Copilot can now help Microsoft 365 subscribers get more out of their OneDrive files on Windows
Copilot actions are available for OneDrive files in File Explorer For many of us, our digital lives are organized within the familiar folders and files of OneDrive. Whether it’s cherished family photos, important school assignments, or household documents, OneDrive keeps your files accessible, safe, and organized. And with Copilot, we have brought new ways for you to get information quickly. Now, we are bringing Copilot for OneDrive files to File Explorer and the OneDrive Activity Center—a new way to make working with your files easier, smarter, and more efficient on your Windows PC. How can you use Copilot for your files? Users can access Copilot features for their files from OneDrive Activity Center We are bringing the power of AI directly into your daily file management experience. With just a few clicks, Copilot can help you summarize lengthy documents, generate an FAQ, compare files, or answer questions about your file. To get started, make sure your files are saved in OneDrive and that you’re signed in with your Microsoft 365 Personal or Family account. File Explorer: simply open File Explorer on your Windows device. When you select a file* stored in OneDrive, right click and hover over OneDrive in the context menu- you’ll notice a new set of Copilot options. OneDrive Activity Center: open the OneDrive Activity Center (OneDrive icon in your taskbar or notification area) and find the file*. Click on More options to access the Copilot actions you can perform on the file. Who can use these features? To access these features, you’ll need a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family account, and your files must be stored in OneDrive to access OneDrive features. They are now available to subscribers, so you can try them today! What can Copilot do with my files? Summarize: generate a concise, easy-to-understand summary of a document’s content. Perfect for when you need a quick refresher or want to decide which file to review in detail. Create an FAQ: puts together a list of “Frequently Asked Questions” related to your document. Ask a question: have a specific question? Just ask Copilot and it will return the answer from your file. Compare files (File Explorer only): creates a concise table highlighting differences between multiple files (up to 5). Tips for Maximizing Your Copilot Experience Keep files in OneDrive. If your files are stored locally or on another service, you can move them to OneDrive for the best experience. Stay signed in. Use your Microsoft 365 Personal or Family account to unlock all Copilot features. If you see Copilot options missing, check your account status and subscription. Try different file types. Copilot actions work with different file types*. Give feedback. We’re always working to improve Copilot. Use the built-in feedback tools to let us know what works well and what you’d like to see in the future. Want to learn about what’s new across OneDrive? Join our digital event on October 8th. To RSVP and get more information, click here. * Supported file types include Microsoft 365 documents (DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLSX, FLUID, LOOP), Universal formats (PDF, TXT, RTF), Web files (HTM, HTML), and OpenDocument formats (ODT, ODP). Photos and videos are not supported at this time.Feature deep dive: Using PDFs in OneDrive and our journey thus far
PDFs are incredibly popular, used for everything from business documents to everyday tasks at home. In fact, over 100 billion PDFs were added to OneDrive and SharePoint in just last year – and its popularity as a file format shows no signs of slowing down. We can bet you’re fans of using PDF’s, and so we’re excited to walk you through everything you can do with this popular file format in OneDrive. Whether you're annotating documents, bookmarking pages, or merging PDF documents, OneDrive offers a robust set of tools to make managing PDFs effortless and efficient. There’s already so many things you can do with your PDF’s whether you’re using OneDrive at home or at work: Freemium PDF features in OneDrive OneDrive for Consumer OneDrive for Business Annotation and markup tools Easily collaborate and share feedback by using digital ink, highlighting text, drawing shapes, and inserting sticky notes directly onto your PDF files. ⚫ ⚫ Bookmark PDF pages Navigate effortlessly through lengthy documents by adding bookmarks to important sections, just like using tabs in a physical book. ⚫ (OneDrive for iOS/iPadOS and Android only.) ⚫ (OneDrive for iOS/iPadOS and Android only.) Change the appearance of your PDF Enhance your reading experience by adjusting the background color of your PDFs to dark mode, sepia mode, or light mode. Ideal for reading in different lighting conditions. ⚫ (OneDrive for Android only.) ⚫ (OneDrive for Android only.) Rotate PDF pages Correct the orientation of scanned documents by rotating individual or multiple pages 90° clockwise. Perfect for fixing