Microsoft Copilot can boost your writing in Word, Outlook, and OneNote — here’s how

One of the most enticing uses for generative AI is to help you write. Anyone can get writing help from Microsoft’s Copilot genAI tool via the free Copilot web or mobile app. But Copilot becomes especially useful when it’s integrated with various Microsoft 365 apps.

As you compose, edit, or view a document in Word, for example, you can summon Copilot to assist you in several ways: It can generate rough drafts, polish or change the tone of your writing, and summarize long passages of text. Copilot can also help you compose or summarize emails in Outlook and help you rewrite or summarize notes in OneNote.

In this article:

Who can use Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps

Have Copilot generate a rough draft

Ask Copilot for suggestions to improve your writing

Have Copilot rewrite text

Have Copilot summarize long documents, notes, emails, or threads

Who can use Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps

If you have a Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, or Premium subscription, Copilot access in Word, OneNote, Outlook, and other Microsoft 365 apps is built into your plan. But Microsoft 365 business and enterprise subscriptions do not include Copilot integration in the apps. Your company has to purchase an additional Microsoft 365 Copilot plan, which costs $30 per user per month when paid annually. (Microsoft does offer plans that bundle the M365 apps and M365 Copilot, but the costs are the same.)

This guide goes over how to use Copilot in Word, Outlook, and OneNote to help you compose, revise, and summarize text. I’ll demonstrate using Copilot with an individual Microsoft 365 Premium account, but most of the steps and user interfaces are similar under a Microsoft 365 business plan. I’ll also note additional features that are available only under the business versions of Copilot and Microsoft 365.

Note: Microsoft 365 apps aren’t completely consistent on different platforms, so you might see a somewhat different interface for a feature than is shown here. What’s more, some features are available in the web apps but not the desktop apps, and vice versa — and if you have a work or school Microsoft 365 account, your administrator may allow some Copilot tools but not others.

Have Copilot generate a rough draft

Copilot can help you compose text drafts in Word, Outlook, and OneNote. You use Copilot through a toolbar or pane that appears within the body of your document, email draft, or note, or via an entry box that appears above a blank document in Word. Copilot is also available from a sidebar that opens along the right of these apps.

Using the Copilot toolbar or pane

In Word: When you start a new, blank document, you’ll see three example prompts above the blank document. Clicking one of these will trigger Copilot to generate text as described in that prompt.

Below these prompts is a text entry box that says, “What do you want Copilot to draft?” That’s where you type in a prompt that describes what you want Copilot to write. (More on prompt writing in a moment.)

When you start a new document in Word, you’ll see some prompt suggestions and the Copilot toolbar above the document.
Howard Wen / Foundry

At the right end of the text entry box you can optionally click the paperclip icon (Reference your content) and select a document in your OneDrive, SharePoint, or on your PC. Copilot will base its output on the document, including content, writing style, and formatting. (Business users can select up to three files for Copilot to reference.) You can also type a / (forward slash) inside the text entry box to select a document for reference.

If your Word document already has text in it, place the cursor where you want to insert new text generated by Copilot. Click the pen icon that appears in the left margin.

In a document that already has text, place your cursor in the file and click the pen icon in the left margin.
Howard Wen / Foundry

This will open the Copilot toolbar, where you can type your prompt into the text entry box and optionally use the paperclip icon to upload a document for Copilot to reference.

When you click the pen icon in the left margin, the Copilot toolbar appears in the body of your document.
Howard Wen / Foundry

On the dropdown below the toolbar, there are three selections:

Click Keep writing if you want Copilot to generate more text based on the context of the rest of the document.

I’ll describe Writing suggestions in detail later in this guide.

Chat with Copilot will open the Copilot sidebar, also described later in this guide.

In Outlook: With the cursor in the message body of a new or draft email, click the Copilot icon that appears in the left margin. Or you can click the down arrow to the right of the Copilot button at the right end of the ribbon toolbar. On the dropdown menu that opens, click Draft.

Select Draft from the Copilot dropdown, then type your prompt into the Copilot toolbar.
Howard Wen / Foundry

The Copilot toolbar opens in the body of your email draft. Type your prompt inside the text entry box or choose one of the example prompts in the dropdown menu below the toolbar to have Copilot generate text as described in the prompt.

In OneNote: With the cursor on the page of a note (blank or with information already on it), click the Copilot icon that appears to the left of the cursor.

On the dropdown menu that opens, click Take notes with Copilot. A pane will open in which you can type a prompt to Copilot. (If you click the Copilot icon while on a blank page, you’ll be taken to this pane immediately.) Type your prompt inside the text entry box, then click Generate or press the Enter key. The second button, Inspire me, will enter suggested prompts based on the context of your other notes.

