How to Use Microsoft Copilot in 2026: Every Version, Step by Step

Most guides on how to use Microsoft Copilot open by telling you to click the sparkle icon. That advice fails immediately for a large share of readers, because the icon either is not there or opens something quite different from what the guide describes. The reason is not user error. In 2026, two completely different Microsoft products are both called “Microsoft Copilot”, and a third thing called Copilot Chat sits between them. Microsoft’s own documentation, updated on 18 August 2026, states it plainly: “Microsoft 365 Copilot is now named Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now named Microsoft Copilot Chat.”

So the first step is not clicking anything. It is working out which Copilot is in front of you, because that single fact decides whether Copilot can read your emails, whether it appears inside Word at all, and whether you are paying for it. This guide starts there, then gives you the actual steps for each surface you are likely to use, including the exact keyboard shortcuts, the toggle that controls what Copilot can see, and the parts that quietly stopped working this month.

The Key Takeaways

• One name, three experiences: the free consumer assistant, Copilot Chat included with Microsoft 365, and the paid Microsoft Copilot licence are all reached differently and see different data.
• Check the label, not the icon: Microsoft prints M365 Copilot (Premium), M365 Copilot (Basic) or Copilot Chat (Basic) inside the Office apps so you can identify your own tier.
• Work IQ is the switch that matters: with a paid licence, toggling it decides whether Copilot answers from your company’s files and email or from the web only.
• Copilot Pro is gone: Microsoft ended support on 1 August 2026, and three more consumer features were retired on 18 August 2026.
• Cowork does the whole job: generally available since 16 June 2026, it returns finished work rather than a draft, billed by the credit and switched off until an admin enables it.

First, Work Out Which Microsoft Copilot You Have

This is the step every other guide skips, and it is the reason their instructions do not match your screen. Microsoft’s admin documentation lists the free consumer assistant and the licensed work product under two separate headings, and both headings read “Microsoft Copilot”. The page’s own summary text lists the name twice in a row. If Microsoft’s technical writers cannot make the distinction visible, you should not feel slow for missing it. If the answer turns out to be that you need to buy one, our guide to what each Copilot tier costs covers every plan and the real per-seat price.

The label inside the app settles it

If the table still leaves you unsure, Microsoft has quietly solved this for you. According to the official Copilot Chat documentation, in-product labels now appear inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote specifically to help people identify what they have. There are three, and they are worth memorising.

M365 Copilot (Premium) means you hold the paid add-on licence and get the full experience with priority access. M365 Copilot (Basic) means you do not hold that licence but still get standard access to Copilot inside those apps. Copilot Chat (Basic) means you do not hold the licence and have no Copilot chat in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote at all. If you have been following a tutorial that assumes a Copilot pane in Word and no pane exists, that third label is almost certainly why.

Three products, three web addresses

The addresses are the fastest way to land in the right place. The free consumer assistant lives at copilot.microsoft.com. Copilot Chat for work opens at m365copilot.com, which redirects to m365.cloud.microsoft/chat once you pin it. The licensed work version sits at m365.cloud.microsoft. On a managed work device you may be asked to choose between work and personal before anything loads, and that choice changes which of these you get. Our companion explainer covers the pricing and licensing side of this in full, if you need to know what Microsoft Copilot is and what each tier costs.

How to Use Microsoft Copilot on Windows, Mac and the Web

The free consumer version is the one most people meet first, and it is genuinely useful before you spend anything. It answers questions from the web, generates images, and can look at files on your device if you let it.

On Windows

On a new Windows 11 machine, Copilot is already installed and pinned to the taskbar or sitting in the Start menu. Two shortcuts open it: the dedicated Copilot key if your keyboard has one, and Windows key + C. Either can be set to open the full app or a smaller quick view, which you control under Account > Settings > Copilot Keyboard Shortcuts. Sign in with a personal Microsoft account to unlock chat history, longer conversations and extended voice.

Three features are worth switching on straight away. Copilot Vision lets it look at browser windows or apps you have open and talk you through what is on screen. The screenshot tool, reached with the + button and Take a Screenshot, lets you crop any part of the display and ask about it. File search lets Copilot find and answer questions about documents on the machine, covering .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, .txt, .pdf and .json, managed under Account > Settings > File Search. You can also say “Hey Copilot” to start hands free, though that one is opt in and off until you enable it.

On Mac and mobile

There is a native Mac app, with real limits worth knowing before you go looking. It needs macOS 14.0 or later and an M1 chip or newer, and Microsoft currently lists it as available in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada only. Outside those markets, the web version at copilot.microsoft.com is the practical route. On phones there are iOS and Android apps, and sign in accepts a personal Microsoft account, an Apple ID or a Google account. The Windows app is stricter and wants a personal Microsoft account specifically.

How to Use Microsoft Copilot at Work

Work is where the name collision starts costing people real time, because two different things are available and they behave nothing alike.

Copilot Chat comes free with Microsoft 365

Microsoft is explicit that using Copilot Chat does not require a Microsoft Copilot licence. It arrives with an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription and gives you secure chat with enterprise data protection, file upload, image generation and Copilot Pages. The catch is grounding. Copilot Chat is grounded in the web, not in your organisation’s files, emails or chats, so asking it to summarise last week’s inbox will not work the way you expect.

