Microsoft Copilot

Mastering Microsoft 365 Copilot: Tips, Tricks & Fresh Updates

Chris Menard

29 Oct 2025 — 4 min read

In this live session, Chris Menard and Melissa Ballesteros walk through practical tips for getting more out of Microsoft 365 Copilot. From Excel formula suggestions to AI-powered notebooks and PowerPoint presentation creation, this 45-minute session covers the features that matter most for everyday productivity.

Excel Formula Completion with TEXTAFTER

Chris demonstrates how Copilot's Formula Completion feature suggests formulas as you type. With a dataset containing invoice dates, typing = in a "Month" column prompts Copilot to suggest =TEXT(G3,"mmmm") — extracting the month name from each date. The same pattern works for extracting other date components.

He also shows how Formula Completion handles name parsing using TEXTAFTER. Given a column of full names with titles (like "Mr. Chris A. Menard"), Copilot suggests formulas to extract first names, last names, and city names from combined address fields — all without manually writing complex string functions.

Excel spreadsheet showing Copilot Formula Completion with a TEXT formula extracting month names from invoice dates, displaying data with State, Source, Invoice Date, Month, Invoice Amount, and Cost columns — Formula Completion suggests =TEXT(G3,"mmmm") to extract month names from dates — just press Tab to accept.

Copilot Notebooks and AI Agents

Melissa introduces Copilot Notebooks — a newer feature within Microsoft 365 Copilot that provides a persistent workspace for longer prompts and multi-step tasks. Unlike the standard Copilot Chat, Notebooks keep your full prompt visible and let you iterate on results without losing context.

The Notebooks interface includes built-in agents accessible from the sidebar: Researcher for finding information, Analyst for data analysis, and Prompt Coach for improving your prompts. There's also a TimeAssist agent and Workflows (Frontier) for automation. These agents specialize in different tasks, so you can pick the right one for your current need.

Melissa shares a prompting tip: declutter your prompts. Remove unnecessary words and context to help Copilot focus on what matters most. Shorter, clearer prompts produce more accurate responses because they avoid overloading the context window.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Notebooks interface showing a 'Prompting Tip for Copilot Users' about decluttering prompts, with agents listed in the sidebar including Researcher, Analyst, Prompt Coach, TimeAssist, and Workflows — Copilot Notebooks provide a persistent workspace with specialized agents for research, analysis, and prompt improvement.

Creating PowerPoint Presentations with Copilot

Chris shows how to create an entire presentation using Copilot in PowerPoint. Type a topic (like "Hartsfield-Jackson Airport") into the Copilot prompt, and it generates a full slide deck. New options include choosing presentation length — Short (3-6 slides), Medium (8-15 slides), or Long (15+ slides) — and attaching reference files from OneDrive to ground the content in your existing documents.

Copilot generates slides with section headings, bullet points, and placeholder images. You can also select a design template before generating, so the slides match your brand or preference from the start.

PowerPoint Copilot dialog showing 'Create a presentation about HArtsfield jackson airport' with Length options (Short 3-6 slides, Medium 8-15 slides, Long 15+ slides), Style dropdown set to Default, and a Change design button — Copilot in PowerPoint now lets you choose presentation length and reference files before generating slides.

Excel Data Cleaning and Name Parsing

Returning to Excel, Chris demonstrates a data cleaning scenario with a spreadsheet containing full names (with titles like "Mr.", "Mrs.", "Prof.") and combined addresses. Using Copilot's formula suggestions, he parses these into separate columns for First Name, Last Name, and City — each requiring different TEXTAFTER and TEXTBEFORE formulas that Copilot generates automatically.

The key insight: Formula Completion reads your column headers and surrounding data to understand what you need. If your header says "First Name" and the adjacent column has full names, Copilot figures out the right extraction formula. This works across multiple sheets — Chris shows separate tabs for different cleaning tasks including text groups and numerical groups.

Excel spreadsheet with Name and Address columns being parsed into First Name, Last Name, and City columns using Copilot Formula Completion, showing data for multiple people with various titles and addresses — Copilot parses complex name and address data into separate columns using TEXTAFTER and TEXTBEFORE formulas.

SharePoint and OneDrive File Actions

The session also covers Copilot's file-level actions in SharePoint and OneDrive. When browsing files, hovering over a document reveals quick actions powered by Copilot: Summarize the document, Create an FAQ from its contents, Create an audio overview (a podcast-style summary), or Ask a question about the file. These work with Word documents, PDFs, and other file types without needing to open them first.

Key Takeaways

Formula Completion in Excel now handles complex parsing with TEXTAFTER, TEXTBEFORE, and TEXT functions
Copilot Notebooks offer a persistent workspace with specialized AI agents for different tasks
PowerPoint Copilot now supports presentation length selection and reference file attachments
Declutter your prompts — shorter, focused prompts produce better Copilot results
SharePoint/OneDrive file actions let you summarize, create FAQs, and ask questions without opening files