Connect to Skills
Log in to A Cloud Guru
Log in to Flow
Connect to Skills
Sign in to A Cloud Guru
Log in to Flow
Let’s face it: day-to-day work in the workplace can feel like an endless hamster wheel of writing emails, answering messages, PowerPoints, automating Excel, and attending meetings that could have been just emails.
That’s why Microsoft Copilot will be your new most productive friend. From writing emails to summarizing internet pages, creating PowerPoint presentations, and extracting data from your spreadsheets, Copilot can make you more productive and minimize daily boredom. In this article, we’ll look at exactly how to do this.
While you’ve likely used browser-based generative AI tools like ChatGPT, the thing that sets Copilot for Windows apart is that it integrates with—wait for it—Windows. So in addition to standard content generation and searches, you can also issue commands against your local machine like “Open Notepad.”
If you have Windows 11, accessing Copilot is as simple as typing the Windows C key to open the desktop app. If you have Windows 10, keep an eye out for when the Copilot feature arrives in its version.
Let’s look at some examples. How about “Enable Dark Mode” to replace your laptop theme?After confirming that this is what you want, Copilot will diligently replace your theme.
Or ideas:
When working in the Edge browser, the Copilot app is available by clicking the button on the top right of the browser.
This causes your AI assistant to appear on the side of the browser, allowing you to continue browsing and interacting with your web pages without having to move to a new window. You can ask it to make moves in your browser (like “Organize my tabs”) or ask it for things that require search or content creation (“Paint a picture of a pixelated dragon breathing in a rainbow – colored sky”).
An interesting feature of Copilot in Edge is the ability to summarize or use content from the recently opened web page. But you don’t get that automatically; You want to turn it on.
At the top right of the Copilot app, click the three dots and then Notifications & App Settings.
On the next screen, turn on Allow Microsoft to page content.
Now, let’s give it a try.
Navigate to the page you need to summarize (I’ll skip to the Microsoft Copilot Wikipedia page). In the maximum case, Copilot will give you a one-click option to generate the page summary (if not, just type “generate page summary”). “).
And, as you wish, you’ll get a summary of what’s on the page.
You can also ask questions about the content of a website. Let’s say, for example, that you’ve discovered a delicious recipe and need advice on what drinks to combine. Just ask!
The next edition of Copilot is for Microsoft 365. In other words, Copilot for what you call Office apps (Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams).
In your app of choice, go to the Home ribbon and click the Copilot button. This is available on the desktop apps, as well as the browser-based apps.
Here’s how to use Copilot in PowerPoint:
Create a new presentation from scratch
Create a file-based presentation
Add a new slide to a presentation
Redesign slides to use a new theme or style
Let’s look at the first point with this message: “Create a first-quarter sales presentation for AdventureWorks. Make it trendy with a blue theme. Include a slide with the name, a slide with the calendar, five slides for sales data, a slide with the summary, and a “thank you” slide with tactile information.
And, as we asked, we have a fundamental design for a presentation. From there, you can ask Copilot to replace the styles or layouts, and/or you can manually add elements to get everything right.
When you use Copilot in Excel, it will give you comprehensive tips on how to do it, adding a pattern table to get you started.
After generating that sample table (or using your own data, obviously), you can try a variety of things to see how it works:
When you select “View Data Statistics,” the following appears:
Clicking on the draft icon will bring up a conversation box where you can describe what you want to write.
And once Copilot has worked its magic, we have a preview of the article, as well as features on how to proceed. Very good!
You can also view Copilot in an existing Word document and perform a variety of actions.
In Outlook, you can write emails, like the one you wanted to send to your boss, asking for a promotion.
But you can also take advantage of Copilot’s training in things like clarity, style, grammar, and tone. Just start composing an email and then ask an AI trainer to give you feedback.
After analyzing the email, Copilot will give you feedback and advice on how to write an email.
In addition to the Copilot goodness you get on your laptop/desktop, you can also use Copilot on your phone. Just navigate to your device’s app store, search for Microsoft Copilot, and install the app.
The mobile app simplifies interaction with Copilot’s photos and voice. For example, take a picture of a plant and ask what it is.
And then use the microphone for follow-up queries. When you ask a query with your microphone, you also get an audio response, which is a big win in terms of accessibility.
Finally, if you’re looking for a simple way to use the Copilot feature without having to worry about apps, just go to bing. com and click on the Copilot tab. This will open the chatbot feature on the Bing website.
From there, you can do the same things you’d expect from a generative AI tool: ask questions, have a conversation, generate text, generate images, and search in real time.
You can also adjust the conversation style, increasing or decreasing the amount of creativity you get in your answers.
How about writing a short story about a software engineer who works remotely while traveling the world?
Or you can request an image. Copilot will generate 4 functions for you, OpenAI’s DALL-E technology.
Then, by settling on the symbol you like, you get more design features to replace taste (in elements like pixel art, watercolor, and more), copy, or percentage of the symbol.
I hope this article has given you some inspiration and tips on how to use the other versions of Microsoft Copilot in your work. But it has only scratched the surface! If you’d like to dive deeper into this offering from Microsoft, as well as generative AI in general, check out these additional resources: