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Kevin Stratvert

Microsoft Copilot Tips and Tricks to Boost Your Productivity

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Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today, in partnership with Microsoft, we’re going to look at 10 amazing ways you can start using Microsoft Copilot right now. For example, you can compare files in OneDrive, fill in missing information in Excel, make branded presentations in PowerPoint, and so much more. Let’s dive in. This brings us to tip number one. Copilot understands the context of the page that you’re currently on. Here I am on YouTube, and in the top right-hand corner, I’ll click on the Copilot icon in Edge. And right here, it recognizes that I currently have a video playing. And right here, I have the option to generate video highlights. Let’s try clicking on this. Over on the right-hand side, up at the top, it generated a video summary, and it also highlights all of the key points mentioned throughout the video. So here, for example, if I want to learn about Copilot and Microsoft 365 apps, I can even click on this timestamp and it’ll jump me directly to that portion of the video. One of the cool things too, is I can also ask questions about this video. Down at the bottom, let’s see what the Copilot plugin is called that generates songs for you. Here, I’ll submit that. And there, again, it understands the video and the plugin is called Suno. If you haven’t tried it before, it’s a really neat plugin to test. This functionality not only applies to websites with videos like YouTube, but you can also use it on text-based webpages too. This brings us to tip number two. You can install Copilot directly on your iPhone or Android phone. Simply go to the App Store or the Play Store and search for Microsoft Copilot and you could download it for free. The app provides all of Copilot’s features while you’re on the go. Now, one of the use cases that I really love, here, I’ll take a picture of a flower at my house and I’m not quite sure what type it is, so I’ll ask Copilot, what type of flower is this? And look at that. It says it looks like a rose with a yellow to peach color. That’s just one example of how you can use Copilot on the go. This brings us to tip number three. You can make a branded presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint. Here, I have a Word document open that talks about opening up a new cookie store in India. And here it has all of the details, including the market analysis. But I think it’s a little bit hard to consume as a document, and I think a presentation would work better. So up on top, I’ll minimize Word, and here I have a presentation open in PowerPoint with the official Kevin Cookie Company theme. And I want to turn that Word document into a presentation. So how do we do that? Well, up on top, let’s click on the Home tab and over on the right-hand side, let’s click on the Copilot icon. This opens up Copilot. And down below, I have a few sample prompts that I could start from, or down below I could type in my own. But right on top, this prompt looks like it’ll work. It says Create a Presentation From, and then I can specify a file. Well, I have that Word document, so let’s click on this, and here it inserts this prompt into the text field down below. And it says Create a Presentation From, and then it uses a forward slash. When you enter a forward slash, you could reference people, files, or even meetings. Now right here, it defaults to files. And here I see all my different Word documents that I have on my OneDrive. Right up on top, there’s that Word document opening a new cookie store in India. I’ll select this. And here it inserts the file into the prompt that I want to send to the AI. Let’s see how this works. Down below, let’s send this through. Before it does anything, right up on top, I get a message that says, Creating a New Presentation Will Replace Your Existing Slides, so you may want to save a copy first. Well, over here, this is just a theme or a template, and I want Copilot to use this template to make its presentation. So, I’m fine with that. So right here, I’ll click on Yes, Please. And look at that. It pulled together 18 slides based on my Word documents using my theme in PowerPoint. This is phenomenal. So right here, we have the title slide. I have an agenda. And look at this. It created all of these different slides. I have a slide in the target audience, the competitive landscape. And again, it pulls all of that information from the Word document. Now, if we go down to the very bottom, it also adds speaker notes. So here I could expand it. And I have all of the original content down at the bottom. And it includes a summary of that content from my Word document. This makes it so easy and efficient to pull together presentations. And the thing I love is it even finds matching imagery to go along with the text included on the slide. This brings us to tip number four. You can reference people, files, meetings, or emails directly from Copilot. Here I am in Copilot, and you can launch this by clicking on the Copilot logo on your taskbar. We looked at this one briefly in the previous tip. But down below in the text field, you could enter a forward slash. And this allows you to reference all sorts of different files, people, meetings, or even emails when you’re prompting Copilot. So right here, I see all the different items. Now here, I can click into people. We could also click into files. And here I see all my different OneDrive files, any meetings that are coming up, and also recent emails. Now I have a question about a recent file. Here’s that file opening a new cookie store in India. I’ll click on this one. And now I can ask