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 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 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, but it doesn’t include all the features of Pages in the M365 Copilot app.)
In this article:
- Create a Copilot page
- Edit your Copilot page
- Revise and expand your page with Copilot
- Share and collaborate on your Copilot page
- Export your Copilot page
- Manage your Copilot pages
Create a Copilot page
Copilot Pages works within the M365 Copilot app. Head to microsoft365.com (the old-school 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.
To start a Copilot page, start a Copilot chat.
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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.)
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Click the Edit in Pages option below Copilot’s result to launch a page.
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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.
Your new page opens to the right of your Copilot chat.
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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.
Edit your Copilot 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.
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Highlighting text brings up the formatting toolbar.
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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.
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Use the six-dot icon to drag and drop any text component to a new location on the page.
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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.
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Type / to bring up a list of different text components you can add to your page.
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Revise and expand your page with Copilot
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.
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Prompting Copilot to rewrite selected text.
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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:
- Adjust content: The four selections under this icon will trigger Copilot to rewrite your page to be more concise or detailed, or to rewrite it as an email or blog post.
- Change tone: Four selections here will prompt Copilot to adjust the tone of your page.
- Style page: These selections will prompt Copilot to add section headers to your page, if they’re not already present, or have it write an introduction or conclusion paragraph for your page.
Options for having Copilot rewrite an entire page.
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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.
You can continue chatting with Copilot and add more material to your open page.
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Share and collaborate on your Copilot page
In addition to collaborating with Copilot on your page, you can invite co-workers or clients to edit the page as well.
Share your page
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:
- Page link: Generates a link to your page that you can paste in an email or chat to share with other people.
- Copy component: Creates a different kind of link that lets you embed your page in a Word document, Outlook email, OneNote note, or Microsoft Teams chat as a Loop component that co-workers can collaborate on. (See our Microsoft Loop cheat sheet and guide to using Loop components in M365 apps for details about how this works.)
Sharing a Copilot page.
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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.
Collaborate on a 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.
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You can tag a co-worker in a specific component on a page to make sure they see it.
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Add a comment: There are multiple ways to start a comment on a page:
- Double-click text or highlight a passage of text that you want to comment on. On the toolbar that opens, click the speech balloon (Comment) icon.
- Click the six-dot icon that appears to the left of the component, and from the top of the menu that opens, click the speech balloon icon.
- Right-click anywhere on the component. From the top of the menu that opens, click the speech balloon icon.
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Adding a comment to a page.
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When you write a comment, you can tag a person by typing @ followed by their name.
Export your Copilot page
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.
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You can export a page as a Word doc or PDF.
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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.
Manage your Copilot pages
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.
The pages you’ve created with Copilot appear in the library for your M365 account.
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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.
Related reading:
- Copilot Chat: Your hub for document creation and analysis
- How to curb hallucinations in Copilot (and other genAI tools)
- 6 tips for better research with Microsoft Copilot
- 11 cool things Copilot can do in Excel
- 10 cool things Copilot can do in PowerPoint
- Microsoft Copilot can boost your writing in Word, Outlook, and OneNote — here’s how
- Microsoft Copilot tips: 9 ways to use Copilot right
- More Microsoft tips and tutorials