Copilot Cheat Sheet · Monét Reid

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What this covers.

Most people only ever use the prompt box. This takes you from setup to the Wave 3 powers, the best free ways to learn, and the tools worth pairing with Copilot by role.

A great place to start

The free 2-hour Wave 3 course with Sabrina Ramonov and trainer Sheree Brock. Watch on YouTube if the player does not load. This guide is built from that course plus Microsoft Learn and the monthly Copilot release notes.

00 · Find your style

Learn Copilot your way.

Take this 16-question check to see how you prefer to take in new information. Your result tailors how to work through this guide. Then keep scrolling; the whole cheat sheet is still here for everyone.

Honest science: learning styles are preferences, not hard limits. Research (Pashler 2008; Riener and Willingham) finds little proof that matching lessons to a style improves results. What is proven is pairing your preference with six strategies: retrieval practice, spaced practice, interleaving, elaboration, dual coding, and concrete examples. This tool does both.

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01 · Setup

Get set up.

Most "it does not work" complaints trace back to skipped setup, not the AI.

Step 1

Confirm access

You need a Copilot license, or use free Copilot Chat (web only). A license unlocks the Wave 3 "Edit with Copilot" powers in the apps.

Step 2

Clean up sharing

Copilot only sees what you can see. Fix oversharing in SharePoint and OneDrive first.

Step 3

Custom instructions

Settings, then Personalization. Tell it how to answer you: honest feedback, plain language, bullet points.

Step 4

Saved memories

Let it remember your role and projects. Setting them in Personalization beats saving mid-chat.

Step 5

Pin it everywhere

Turn it on in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, plus the Windows app and Edge sidebar.

Step 6

Pick 2 or 3 tasks

Do not explore once and quit. Choose concrete jobs: triage my inbox, build this tracker, draft this recap.

Privacy note: your enterprise data is protected (Copilot pulls it in, it does not push it out), but your company can still see and flag what you type. Do not paste anything you would not want IT to read.

02 · The hub

The homepage is a workspace.

Most people treat it as just a prompt box. Here is what else lives on that screen and left rail.

Prompt Gallery

Ready-made prompts that pull from your real files. "Prepare me for a one-on-one" gathers the right docs, meetings, and chats.

Search

The underrated one. A search engine across your whole org: every meeting, Teams message, email, and SharePoint site.

Create

Images, one-sentence videos, infographics, roadmaps, posters, and a reusable brand kit with your colors.

Pages

Turn any answer into an editable canvas. Rewrite and reorder sections like a Word doc, then share or push to PowerPoint.

Notebooks

A private desk grounded only in the files you add, with citations. Good for one policy or project.

Temporary chat

No history, no memories, and it ignores your custom instructions for one-off questions.

Schedule prompts

Reuse a favorite prompt on a timer. Example: every Monday, sort my weekend emails by importance.

Models and Web / Work

Pick GPT-5.2 or leave it on Auto (agents run on Claude). Toggle Web for the internet or Work for your data.

Backslash to tag

Type "/" to tag a file, meeting, or person, including anything shared with you across OneDrive, Teams, and Outlook.

03 · The formula

Talk to it like a teammate.

The Prompt Coach agent teaches this four-part recipe. Hit three of four and results jump.

Goal

What you want back. "Rewrite this email to sound more professional."

Context

Why and for whom. "Going to a coworker; clear but friendly."

Source

Point to the file, email, or meeting. "Use the email below."

Expectations

Format and tone. "Keep it four to six sentences."

Weak vs strong: "Copilot, make this better" gives it nothing to work with. The version above gives it everything. New to AI? Run Prompt Coach once and let it build the prompt with you, step by step.

04 · Agents

Give a task, get a result.

Unlike chat, you hand an agent a goal and it does the whole job. These are built by Microsoft and ready under "All agents."

Agent	What it does for you
Researcher	Best first agent. Returns a 5 to 7 page, expert-level report with cited sources from one goal.	Start
Analyst	Complex, multi-step data analysis over your files. Ask "any trends I am missing?" on a messy spreadsheet.	2026
Prompt Coach	The most underrated one. Guides you to a great prompt before you run the heavy agents.	2026
Facilitator	Replaces meeting notetakers: live notes, action items, owners, and follow-up scheduling.	2026
Career Coach	Reality-check on a promotion: the skills gap and an 18-month plan. Talk to leadership too.	2026
Idea Coach	Structured brainstorming partner for planning and problem-solving.	2026
Learning Coach	Builds learning plans and points to courses. Ask it to keep resources free.	2026
Build your own	Create custom agents in Copilot Studio. Some teams run whole workflows on them.	Advanced

05 · Wave 3

Inside the apps now.

Wave 1 was drafting; Wave 2 added Pages and Notebooks; Wave 3 puts agents inside the apps. Look for the "Edit with Copilot" button.

Excel

Build an entire tracker or dashboard from one prompt
Add sheets, dropdowns, charts, and fix formulas by asking
Turn a Word or PowerPoint file into structured data; clean messy data
Double-click any cell to see the formula it wrote

Word

Rewrite and restructure sections, not just summarize
Edit formatting by prompt: bold, color, insert tables and charts
Rewrite for a new audience: finance to legal, technical to plain
Turn a 150-page report into a 1 to 2 page executive brief

PowerPoint

Build a deck from a topic or from an existing file
Add a slide or a whole section, with automatic speaker notes
Use brand kits and templates; ask Copilot to make images
Find slides from your team's past decks; pair with Designer

Outlook

Draft and rewrite replies; change tone (shorter, casual, direct)
Set draft instructions so it sounds like you, not like AI
Triage the inbox: what matters most, what needs urgent replies
Summarize a month of email into a prioritized action list

Insider trick: when building an Excel tool, ask for dummy data first. Test the sheet, confirm it works, then clear it and drop in your real numbers.

06 · Mindset

Five beginner rules.

Rule 1

Copilot, not autopilot

Always review the output. The moment AI never makes a mistake is the moment it does not need you.

Rule 2

Ask AI first

Beat the blank page. "I am a [role]; what custom instructions should I use?" Let it draft, then tweak.

Rule 3

Let it ask you

Prompt Coach and clarifying questions force you to get clear on what you actually want.

Rule 4

Kill the AI tells

In Outlook draft instructions, ban openers like "I hope you are well" and stray em dashes so it reads like you.

Rule 5

Search is not chat

Chat does something for you and may find only a few files. Search is built to find everything across your org.

07 · Connectors

Bring your other apps in.

Your Microsoft apps already talk to each other, so you skip stitching ten tools together. Connectors extend that to outside systems: 100+ available, and 2026 adds federated ones that query live, with a citation and your permissions on every result.

Federated (live) 2026

Query the source system in real time, no stale index
Every answer carries a citation back to the record
Runs on your identity and permissions
Works in Chat, Researcher, and Agent Mode in Excel

Reality check: most connectors need the underlying app and an admin to switch them on. A greyed-out connector is an admin toggle, not a bug on your end.

08 · Learn

Free ways to get good.

Follow a few creators, then work a free course. Best path: Microsoft Learn, the Wave 3 course, then a certificate.

Pro tip and a warning: if an ad shows someone in a power pose insisting you NEED their paid masterclass or a robot will take your job, it is a scam. You can learn AI for free. Start with the creators, courses, and communities below and build your own path from there.

Creators worth following

Free course

Sabrina Ramonov

The free 2-hour hands-on Wave 3 course with trainer Sheree Brock, plus free prompts, automations, and a community.

YouTube

Kevin Stratvert

Ex-Microsoft PM and the most Reddit-recommended teacher. Real business scenarios, not toy demos.