Copilot a question about this document. I want to know who is the target audience. I don’t feel like opening up the document. So, let’s send that through and see what comes back. And look at that, it pulls out the information directly from the document. That was easy. I also noticed that I have a meeting coming up later today. So down below, let’s once again, enter that forward slash. And here, I’ll click on meetings. And it looks like we have one of my favorite types of meetings, a cookie brainstorming session. I’ll click on that, and let’s find out who’s attending this meeting. Let’s send that through. And look at that, right up above, it pulls out all of the attendees. It looks like Diego’s going, so I better attend. And right up on top, it looks like I’m the main speaker and host, I better go prep for this meeting. This brings us to tip number five. You can use Copilot to create email rules in Outlook. Right here, I have an email from Henrietta, my manager. And to be honest, I almost missed it, so I needed to stand out a little bit more anytime my manager emails me. In the top right-hand corner, let’s click on the Copilot icon. And right here, we see a whole bunch of different sample prompts, but I already have a prompt in mind. So down below in this text field, I’ll type in my prompt, create an inbox rule to highlight in red and pin to the top for emails from Henrietta Mueller, my manager. So right over here, let’s see if Copilot can help create that rule. And look at that, it now opens up the rules prompt. And here, I can see that it automatically filled in all of these details. So, emails from Henrietta, here it adds a condition. So, it’s from, and here’s Henrietta’s email address. And then I see two actions. It’ll pin the email to the top, and it’ll also categorize it as red. That’s pretty close. I wanted to highlight in red, but I think that looks okay. What’s nice is here, I can validate and confirm that the rule all looks good to me. And I think it does. So down below, I’ll click on Save. Now that I’ve saved this rule, right up here, I’ll run it. Let’s click on Run the rule. Now let’s close out of this prompt. And right there, I can see the email from Henrietta pinned to the top with the red category. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had trouble creating rules, and this makes it so much easier. This brings us to tip number six. You can understand your files faster with Copilot in OneDrive. Here I am in Microsoft OneDrive. And here I have this Word document about opening a new cookie store in India. When I hover over this file, right over here, I see the Copilot logo. And when I click on this, I have a few different actions. I can have it summarize the file. I can create an FAQ or frequently asked questions. And down below, I can even ask a question about this file. Let’s try asking a question. When I click on that, that opens up the Copilot pane over on the right-hand side. And I’ve got a question for you, Copilot. Where should we open a location in India? And let’s see what comes back. And look at that, Copilot comes back with a few different recommendations. It says Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, or Hyderabad. Let me know which one you think is the best one in the comments down below. But here, it looks like it gave it some good consideration for all of those recommendations. Looking over at the left-hand side, it reminded me of a task that I have. We have all these different invoice files, and my manager wanted me to summarize all of these different invoices. Over on the left-hand side, let’s click into the My Files view. And here I see all the different files that I have in my OneDrive. Over here, I see all those different invoice files. I’ll press Shift to select all five of these files. And up on top, we have the Copilot logo right up here. I’ll click on that, and again, we can summarize. But there’s now a new option. We can also compare these files. You can do this with up to five files at a time. So, let’s test this out. I’ll click on Compare. And look at that, it extracts all of the information from those five files and then presents it in a table. So here I see all the invoice numbers, the dates, who the bill to is, and here I could even see the grand total for all of these different invoices. That makes my job so much easier. Now, you could also use this for things like, say, comparing resumes or retail logs, or in my case, invoices. This brings us to tip number seven. You can improve your writing with coaching by Copilot. Now, if you don’t feel comfortable having Copilot help write text for you, you can also have it evaluate your existing text. Here I have an email message where my manager has asked me to announce to the organization that we’re ending remote work and everyone has to come to the office. I still don’t know why my manager just wouldn’t send it out herself, but I guess you need a fall guy. Now here I have my message and I’m not sure if it uses the best tone or if it’s the most convincing. So right up on top, we have that Copilot icon. I’ll click on this and here you could draft with Copilot. That’s where Copilot will help you write text or you could use coaching by Copilot where it’ll evaluate your text. I’ll select that and right now it’s analyzing my message. And look at that. It looks like it has some feedback for me. First, it says that I should be more professional. The email uses a direct approach to communicate the policy change. Well, that’s good. However, the tone comes across as aggressive and disrespectful, which can demotivate employees. Now I don’t want that. Now right down here, I could see all these suggestions. So, it recommends changing up some of the wording. Those are some good ideas I