Enter your prompt or click Inspire me to see suggested prompts.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Crafting your prompts

Prompts are sentences you enter to instruct Copilot (or other AI assistants) how to compose the text that you want it to create. Your prompt should minimally include the subject and a few specifics about the writing you want it to generate.

To get started, describe the kind of text you want Copilot to generate and add a detail or two about it. These prompts can be simple or a little more complex. For example:

Create a brief business pitch for a new vegan restaurant that will be located in downtown Atlanta, Georgia.

Write an opening paragraph describing my interest in a technical support job opening at Microsoft.

Write a few sentences that inquire if there are any job openings in technical support at Microsoft.

Compose a polite follow-up with the recipient about a video call we had last week.

The more specifics you include in your prompt, the more likely you are to get good results. For instance, if you have notes that contain specific data points that you want to include in the generated text, copy and paste those notes into your prompt (or upload a document in Word as described earlier in the story). If you have an outline for the topics you want to cover in the draft, paste that in as well.

But frankly, there are no hard rules about writing prompts — just use your imagination and see how Copilot responds. It may not generate results that you like (if it generates any at all). But keep experimenting with the descriptions in your prompts until you coax Copilot to produce a useful response.

Once you’ve entered your prompt, click the right arrow (Generate) at the right end of the entry box or press Enter on your keyboard and wait for Copilot to work its magic.

The results are in – actions you can take

When Copilot has generated a draft, it appears in the document, email, or note with a toolbar below it.

In Word, use the toolbar below the generated draft to keep, retry, discard, or refine the text.
Howard Wen / Foundry

In Word and OneNote: You can use the toolbar to perform the following functions:

Click the Keep it button to keep the newly minted words in your document or email. You can then edit the generated text in the doc or note as you see fit.

Click the Regenerate button (two circular arrows) if you’re not satisfied with the result and want Copilot to generate a whole new one.

Click the Discard button (a trashcan) to discard the result.

Refine the result by typing more prompts in the text entry box (e.g., “add more details,” “make this sound more professional,” or “make it shorter”) and clicking the arrow. Copilot will generate an updated result using your additional commands and descriptions.

Click the pencil icon above the toolbar so that you can edit the prompt you wrote, or enter an entirely new prompt, in the text entry box. The current results that Copilot generated will be discarded, and it’ll generate another set of text based on your revised or new prompt.

Optionally click the thumbs up or down icon in the upper-right corner of the toolbar to rate the quality of the result that Copilot generated. Presumably, this helps train the AI to produce better results in the future.

In Outlook: Using the options in the dropdown menu below the toolbar, you can have Copilot change the length of the generated text (by selecting Make it shorter or Make it longer) or the tone of the text (by moving the pointer over Change Tone and selecting Direct, Casual, Formal or Like a Poem).

Copilot-generated text in Outlook, with options for taking action on it.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Important: All AI-generated content can contain errors or outright fabrications, known as hallucinations. When you insert text that Copilot has generated into a document or email, be sure to fact-check it carefully. (See our tips for curbing hallucinations in Copilot.)

AI-generated content also tends to be generic and a bit boring, so you’ll likely want to edit it to inject your own personality or writing style.

Customize email draft instructions in Outlook

Outlook offers an additional way to make Copilot’s email drafts sound more like you: give it custom instructions for composing messages. Click the down arrow to the right of the Copilot button that’s at the right end of the ribbon toolbar. On the menu that opens, select Settings.

On the Settings panel that opens over the page, click Draft Instructions. Then on the right side of the panel, under “Custom Instructions,” click on the switch for Use custom instructions when drafting email. Type in your custom instructions, including specifics like length, tone of voice, your customary greeting and closing, and so on. Then click the X at the upper-right corner of the panel to close it. You can further adjust these instructions at any time.

You can specify custom instructions for Copilot to use when generating email drafts.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Using the Copilot sidebar

In Word and OneNote, click the Copilot button toward the right end of the ribbon toolbar on the Home tab. In Outlook, start a new email message and click the Copilot button at the upper right.

This will open the Copilot sidebar to the right. Type your prompt inside the text entry box. Optionally, you can click the + to search for and select a document in your OneDrive, SharePoint, or on your PC to use as a reference. This works the same as the aforementioned “Reference your content” function while using the Copilot toolbar in Word. You can also type / (forward slash) to activate this function.

When you are done entering your prompt and adding a document for reference, click the arrow button or press Enter on your keyboard. Copilot will generate text and display it inside the sidebar.

Generated text in the Copilot sidebar in Word (left). If you scroll down in the sidebar, you’ll see icons for inserting the text or copying it your clipboard (right).
Howard Wen / Foundry

In Word, you can click + in the row of icons that appear below the generated text to add the text to your document or note. (This option isn’t available in Outlook or OneNote.) In all three apps, you can click the Copy button to copy the writing to your PC clipboard. You can then paste it into your document, email, note, or elsewhere.

