Copilot in OneNote can help you work more intentionally

Last week I had the opportunity to give a presentation on Microsoft 365 Copilot. During the session, I noticed some of the attendees taking notes in OneNote. I will note my love for this product (I use it every day), but I will be the first to admit that I am not the most organized note-taker. I found there was a wealth of information scattered across multiple pages in my OneNote, so I decided to use Copilot to make sense of it and share some tips about my experience on this blog to inspire you to give it a try too!

Tip 1: Use Copilot to Understand Your Existing Notes

Most of my content in OneNote comes from meetings over the past year and usually begins with the names of the people attending the meeting, the date, and notes from the conversation. The first thing I tried was to ask OneNote’s Copilot to create a table of everyone I’ve talked to and write a brief description of the conversation based on my notes.

I selected Copilot from OneNote’s Home ribbon and typed the prompt into the chat window. “Take a look at this page and put together a table of people I spoke to and a column for what we discussed. You may use parts of the table on your blog, so just use the names.”

A screenshot of Copilot showing a table containing the individuals I spoke with and a brief description of the discussion.

Next, let’s look at the responses. I found this table very helpful as a first step in reminding me of the conversations I’ve had with so many people over the past year.

Try the prompts on every aspect of your existing notes and see what happens. Maybe it’s a conversation with a customer, a stakeholder in your company’s various business functions, or some great people you’ve met along the way. Copilot in OneNote helps you organize these notes so you can collect your thoughts neatly and concisely.

Tip 2: Create a new note using Copilot

For my next task, I wanted to see if Copilot could help me stay organized with a better note-taking structure.

The prompt I used is: “Take a table of the meetings I had last week. Add the title of the meeting in one column, a brief summary of the meeting in another column, and the action items from that meeting in the third column.”

Screenshot of Copilot creating a table containing the content of last week’s meeting, a brief summary of what was discussed, and action items.

I really appreciate how quickly Copilot was able to get this done. In addition to being a quick reminder of meetings I’ve had, action items will help me stay on top of what I need to do this week. I’ve asked Copilot to summarize meetings in a variety of ways in the past, but I’d never thought of using Copilot to provide a full week’s view of my personal notes before. With this, you may never have to take notes yourself again.

Tip 3: Type, Write, or Both

This is for people who prefer to write notes by hand, utilizing tablets and touchscreens. Recently our What’s New BlogCopilot in OneNote can analyze both typed and handwritten notes. No matter how your thoughts are captured, Copilot will summarize, rewrite or create your to-do list. Users can also write messages directly in the Copilot chat window, which will automatically be converted to typed text.

In the OneNote app, users write messages directly into the Copilot chat window to update content on OneNote pages.

Try these tips and let us know what you think!