2025 Guide to Copilot Notebooks: Build an AI Workspace for Long Prompts and Multi-Step Tasks

Have you ever tried to give Copilot a long, complex prompt… and halfway through, the conversation goes off track?

Or maybe you’re working on a bigger project – a report, a training, a product launch – and you wish you could tell Copilot:

“These are the documents, this is the context.
Stay inside this project and help me think, draft, and refine.”

That’s exactly what Microsoft 365 Copilot Notebooks are designed for.

Copilot Notebooks give you an AI-powered workspace where you can gather:

Copilot chats

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Loop pages, PDFs

Meeting notes, links, and more

in one place, then let Copilot reason over only that content to answer questions, summarize, and draft new content.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

What Copilot Notebooks are (and how they differ from normal chat or OneNote)

Requirements and where you can use them

How to create your first notebook and add references

How to write long, multi-step prompts that actually work

Practical scenarios: documentation, training, meetings, projects, and more

Limits, performance tips, and security considerations

1. What Are Copilot Notebooks?

Microsoft describes Copilot Notebooks as:

“Your AI-powered workspace for focused tasks… Bring together chats, files, pages, meeting notes, links, and more in one place, and get tailored answers grounded in your notebook’s content.”

Think of a notebook as a “project brain” that Copilot can access:

You create a notebook for a specific project or topic

You add the relevant content (documents, chats, links, notes)

Copilot uses that collection as the grounding context when answering questions or drafting content

How it differs from normal Copilot chat

Normal Copilot chat:

One continuous conversation thread

Context is whatever you’ve typed plus some M365 data

Different topics can easily get mixed together

Great for quick questions, not ideal for long-running projects

Copilot Notebooks:

A separate workspace per project

You explicitly choose which files, pages, chats, and links belong to that project

Copilot’s answers are primarily grounded in those references

You can share a notebook with teammates and collaborate in real time

In practice, this means you can finally tell Copilot:

“Stay inside this project. Don’t bring in random stuff from elsewhere.”

Copilot Notebooks vs OneNote notebooks

Because of the word “notebook,” many people confuse Copilot Notebooks with OneNote notebooks. Microsoft makes a clear distinction:

Copilot Notebooks

AI-first workspaces

Designed for focused projects with AI-powered reasoning

Optimized for “gather references → ask questions → draft content”

OneNote Notebooks

Human-first note-taking and organization

Long-term structure with sections and pages

Great for meeting notes, daily logs, personal knowledge, etc.

A powerful pattern many power-users adopt is:

Organize your thinking in OneNote → Build an AI workspace in Copilot Notebooks.

2. Requirements and Where You Can Use Copilot Notebooks

Before you fall in love with the concept, check that you actually have access.

Licensing and availability

As of late 2025, Copilot Notebooks are part of Microsoft 365 Copilot for organizations (enterprise / business licenses).

Key points:

You need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license (not just the free consumer Copilot)

Rollout is still staged in some tenants – features may appear gradually

If the “Notebooks” option is missing in your Copilot app, your IT admin may need to enable or confirm availability

If you’re unsure, the simplest route is:

Open your Microsoft 365 Copilot app in the browser

Look for “Notebooks” in the navigation menu

If you don’t see it, check with your admin or IT team

Where you can access Copilot Notebooks

According to Microsoft’s documentation and rollout notes, you can use Copilot Notebooks in:

The Microsoft 365 Copilot web app

OneNote for Windows (starting with version 2510, rolling out gradually)

This is helpful because you can:

Start a notebook in the web Copilot app

Or work directly from the OneNote interface you already use daily

Cloud connection and online-only

Copilot Notebooks require:

An internet connection

Access to files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint

There is no offline mode – the AI processing and file access are cloud-based.
SCHNEIDER IT MANAGEMENT

3. Creating Your First Copilot Notebook

Let’s walk through the basic setup using the web Copilot app.

Open the Copilot app and find Notebooks

Open a browser and sign in to your Microsoft 365 Copilot home or app page.

In the left-hand navigation (or top menu), look for “Notebooks”.

Click Notebooks to open the Notebooks home screen.

If you’ve never used it before, you’ll typically see a welcome screen and a button like “Create your first notebook”.

Create a new notebook

Click New notebook (or the equivalent button).

Give it a clear, project-oriented name, such as:

“Windows 11 troubleshooting articles – 2025”

“Q4 marketing plan – product A”

“Client onboarding – Contoso Ltd”

Confirm to create the notebook.

You’ll land in a fresh notebook workspace, usually with:

A chat pane at the bottom

A References tab or section

Possibly the ability to create pages inside the notebook workspace

4. Adding References: Building the Brain of Your Notebook

A notebook without content is just an empty shell.
The real power comes when you attach the right files, pages, chats, and links.

