Draft your content using Microsoft Copilot

Completed

As a business professional at a growing organization, you've been asked to prepare a quarterly performance report, turn it into a leadership presentation, and send a status update to stakeholders — all under a tight deadline. Copilot in Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook can help you move through that workflow faster, so you can focus on what the content says rather than how to produce it.

In this unit, you'll explore how Copilot helps you draft, refine, visualize, and communicate content across these three apps — and how the right prompts make the difference between a generic draft and one that's ready to share.

Getting started

Copilot is built into Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Look for the Copilot icon within the app to open the Copilot pane.

Controlling what Copilot draws from

In Word and PowerPoint, you control what Copilot references through how you write your prompt:

• To draw from your organizational content, reference specific files using /filename in your prompt, or describe the internal source you need (for example, "from my documents and emails").
• To draw from the web, describe the external source in your prompt (for example, "using recent web sources" or "based on publicly available data").

Outlook uses a Work and Web toggle in the Copilot Chat interface, which is covered in the Copilot in Outlook section below.

Copilot in Word

Model selector

Setting	What it does
Auto	Automatically selects the best model for your request. Recommended for most tasks.
Claude	Routes your request to a Claude model. Expand to choose a specific version.
GPT	Routes your request to a GPT model. Expand to choose a specific version.

Draft new content

Copilot in Word lets you generate a first draft from a prompt, then refine it through conversation — adjusting tone, length, structure, or detail at any point. Describe what you need and Copilot builds a draft grounded in the context you provide. The more specific your prompt, the more targeted the result.

For example:

• Write a professional introduction for our Q3 performance report. Audience: leadership team.
• Make the tone more optimistic and forward-looking.
• Add a sentence that highlights our team's achievements this quarter.

When you need outside research or industry context, the grounding approach in your prompt makes the difference:

• Summarize recent internal insights on industry trends from my documents and emails. (draws from your organizational content)
• Summarize current trends in the wearable tech industry using recent web sources. (draws from the web)

Copilot can automatically include citations when it draws from your work files or web sources — helping you produce credible documents without manual source-tracking.

To reference a specific file, email, or meeting in your prompt, type / in the Copilot pane and start typing the name — Copilot will find it and use it as a source.

You can also refine content you've already written. Select any text and describe what needs to change:

• Rewrite this in a more formal tone for a leadership audience.
• Make this paragraph more concise — aim for two sentences.
• Simplify this for a non-technical reader.

Tip

Working in a shared document? When Copilot plans to make changes, it shows you a preview first — nothing is added until you review and approve it.

Understand an existing document

Copilot isn't just for creating content — it can also help you understand an existing document before you edit it. Switch to Chat only mode so Copilot responds in the chat pane without making any changes to the document, then ask questions or request a summary:

• Summarize this document in five bullet points.
• What decisions are needed before this document is ready to share?
• What parts of this document might be unclear to a customer?
• Identify the open questions or unresolved risks in this document.

This is especially useful when working with inherited documents or lengthy reports you need to quickly get up to speed on before contributing.

Convert text to a table

Once you have a draft, you can restructure content visually without rewriting it. Describe the structure you need in the Copilot pane and Copilot converts the content and formats it to your specifications:

• Convert this paragraph into a table with columns for team name, KPI, and result.
• Add a header row and bold the column titles.

With the written portion of your report complete, the next step is turning that content into a presentation for leadership.

Generate images

Copilot in Word can generate images directly in your document from a text description — useful when a report needs a diagram, illustration, or supporting visual that doesn't exist yet. Describe what you need and Copilot produces options you can insert inline.

• Generate an image of a retail store layout to illustrate the performance report.
• Create a simple illustration of a supply chain workflow.

Copilot in PowerPoint

Model selector

Setting	What it does
Auto	Best model for the task. Recommended for most work.
Claude	Routes your request to a Claude model. Expand to choose a specific version.
GPT	Routes your request to a GPT model. Expand to choose a specific version.
Effort: Faster	Prioritizes speed for straightforward requests.
Effort: Balanced	Default. Balances speed and quality.
Effort: Smarter	Takes more time for higher-quality, complex outputs.
Image generation: MAI Image 2.5 Flash	Microsoft AI image model — fast generation for slide visuals.
Image generation: GPT-Image	OpenAI image model. Expand to choose a version.

