One rule before you start: Without the M365 Copilot paid add-on, only free-tier Copilot Chat is available — web-only, no Teams or SharePoint access. Exception: Copilot Chat within Outlook retains inbox and calendar grounding for all M365 users at no extra cost. Seat threshold applies. In tenants with more than 2,000 M365 seats, Copilot Chat in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote requires the paid licence. The in-app tools listed below follow this rule. (MC1253858) All other tools below require the paid licence.
Licence baseline for this guide
Without the M365 Copilot paid add-on, only free-tier Copilot Chat is available — web search only, no M365 data access (except Copilot Chat within Outlook, which retains inbox and calendar grounding for all users at no extra cost). Every tool listed below marked "paid" requires the add-on.
I need live data from my inbox, Teams, or calendar
Email summaries, meeting recaps, recent activity
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Copilot Chat
I need answers from a specific file, email, or meeting
Contract clause, meeting action items, email commitment
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@ References
I need to query across many documents repeatedly over time
Project files, standards, contracts, compliance docs
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Notebooks
I need to draft, rewrite, or analyse content inside a document
Word doc, PowerPoint deck, Excel spreadsheet
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Office Apps
I need notes, action items, or to catch up on a Teams meeting
What was decided? What did I miss? Who owns what?
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Teams Meetings
I need to draft, summarize, coach, or prep inside Outlook email
Reply to a thread, coach tone, build a meeting brief from inbox
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Outlook
I need this output to run automatically on a schedule
Monday pipeline, Friday competitive scan, daily briefing
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Scheduled Prompts
I need to share this output as a working document others can edit
Briefing note, shared summary, collaborative draft
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Pages
I need the whole team to get consistent answers at scale
Procedure questions, pipeline reviews, recurring report format
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Agents
Copilot keeps giving vague or off-target answers
Output is too long, wrong format, wrong level of detail
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Prompt Hygiene
Copilot is not reading the right document or email
Generic answer when you need a source-specific one
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@ References
All guides in this series — 12 guides · plus Decision Map · Failure Triage · IT Deployment Kit · kesslernity.com