Or you can refine Copilot’s results. In the sidebar below the generated text you’ll see some suggested prompts, such as “Make it more specific to our industry” or “Expand into a full section.” You can select one of these and/or type additional prompts into the entry box.

Ask Copilot for suggestions to improve your writing

If you’d rather compose emails and documents yourself but would like some suggestions for improvement, there’s a nifty Copilot feature in Outlook to assist you. Called “Coaching,” it critiques an email draft and offers recommendations for making it stronger. You can then make changes yourself or request that Copilot do so.

Word has a similar feature called “Writing suggestions” that uses Copilot to suggest ways to improve your writing, and you can choose to apply them to your document.

Outlook: Get coaching on an email draft

After you’ve written an email draft, click the down arrow to the right of the Copilot button at the right end of the ribbon toolbar. On the menu that appears, select Coaching.

Or, in your email draft, click the Copilot icon in the left margin to open its toolbar. From the dropdown below the toolbar, select Get coaching.

Copilot will review your draft and offer specific suggestions for improving it in terms of tone, reader sentiment, and clarity. At the bottom of this report, you can click Apply all suggestions, which will trigger Copilot to rewrite your email draft according to its suggestions, or click Dismiss to close the report with no changes made to your email draft.

Copilot can critique your email draft and offer suggestions for improvement.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Word: Get writing suggestions for a document

Click the pencil icon in the left margin of your document. Or, if you want Copilot to evaluate a specific section of the document, highlight the text you want critiqued and then click the pencil icon.

On the dropdown below the Copilot toolbar, click Writing suggestions. Copilot will analyze your writing. A panel will open that displays one or more suggestions. You can read through them by clicking the left and right arrows on the top of this panel. Each suggestion has a blue checkmark that you can uncheck if you want to disregard the suggestion.

If you want to apply any of the checked suggestions to your writing, click the Apply selected suggestions button.

Copilot can offer suggestions for improving a document in Word.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Have Copilot rewrite text

You can have Copilot rewrite passages of text in a Word document, an email, or a OneNote page. This can be useful if you feel that the text could use a little more detail, or if a paragraph sounds too wordy. Microsoft says Copilot’s rewriting ability works best at under 3,000 words.

In all three web apps, you can use the Copilot sidebar for rewriting. In Word, you can also use the “Rewrite with Copilot” panel, and OneNote has a similar rewriting tool.

Using the “Rewrite with Copilot” panel in Word

Highlight the passage of text that you want Copilot to rewrite, then click the pencil icon that appears in the margin to the left of the text that you highlighted. Alternatively, you can right-click on your highlighted text, and on the menu that opens, select Draft with Copilot.

On the dropdown that opens, you can select Auto rewrite to prompt Copilot to rewrite the passage wholesale, or you can choose one of the other items on this dropdown to have Copilot rewrite the text in a specific way: Fix spelling and grammar, Structure and refine, Make shorter, or Make formal. (Writing suggestions will have Copilot offer targeted suggestions for improving your writing, as covered in the previous section of this story.)

Copilot offers several approaches for rewriting your document.
Howard Wen / Foundry

After you make a selection from the dropdown, the “Rewrite with Copilot” panel appears below your highlighted text. Copilot will generate and present up to three rewritten versions in the panel. Click the right and left pointing arrows at the top of the panel to cycle through these rewrites to review them.

Reviewing Copilot’s suggested rewrites for the highlighted text.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Below the rewritten text, you can click the following buttons:

Replace will replace the original text that you highlighted with the currently visible rewritten version.

Insert below will insert the rewritten version below the original text you highlighted (so that you can decide later if you want to keep it).

The Regenerate button (two circular arrows) will generate another result.

In the Word web app, there’s a text entry box where you can refine the result by typing more prompts.

Note: Users with Copilot and M365 business subscriptions can also have Copilot rewrite messages in Teams. This feature works similarly to the Rewrite with Copilot panel in Word.

Using the Copilot icon in OneNote

The OneNote Windows app has its own built-in rewriting tool. To use it, click the top bar of a text field on a page, then click the Copilot icon to the left of the text field and on the next menu, select Rewrite this.

Select Rewrite this from the Copilot menu.Howard Wen / Foundry

This action will trigger Copilot to rewrite everything inside the text field. The rewrite will then be set inside the top of the text field.

The rewritten text appears in the text field above the original text.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Using the Copilot sidebar in Word, Outlook, or OneNote

You can use the Copilot sidebar for rewriting in Word’s Windows and web apps, and in the Outlook and OneNote web apps — though it’s less convenient in Outlook and OneNote.