For most tasks, leaving this set to Auto and effort set to Balanced is recommended.

Create a new presentation

Copilot in PowerPoint can start a presentation two ways depending on where your content lives.

From a prompt: Describe what you need and Copilot builds a draft — structure, content, and slides included. This is useful when you're starting fresh without a source document.

• Create a five-slide leadership presentation on our Q3 performance highlights and key wins.

From a Word document: If your content is already drafted, reference your document using / followed by the filename. You can reference up to five files at once, drawing from a Word document, an Excel file, and a PDF in a single prompt.

• Create a five-slide leadership presentation based on /Q3_Performance_Report.docx.
• Summarize this content into five bullet points for a leadership presentation.
• Make the bullets concise and action-oriented.

Copilot can also generate images for individual slides from a text description.

Generate images

When building your presentation, you can ask Copilot to generate an image for any slide. Describe what you want and Copilot produces options you can insert directly into the deck — no stock photo search needed.

• Generate an image of a modern retail store for the introduction slide.
• Create an icon representing customer growth for the results slide.

Once an image is inserted, you can refine it with a follow-up prompt: Make the background lighter or Use a flat illustration style instead.

For more information, see Build effective presentations with AI.

Try a new design

Once your presentation is created, you can ask Copilot to update the visual theme of the entire deck in one step — no slide-by-slide formatting needed. Copilot applies a new design and you can keep cycling through options until the look matches your audience or your organization's brand.

• Try a new design.
• Apply a more modern, minimal theme.

Review and refine an existing presentation

Copilot in PowerPoint can also help you work with a deck you've already built. Open a presentation and use the Copilot pane to ask questions, get a summary of key points, or request changes:

• Summarize the deck — prompt Copilot to give you an overview of the presentation's main themes
• Ask targeted questions — for example, Which slides need more supporting data? or What are the key takeaways from this deck?
• Add or expand content — ask Copilot to add a specific new slide or expand an existing one: Add a slide about our Q3 customer feedback highlights or Expand the risks slide with two more bullet points.
• Insert an image — ask Copilot to add an image mid-presentation: Add an image that represents a team celebrating a successful quarter.

Copilot in Outlook

Communicate progress with your team

After you complete your document and presentation, you need to let your leadership team know the current status. Copilot in Outlook can generate a complete email draft from a single prompt. Open a new email, select the Copilot icon in the message toolbar, and describe what you need:

• Draft an email to my manager announcing completion of the Q3 performance report.
• Write a meeting request to the leadership team for a 30-minute Q3 review session.
• Compose a project update for stakeholders that highlights key milestones achieved this quarter.

Copilot generates a full draft you can review and refine before sending. Before you send it, use Copilot's email coaching feature to get suggestions on tone, clarity, and reader sentiment. Select Get Coaching in the Copilot pane and Copilot reviews your draft and offers specific suggestions. You can apply suggestions individually — adjusting a sentence, a phrase, or the overall tone — until the message lands as intended.

By following this workflow, you see how Copilot helps you move from drafting a report, to building a presentation, and finally to communicating your progress — all within the apps you use every day.

Validate content against your business goals

Before you share what Copilot helped you create, pause and check it against the outcome you actually need. A polished draft isn't useful if it doesn't serve its purpose.

Ask yourself:

• Audience fit: Does the tone, length, and level of detail match who's reading this—leadership, a client, or your team?
• Goal alignment: Does the content support the decision or action you need from your audience, not just describe the topic?
• Format fit: Is this the right deliverable—a document, a table, a slide, an email—for how your audience will use it?
• Accuracy: Have you checked the facts, figures, and citations Copilot included?

If a response falls short on any of these, refine your prompt or edit the draft directly rather than sending it as-is. Treat Copilot's output as a draft, not a final answer, so your business content stays both efficient to produce and reliable to share.

If your report or presentation would benefit from external research — industry trends, competitor insights, or benchmarks beyond your organization's files — the next unit covers the Researcher agent, a prebuilt Microsoft Copilot agent that gathers and synthesizes that information for you.