Information about a project ends up scattered: a few documents in OneDrive, meeting notes in Teams, a Word draft on the desktop, links in chats. Copilot Notebooks bundle exactly this content in one place and give you an AI alongside it that can answer questions about it.
What exactly are Copilot Notebooks?
Copilot Notebooks are an AI-powered workspace in Microsoft 365. Think of a digital project folder with extended capabilities. Unlike a classic OneDrive folder, you can ask the notebook questions that Copilot answers based on the content you have stored there.
The system analyses only the material you bring together in the notebook, not your entire M365 context.
What do you need for it?
- A Microsoft 365 Copilot licence
- An active SharePoint or OneDrive licence
- Both are included in most business plans with the Copilot add-on
How to create your first Copilot Notebook
Step 1: Navigation
Open m365.cloud.microsoft/notebooks in your browser.
Step 2: New notebook
Click «New notebook» and enter a meaningful name.
Step 3: Add content
Use the «+» icon to add the following content types:
- Word documents
- Excel spreadsheets
- PDFs
- Meeting notes from Teams
- Copilot chat histories
- Links to SharePoint sites or websites
Step 4: Working with the notebook
Ask Copilot questions in the chat area, for example:
- «Create a summary of the most important requirements»
- «Which open points were mentioned in the last meeting?»
- «Write a draft based on these documents»
The features that give you the most value
Overview page
Every notebook automatically generates an overview page with the most important insights, topics and key points. That gives you quick orientation without having to read through all the documents again.
Quick Create: Audio Overview, Flashcards & Quiz
- Audio Overview: a podcast-style walkthrough of the content
- Flashcards: preparation for presentations
- Quiz: useful for passing knowledge on to others
Mind Map
Copilot creates interactive diagrams that visualise how topics connect. You can click on individual nodes and get topic-specific summaries.
Sharing with the team
You can share notebooks directly with Microsoft 365 groups, so the whole project team works on the same knowledge hub.
What Copilot Notebooks cannot do
The quality of the answers depends heavily on the documents you have stored. Outdated, incomplete or poorly structured files feed straight through into the Copilot answers. And: without a Copilot licence, nothing works.
My verdict: notebooks are my new standard tool
Copilot Notebooks solve a very everyday problem: the chaos of scattered information. My tip: take a project that is already running, set up a notebook and ask your first questions. The value usually only becomes properly visible after the third or fourth attempt.