could go through and make some modifications. It also tells me to show appreciation, not frustration. And here it has specific suggestions. Down below, it also has some additional suggestions. So, this way you can use the coach to improve your writing. This brings us to tip number eight. Copilot in Excel makes data analysis so much easier. My manager has asked me to pull together a table with all the cities where we have stores along with the corresponding country. But as you can see, there’s no country here. And I don’t want to have to look these up one by one, so let’s see if Copilot can help me with this. To be able to use Copilot in Excel, first off, we need to make sure that all of this data range is in a table. So how do we do that? Well, first off, click somewhere in this data range. And up on top, let’s go to Insert. And here you can insert the table. Alternatively, you can also press Ctrl T on your keyboard, and that also allows you to insert a table. Now right here, my table has headers, so I’ll make sure to check this and then click on OK. Additionally, I also need to make sure that this sheet is saved in the cloud. And currently it is. But if not, you have to make sure you save it in OneDrive. Once you do those two things, you can now use Copilot. So right up on top, let’s click on the Home tab and all the way over on the right-hand side, let’s click on Copilot. Down below, here I see a whole bunch of sample prompts, but I have my own. So, let’s go down to this text field and I’ll type in Add a New Column with the country for these cities. And let’s see if it could do my work for me. Let’s click on this and look at that. Here it walks me through how it went about doing it. And it also provides a preview. And that looks good to me. So, let’s insert this column and look at that. I’ve got all the countries for these different cities. It looks like I’ll have to fill out a few of them at the bottom, but it’s a really good start. Now, I’d also like to add one more column with the counts of countries. So, let’s see if Copilot can help. Over on the right-hand side, let me enter the prompt, add another column with accounts of countries. And let’s send that through. And right there, look at that. Let’s insert that column. And when I click on it, here I see the function that it used to count the number of countries. That makes using functions and formulas so much easier. This brings us to tip number nine. You can use Copilot in Microsoft Teams to stay on top of all of your meetings. Now, right up on top, there’s the Copilot logo. I’ll click on this and that opens up the Copilot pane. Now, at the very bottom, we can click on more prompts and you can see examples of the types of prompts that you can ask. Now, I’m a little bit late joining this meeting, so let’s see if I could get a recap of what’s been covered so far. I’ll click on this. And look at that. There I get a quick overview of everything that’s been covered so far. It doesn’t look like I’ve missed anything important. I think that was just the introduction. So down below, let me also ask if there are any action items for me. That’s always one of the most important questions. And let’s see what comes back. And look at that. It looks like there are no specific action items for me, at least not yet. Now, this is a great tool where you can ask questions about meetings. You could get up to speed on any content that you might’ve missed. This brings us to tip number 10, inspiration for prompts. Now, as we’ve been going through this video, you might be wondering, well, how do you know what you can even ask Copilot? Here I am in PowerPoint. And in the top right-hand corner, I’ll click on the Copilot icon. And here we see all sorts of sample prompts that you can ask. But as a quick tip, down at the very bottom, you’ll see this icon where you can view even more prompts. Here I could hover over Create and then click on it. And it’ll show you different types of things you can create with Copilot. I’ll go back. You could also use Copilot to understand your presentation. And here we see a few sample prompts. I’ll go back again. You could also use it to edit your presentation. Now, all the different Microsoft 365 apps will have their own set of prompts. So, it’s well worth going through each app to see what types of things you can do with Copilot. And if you need even more inspiration, down at the bottom, you can click on View More Prompts. And this opens up the Copilot Lab. And here you’ll see a very comprehensive list of all the different types of prompts you can ask. And down at the bottom, if you want even more, you could also click on See All Prompts. This opens up the Copilot Lab. And over here, you could filter all the different prompts by app. Here you could also filter by task or even job type. And here you’ll see there are lots of different prompts to give you inspiration. All right, well, let me know which tip was your favorite. Also, let me know if you have any other tips in the comments below. And for those of you looking to really master Copilot, be sure to visit the Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 training. You can click on the card right up above. These are training courses catered specifically to different roles and also functions like HR, finance, executives, operations, sales, IT, and marketing. There, you can find webinars and other training events that will help you make the most of Copilot in your everyday work. Best of all, they’re completely free and they go on all the time. So, you’ll likely find one that suits your level, need, and schedule. To watch more videos like this one, please consider subscribing and I’ll see you in the next video.

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