You can still feed it your own content three ways. Paste it into the prompt, upload a file with the + button, or type / to pick a file from the ContextIQ menu. It is also aware of what you have open when you use it inside Teams and Outlook, which covers a lot of everyday work without any upgrade. A model selector at the top right offers Auto by default, plus Quick response for routine questions and Think deeper when the task needs reasoning.

The Work IQ button is the one to learn

With the paid licence, Copilot gains access to organisational data through Microsoft Graph, and a single control decides whether it uses it. You will find Work IQ at the top left of the chat screen, where the separate Work and Web tabs used to sit. Switch it on and, in Microsoft’s words, Copilot “can reference your work data, your emails, files, chats, meetings, people, and projects across Microsoft 365, alongside the web and anything you attach”. Switch it off and Copilot “answers without referencing your work data”, falling back to public web information plus whatever you attached to the prompt.

That single toggle explains most complaints that Copilot “cannot see” a document plainly sitting in SharePoint. It is worth checking its state before you conclude a file is missing or your licence is broken. Microsoft's own explainer on what information Copilot uses to answer a prompt is the reference worth bookmarking, because it also covers what happens to anything you attach.

Copilot in Word, Excel and PowerPoint

In Word, select the Copilot Dynamic Action Button in the corner of the document and the chat pane opens with Edit mode on. If you were expecting a ribbon icon, that is not a fault in your memory. The button moved onto the document canvas during 2026, and after complaints Microsoft added the option to right click it and put it back on the ribbon, so the two versions coexist. From there you get Draft to write from a prompt, Rewrite for a selected passage, Refine to change tone or length, and Summarize for key takeaways. Type / to point it at another document, email or meeting. On a blank line, Alt+I opens the Draft with Copilot dialog on Windows and the web, while Mac users press Control+L. A Model Selector lets you pick a reasoning level or a provider such as OpenAI or Anthropic.

Excel is narrower than people hope. Officially it drafts: formula suggestions, chart types and insights about data already in the sheet. PowerPoint is stronger, building a deck from a prompt or an existing Word file, then handling summaries and deck wide formatting changes. Each of these deserves more room than a section here allows, so we have covered them properly in dedicated guides to using AI inside Microsoft Word, building and editing spreadsheets with AI in Excel, and creating presentations with AI in PowerPoint.

Copilot in Outlook and Teams

These two are where a work licence earns its money, and they get far less coverage than the Office apps.

Outlook

Three things work well. Summarize collapses a long thread into the decisions and open questions, with annotations showing where each point came from. Draft writes a reply and can pull from other emails and content across Microsoft 365 that you already have access to, which is what separates it from a general chatbot. Coaching tips is the underused one: it reviews a message you have written for clarity, sentiment and tone and gives an overall assessment before you send. That is quietly excellent for anything sensitive, and it costs you nothing to run.

Teams

In a chat, Copilot summarises up to 30 days of content before the last message. It is important to know the boundary: it reads that single thread only and cannot reference other chats, meeting transcripts, emails or files. In meetings, it works from the live transcript, answers questions about what has been said, knows who is asking, and stays available after the meeting ends. On calls it captures key points, task owners and next steps. Conversations happen in a side panel and close when the panel does, so copy anything you want to keep before you shut it.

Copilot Cowork, for Delegating a Whole Task

Cowork is the biggest change to how Copilot is used this year, and it is barely covered anywhere. It became generally available on 16 June 2026. The distinction from chat is real: you define the work, Cowork runs it end to end across Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint and OneDrive, and returns a completed result rather than a first pass. It plans, checks in at approval points, and executes.

Two practical notes before you go looking for it. Cowork is off by default, and an admin decides when to enable it and who gets access, so its absence is a tenant setting rather than a missing feature. Billing is separate from your licence and runs on metered Copilot Credits at one cent per credit. It is built on Anthropic's technology, which Microsoft described when introducing it, and readers who want the underlying model can compare it against our guide to Claude Cowork.

What Stopped Working in August 2026

If a tutorial you are following describes something that is not there, it may simply be out of date. Copilot Pro is finished. Microsoft states that it is “no longer available for purchase” and that existing subscribers could use it “until they cancel or support ends on August 1, 2026”. Microsoft points people to Microsoft 365 Premium instead, described as its most comprehensive plan for up to six people. Any 2025 article still quoting a Copilot Pro price is selling something that cannot be bought.

Three more consumer features retired on 18 August 2026: Group Chat, Podcasts and Deep Research in the consumer Copilot app. Group Chat threads and images created in them are not carried forward, so anything you wanted from those needed exporting first. Students should note that the free access routes are a separate matter entirely and still worth checking, which we cover in our guide to getting Microsoft and GitHub Copilot free as a student.

The Verdict

Copilot is at its best when it is close to work you already have, summarising a thread you have not read or turning a document you wrote into a deck. It is weakest as a general assistant, where its grounding rules and licence tiers get in the way of a simple answer. Learn the Work IQ toggle, learn which of the three labels applies to you, and most of the frustration disappears. If you are still deciding whether it is the right assistant at all, our comparison of Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT weighs both on price, models and real tasks.

The one structural limit is that Copilot decides which model you get. The selector offers a reasoning level or a provider, not a free choice, and that choice is shaped by your tenant's settings. If you would rather pick a model deliberately and compare answers side by side, running several through one desktop client is the more flexible setup, which is what we built Fello AI to do.

Frequently Asked Questions