Copilot Pages: Work side by side with AI

Microsoft's Copilot Pages feature in the M365 Copilot app lets users edit AI-generated content in a dynamic document canvas alongside the chat, and it is available with a paid Microsoft 365 plan without requiring a separate Copilot license. The tool allows manual editing, formatting, moving, copying, and deleting text components, and supports collaboration by sharing pages or embedding them as Loop components in Word, Outlook, OneNote, or Teams.

When you’re working with Microsoft Copilot to create a business document, you might find yourself torn between two opposing instincts. Part of you is itching to edit its output right away, while another part wants to keep prompting the AI assistant to refine the generated text. Turns out you can do both. The Pages feature in the M365 Copilot app https://www.computerworld.com/article/4171293/copilot-chat-your-hub-for-document-creation-and-analysis.html is a dynamic text editor that works in a window alongside your Copilot chat. It lets you turn the AI’s response into a persistent document a “page,” in Microsoft parlance that you can edit manually while continuing to collaborate with Copilot on it. You can also invite your co-workers to collaborate on it, either by sharing the page with them or by embedding it in a Word document, Outlook email, OneNote note, or Teams chat as a Loop component. More on that later. In this guide, we’ll go over how to use the Pages tool in the M365 Copilot app. It’s available with a paid Microsoft 365 plan https://www.computerworld.com/article/1691110/microsoft-365-explained.html and, notably, does not require a separate Copilot license. This means that enterprise users who have a Microsoft 365 plan but not a Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on plan can use Copilot Pages. Confusingly, there’s also a lower-end free Copilot app for users who don’t have an M365 account. It has its own basic Pages tool https://support.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-copilot/using-copilot-pages , but it doesn’t include all the features of Pages in the M365 Copilot app. Copilot Pages works within the M365 Copilot app. Head to microsoft365.com https://microsoft365.com the old-school office.com https://www.office.com/ works too , where you’ll see the Copilot Chat interface front and center. Get your first page going: Simply type in a request for Copilot as usual. Howard Wen / Foundry When Copilot gives you a result that you want to turn into a document, such as a list of action items or an outline for a marketing plan, scroll to the bottom of the result and click the pencil Edit in Pages icon. Depending on your M365 subscription, you might have to click the three-dot icon and then select Edit in Pages from the menu that pops up. Howard Wen / Foundry The screen will split into two windows, with your chat with Copilot on the left and a document canvas your new page containing the generated text on the right. Howard Wen / Foundry Give your new page a name: Before you do anything else, move the pointer to the upper-left of your page. The first few words you wrote to Copilot in your prompt appear inside a text box. Click the text box and type in an appropriate name for the page. Each text item on your page canvas paragraph text, heading, bulleted list item, etc. is a separate element that you can edit in various ways. Add or edit text: Click inside a text element and start typing. To select a word, double-click on it. To select a line of text, triple-click on it. Format text: Select the text you want to format. This action will open a formatting toolbar where you can change the font style bold, italic, underline, etc. , formatting headline, list, etc. , or color of the highlighted text. Howard Wen / Foundry Move a text component: Move the pointer over the component until you see a small icon with six dots in a grid to the left of it. Click-and-hold this icon, drag the component down or up the page, and let go where you want to relocate the component on the page. Howard Wen / Foundry Copy or delete a text component: Click the six-dot icon. On the menu that opens, select Copy a copy of the component will be saved to your clipboard or Delete . Add a component: Place your mouse pointer at the end of a text component and press Enter. In the “Just start typing…” field that appears on the next line, type in your new text. Your new component will be formatted as paragraph text by default, but you can reformat it as described above. Alternatively, you can move the pointer over a text component and click the + icon Click to insert below that appears to its left, or just type a forward slash / . This will summon a menu of several components that you can add to your page. The ones listed under the “General” category will be the most relevant for work-related purposes: Table , Checklist , Bulleted list , Numbered list , Date , Callout , Table of contents . Howard Wen / Foundry From the document canvas, you can use Copilot to rewrite passages of text in two ways: Use Copilot to rewrite a text component: Highlight the text you want Copilot to rewrite. On the formatting toolbar that opens, click Ask Copilot . Or click the six-dot icon to the left of the component and select Ask Copilot from the menu that opens. A text entry box will open. Type a prompt inside it that describes how you want Copilot to rewrite the text in the component, such as making it more concise or giving it a more professional tone. Howard Wen / Foundry Use Copilot to rewrite an entire page: Alternatively, you can have Copilot rewrite the text of your page as one document. At the lower-right corner of the document canvas, click the backwards “S” icon Copilot shortcuts . This will open a mini-toolbar with three icons: Howard Wen / Foundry Add more text generated by Copilot to your page: With the document canvas open in the right window, you can still chat with Copilot in the left window, and add additional content that Copilot generates in your chat to your page in the right window. Howard Wen / Foundry In addition to collaborating with Copilot on your page, you can invite co-workers or clients to edit the page as well. Click the Share button an icon of an arrow over a square at the at the upper-right corner of your page. You’ll see a menu with two options: Howard Wen / Foundry When either link type is generated for your page, you’ll be presented with a confirmation panel. Click the Settings button on this panel if you want to change the access permissions for the link to your page. This will open a panel that lets you specify who can access your page through this link, and whether they can edit your page. People you can share the page with include co-workers in your organization, specific people you invite, or, if your company allows it, anybody at all. You can also set an expiration date for when the link will no longer work, as well as a password that people must enter to access your page. If you’ve given others permission to edit your page, they’ll be able to add, move, and delete the text elements on the page, as well as tag other collaborators and add comments. They’ll only see the page itself, not your Copilot chats. If the receiver has their own Copilot license, they can use Copilot to edit the page. Tag a person: If there’s a component in your page that you want a co-worker to take a closer look at, insert the cursor somewhere in this component and type the @ symbol followed by their name. If they’re in your Microsoft 365 contacts, their name should pop up for you to select. Their tagged name will appear in this component, and they’ll be notified in an email. Howard Wen / Foundry Add a comment: There are multiple ways to start a comment on a page: Howard Wen / Foundry When you write a comment, you can tag a person by typing @ followed by their name. You can export your page to Microsoft Word or PDF. At the upper-right corner of your page, click the three-dot button, select Export , and then select either Document or PDF . Howard Wen / Foundry When you export a page to Word, it will open in the Word web app in a new browser tab. When you export it to PDF, it’ll be downloaded to your PC. The pages that you create from your chats with Copilot appear in the Library section of the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. At the upper-left corner, click the Expand navigation icon. A sidebar opens along the left. Click the Library icon, and the pages you’ve created or been invited to will appear in the main window. Howard Wen / Foundry Click the name of a page, and it’ll re-open inside the document canvas window. Or, if you want to delete it, move the pointer over its name, click the three-dot icon at its right, and select Delete .