The References tab

On your notebook screen, go to the References tab. From there, you can add references in several ways.

Typical options include:

Search for content in your Microsoft 365 environment

Browse OneDrive or SharePoint to select files

Add existing Copilot chats

Attach meeting notes, pages, or links

Supported file types and limits

Microsoft’s official documentation notes that Copilot Notebooks can use many common Microsoft 365 formats as references, including:

Word (.docx)

PowerPoint (.pptx)

Excel (.xlsx)

PDFs (.pdf)

Loop components and pages

OneNote pages

You can technically add more than 100 references to a notebook, but:

Only the first ~100 references are used as grounding content for AI responses

Beyond that, additional references may be ignored for reasoning purposes

So it’s smarter to:

Keep each notebook focused

Split big, unrelated topics into separate notebooks

Use naming conventions for references so you can remove or reorder them later

Practical ways to add references

Here’s how people typically build a useful notebook:

Start with a core file set

Main spec document

Existing proposal or report

Relevant policies or guidelines

Add context documents

Meeting notes from Teams or OneNote

FAQ or helpdesk tickets

Past emails copy-pasted into a Word or OneNote page

Include previous Copilot chats

If you already used Copilot to brainstorm, bring that history in

It gives the notebook “memory” of prior thinking and decisions
LinkedIn

Add external links

Public knowledge base articles

Reference websites that are important for the project

5. Prompting Inside a Notebook: Long Prompts and Multi-Step Tasks

Once your references are in place, you can start chatting with Copilot inside the notebook.

The chat box at the bottom is where the magic happens – but your prompts should be slightly more structured than a casual Q&A.

Basic examples: summarizing and comparing

Because Copilot is now grounded in your notebook content, you can ask it to synthesize information across multiple files.

Example 1 – Summarize key themes:

“Using only the content in this notebook, list the top 5 challenges our users are facing.
For each challenge, include:
– A short description
– Where you found it (file name or note)
– Any suggested solutions mentioned so far.”

Example 2 – Compare documents:

“Compare the two Word documents in this notebook that contain our ‘2024’ and ‘2025’ plans.
Summarize the key differences in goals, budget, and target audience in a table.”

Example 3 – Draft a first version:

“Based on the references in this notebook, draft a 1,200-word blog post that:
– Explains the problem in simple terms
– Summarizes our solution
– Includes a clear call-to-action at the end
Use friendly, professional English and avoid internal acronyms.”

A long, multi-step prompt template

Copilot Notebooks are ideal for prompts that outline a complete workflow.

Here’s a template you can adapt:

Multi-step prompt template
“In this notebook, please work through the following steps based only on the provided references:

Identify the main problems or pain points described in the documents and notes. Group them into 3–5 themes.

For each theme, list possible root causes and the evidence you found in the notebook.

Suggest 3 practical actions we could take for each theme. Focus on actions that are realistic within the next 3 months.

Finally, write an executive summary (500–700 words) that explains the situation, the key problems, and our proposed actions in plain business language.
Please show the results for each step clearly, with headings.”

You’re essentially asking Copilot to:

Read everything

Analyze

Propose solutions

Then package it nicely for stakeholders

…within one conversation that stays grounded in your notebook.

Setting tone and behavior at the notebook level

According to community guides and early user experiments, you can define behavior instructions and reuse them across the notebook, such as:

“In this notebook, always answer in clear, simple English suitable for non-technical readers.”

“Use a friendly but professional tone. Avoid slang.”

“When providing code or scripts, add comments explaining each major step.”

A good practice is to start the very first message in a notebook with something like:

“For all future responses in this notebook:
– Use concise, accessible language
– Prefer bullet lists and headings
– Add a short ‘Why this matters’ paragraph whenever you suggest a solution.”

Copilot will try to honor these instructions in subsequent prompts, making the whole notebook feel like a consistent AI assistant.

6. Real-World Use Cases for Copilot Notebooks

Let’s look at some practical scenarios where Notebooks shine.

Content creation and documentation

Perfect when you’re creating “definitive” guides, docs, or articles.