On the Home tab in the ribbon toolbar, click the Copilot button to open the Copilot sidebar to the right.

In Word: To have Copilot rewrite the whole document or note, type rewrite in the text entry box. To have it rewrite a specific paragraph, supply the paragraph number or select the paragraph you want rewritten. You can also describe how you want the text to be rewritten, such as rewrite the first paragraph to be shorter or rewrite paragraph 3 to sound more professional.

In Outlook or OneNote: Here you can’t simply select the text you want rewritten; you have to paste the text into Copilot’s text entry box and tell the AI how you want it rewritten.

Copilot’s rewritten text appears in the sidebar. In Word, you can click + in the row of icons that appear below the generated text to add it to your document. It will be added in the spot where the cursor is on your document. In all three apps, you can use the Copy icon to copy the rewritten text to your clipboard, and then paste it where you like.

A rewritten paragraph in the Copilot sidebar.
Howard Wen / Foundry

If you want to adjust Copilot’s rewriting result, you can click one of the suggested prompts that appear in the sidebar below the generated text — or you can type more prompts in the text entry box.

Having to copy and paste text to and from the sidebar in Outlook and OneNote is a bit of a hassle. For rewriting tasks in those apps, it’s simpler to use Outlook’s Coaching feature or OneNote’s “Rewrite this” tool via the Copilot icon.

Have Copilot summarize long documents, notes, emails, or threads

You can have Copilot generate a brief summary of a long document in Word or a page in OneNote. Microsoft says Copilot can summarize up to 1.5 million words. In Outlook, Copilot can summarize a long email and, even more useful, the conversation within an entire email thread.

Using the Copilot summary panel in Word

When you open a document that already contains text in the Word web app, Copilot automatically generates a summary of it in a small panel above your document; click View more to expand the panel so that you can view the entire summary.

Click View more (top) to expand the summary panel and see the full summary (bottom).
Howard Wen / Foundry

Throughout the summary, you may see citation numbers that refer to passages of text within the original document. Moving the pointer over one of these numbers will pop open a snippet of the cited text in a small panel. Clicking a number will jump your view of the document in the main window to the cited text in it.

Hover over a citation number to see a snippet of the cited text.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Using the Copilot sidebar in Word

With the document opened in Word, highlight the text that you want summarized. If you want a summary of the entire document or page, skip this step.

Click the Copilot button on the Home tab of the ribbon toolbar to open the Copilot sidebar. Inside the text entry box, type summarize and click the arrow button.

Copilot will generate a summary and display it inside the sidebar.

Copilot’s summary of a long document in the sidebar.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Below the summary, there’s the familiar + icon you can click to add the generated text to your document and the Copy button to copy the summary to your PC clipboard. Below that you may see suggested prompts that you can click to revise the summary.

Using the Copilot icon or sidebar in OneNote

Click the top bar of a text field on a page. Click the Copilot icon to the left of the text field and on the next menu, Summarize this. This action will trigger Copilot to summarize everything inside the text field. The summary will then be set inside the top of the text field.

In OneNote, Copilot’s summary appears at the top of the text field.
Howard Wen / Foundry

To summarize an entire notebook, open the Copilot sidebar, type summarize in the text entry box, and click the arrow button. Copilot will generate a summary and display it inside the sidebar, along with the usual Copy button and suggested prompts for refining the output.

Summarizing emails and threads in Outlook

Open the email or conversation that you want to summarize. Click Summary by Copilot or Summarize at the top of the email thread. Copilot will generate a summary of the email or thread.

A Copilot-generated summary of an email.
Howard Wen / Foundry

This summary will be posted at the top of the email or thread. Thread summaries may include citations that Copilot used in generating the summary. Clicking a citation (denoted by a number) will scroll down the thread to the cited email for you to view.

This Copilot-generated summary of an email thread includes citations you can click to go to the source email.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Getting a summary when sharing a Word doc (business plans only)

If you have Copilot with a Microsoft 365 business plan, you can use Copilot to generate a summary of a Word document when you share it with your co-workers. This summary is inserted as a passage of text inside the message that your co-workers receive inviting them to collaborate on the document.

Note: This feature works with the web version of Word, not the desktop apps.

With the document open in Word, click the Share button toward the upper right. On the Share panel that opens, click the Copilot icon inside the lower right of the “Add a message” composition box. The AI will generate and insert the summary. You can edit the summary before you send out the invite.

This article was initially published in August 2024 and updated in December 2025.

Related:

How to curb hallucinations in Copilot (and other genAI tools)

Microsoft cheat sheets: Dive into Windows and Office appsMicrosoft Copilot can boost your writing in Word, Outlook, and OneNote — here’s how – ComputerworldRead More