suggestions to make the message clearer and less likely to cause confusion or pushback.

To be honest, this is a quiet lifesaver for uncomfortable emails—things like announcing new CIS benchmark microsoft 365 enforcement, mandatory MFA, or tighter access controls. Copilot won’t magically make everyone happy about the change, but it can at least help you sound more human and less like a blunt policy bot.

In OneDrive, hover over a supported file and look for the Copilot icon. From there you can:

• Summarize the file
• Generate FAQs
• Ask a specific question about the content

Even better, you can select up to five files and choose Compare. Copilot then extracts key information into a comparison table.

A few realistic uses:

• Compare multiple vendor security questionnaires
• Line up several configuration exports or reports
• Quickly see differences in terms, dates, or totals

If you’re doing microsoft 365 audit preparation, you can quickly see how different reports or periods line up without manually copy-pasting into Excel first.

Copilot in Excel really shines once your data is formatted as a table and stored in OneDrive.

You can ask it to:

• Add a new column and derive values (for example, country from city name)
• Count or group values
• Suggest formulas and then show you how they work

Typical prompt examples:

• “Add a new column with the country for each office city.”
• “Add a column counting how many times each country appears.”

For compliance and security teams, this becomes useful for things like:

• Grouping users by country or department for data residency checks
• Counting how many resources meet (or fail) a given control
• Sorting systems by risk level or missing CIS controls

It’s not a full m365 security audit platform, but it really speeds up the ‘spreadsheet phase’ of the job, which most teams are stuck in more than they’d like to admit.