Gather product specs, old blog posts, support tickets, and FAQs

Ask Copilot to:

Propose a new article outline

Merge overlapping explanations into one “canonical” version

Convert technical text into user-friendly language

Iterate until you have a publishable draft that’s grounded in real data

Project planning and tracking

For a project like “Windows 11 deployment” or “Website redesign,” you can:

Reference project charters, roadmaps, meeting notes, and risk logs

Use Copilot to:

Extract risks and dependencies

Highlight overdue tasks

Prepare status reports for different audiences (team, leadership, clients)

Meetings and action item follow-up

If your Teams meetings are recorded and transcribed, you can:

Add meeting transcripts or OneNote meeting pages to the notebook

Ask Copilot to:

Summarize decisions and unresolved questions

Generate a table of action items (who / what / when)

Draft follow-up emails to participants

Training materials and onboarding

For internal trainings (e.g., “How to use Microsoft Teams securely”):

Add policies, guidelines, previous training decks, and Q&A logs

Let Copilot:

Design a 60-minute training agenda

Draft slides outlines and speaker notes

Create variations: beginner vs advanced, short vs long form

Technical documentation and scripts (advanced)

If you’re a power user, admin, or developer:

Reference technical specs, API docs, past scripts, incident reports

Ask Copilot:

To propose PowerShell or CLI scripts (then review them carefully)

To refactor or explain existing code

To generate troubleshooting runbooks step by step

Always remember: you are responsible for validating outputs, especially technical changes in production environments.

7. Using Copilot Notebooks with OneNote

Many people live in OneNote all day already. The good news: Copilot Notebooks are increasingly integrated into OneNote for Windows.

How the integration helps

According to Microsoft’s OneNote documentation, you can:

Access Copilot Notebooks from within OneNote

Bring together Copilot chats, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDFs, and more into a focused space

Ask Copilot questions grounded in that content and get tailored answers and summaries

A practical workflow:

Use OneNote pages for live note-taking during meetings or research

Periodically add important pages as references to your Copilot notebook

Use Copilot to:

Summarize multiple pages at once

Turn notes into structured documents, emails, or plans

In other words:

OneNote remains your personal notebook,
Copilot Notebooks become your AI workspace built on top of that content.

8. Limits, Performance, and Troubleshooting

No tool is perfect. Here are some limits and performance tips to keep in mind.

Reference limits and structure

Remember:

Only the first ~100 references in a notebook are used as grounding content

If you dump hundreds of random files into one notebook, Copilot will become less focused

Best practices:

Create one notebook per clearly defined project

Use meaningful names like 01_Spec_Main.docx, 02_Requirements_Client.docx so you know what to prune

Archive or remove outdated references periodically

Performance: when Copilot feels slow

Some users report that Copilot gets slower over time, especially with long sessions or complex notebooks. Microsoft’s own troubleshooting tips include:

Close unnecessary browser tabs and heavy apps to free CPU and memory

Make sure your browser (Edge / Chrome) is up to date

Restart your browser – or your PC – if performance degrades

Avoid very long, never-ending chats; instead, start a fresh conversation or notebook when the topic changes

If your organization uses strict network or security controls, performance can also be affected by:

Network latency or proxies

Conditional access policies

Data loss prevention policies

In that case, check with IT if issues persist.

Online only and file access

As noted earlier:

Copilot Notebooks do not work offline

They rely on cloud files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint

Copilot respects normal Microsoft 365 permissions:

If a colleague doesn’t have access to a referenced file, the AI won’t show them its contents

Sharing the notebook does not bypass file-level permissions

This is good for security, but it also means:

If someone tells you “Copilot said it can’t access file X,”

The fix is usually updating their permissions in OneDrive/SharePoint, not changing the notebook itself.

9. Security and Privacy Considerations

Because Copilot Notebooks can see and reason over your internal documents, you should treat them like any other powerful enterprise tool.

Key points:

Copilot follows your organization’s data and access policies

It can’t break file permissions or read documents that a user is not allowed to see

Notebook collaboration doesn’t automatically grant file access – that still needs to be managed separately

You should avoid adding:

Highly sensitive documents that don’t belong in the project

Personal data or regulated information unless your organization has approved usage

In short:

If it’s too sensitive to store in OneDrive/SharePoint for this project,
it’s probably too sensitive to hand to Copilot inside a notebook.

10. Final Tips: Make Copilot Notebooks Your “AI Project Room”

To recap, Copilot Notebooks are one of the most powerful – and underrated – features of Microsoft 365 Copilot:

They give you a project-specific AI workspace

You can gather chats, documents, pages, notes, and links in a single place

Copilot then reasons over only that content to:

Answer questions

Summarize

Draft documents, emails, reports, FAQs, and more

To get the most out of them:

Create one notebook per project or theme

Add only relevant references – quality over quantity

Start with a clear behavior instruction (“tone,” “audience,” “format”)

Use long, multi-step prompts to outline entire workflows

Periodically clean up references and archive old notebooks

Keep an eye on performance – restart or split notebooks when things feel heavy

If you’ve ever felt that Copilot “forgets” your context or mixes different conversations together, Copilot Notebooks are your chance to fix that and build a dedicated AI project room for your work.

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タグ: Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot, AI Productivity, Copilot Notebooks, Long prompts, Workflow automation, Knowledge management