upside-down or sideways pages. ⚫ ⚫ Jump to specific PDF page Quickly access specific sections by jumping directly to any page in your PDF documents with just a click. ⚫ ⚫ Display table of content Effortlessly navigate through long documents using the clickable table of contents. ⚫ (Coming soon to OneDrive for web) ⚫ (Coming soon to OneDrive for web) Premium PDF features in OneDrive OneDrive for Consumer [1] OneDrive for Business [2] Extract PDF pages Easily extract specific pages from your PDF documents to create new, smaller files. Ideal for sharing only the most relevant sections. ⚫ ⚫ Merge PDFs Seamlessly combine multiple PDFs into a single, organized document. Perfect for consolidating reports, presentations, and more. ⚫ ⚫ [1] Premium features are available to OneDrive users with M365 Basic, M365 Personal and Family subscriptions. [2] Premium features are accessible to all OneDrive commercial users with SharePoint in their subscription plan. Let’s take a look first at the features that you can use for free on OneDrive. Enhance Collaboration with Annotation and Markup Tools PDFs are used in a variety of collaboration scenarios, and to help, we are releasing new annotation and markup features for easier collaboration. Imagine you’re working on a project with your team, and you need to share feedback or highlight important sections of a PDF. Instead of sending endless emails or starting chats, you can simply use the PDF annotation tools available in OneDrive. These features allow you to use digital, hand-drawn ink, highlight text, draw shapes, and even insert sticky notes directly onto your PDF. The annotations and notes appear on your document when you share them with other colleagues via OneDrive. Here's how you can easily annotate a PDF in OneDrive: Find the PDF you want to annotate in your OneDrive and tap to open it. At the bottom of the screen, tap on Annotation to enter editing mode. Choose an annotation tool from the bottom of the screen or select a drawing markup tool from the top. Change the pen color by tapping on the color picker at the bottom of the screen and choose from any of the preset colors. You can also adjust the thickness and transparency of the ink here. When you're done, just tap Done at the top left of the screen, and then tap Save at the top right, to save your changes back to OneDrive. Now when you share your annotated PDF via OneDrive, your colleagues will see your annotations too. Navigate PDFs Effortlessly with Bookmarks Scrolling through a lengthy PDF document and trying to locate a specific section can be a frustrating experience, right? That's where the PDF bookmark feature is handy. Think of bookmarks in PDFs as your personal navigation tool, much like the tabs you might use in a physical book. They allow you and recipients to easily jump directly to important sections with just a click, making your reading experience smoother and more enjoyable. To use bookmarks: At the bottom of the screen, tap Bookmark to add a bookmark to the current page you’re viewing. After adding a bookmark, you'll see a confirmation dialog at the top of the screen. To view all the pages with bookmarks, tap the Thumbnail icon at the top right of the screen. At the top of the screen, tap Bookmarked to see only the pages with bookmarks. From this view, you can also navigate to a specific page by tapping on it. From the All Pages view, you can select multiple pages to add new bookmarks or remove existing ones. Jump to Specific Sections with Table of Contents Also helping you to more easily navigate a lengthy PDF is OneDrive’s handy Table of Contents feature. When your PDF has an embedded table of contents, OneDrive will display the chapter or section titles along with their page numbers, making it a snap to jump to specific chapters or sections. To view a PDF’s table of contents: If the PDF includes the necessary metadata for a table of contents, you'll see an icon at the top right of the screen. Clicking on it, opens the table of contents. The table of contents with clickable chapters or sections will appear on the left side of the screen. Optimized PDF Viewing with Reading Mode You might have to read a PDF under varying lighting conditions. You can maximize your comfortability and readability of your document by adjusting the Appearance of that PDF. When viewing a PDF in OneDrive, you can adjust the background to dark mode, sepia mode, or light mode, making it easy to read no matter the type of environment. To change the appearance of a PDF: Open a PDF in OneDrive for Android and tap to expand the bottom sheet of the screen. Tap Appearance. In the Appearance window, select the colored circle for day, night, or sepia mode. Adjusting a PDF’s Orientation with Page Rotation With PDF page rotation, you can simply adjust the orientation of any of the pages within a PDF document. This is especially useful for fixing multi-page scanned documents that may have been saved upside down or sideways. With the Rotation feature, you can choose to rotate all pages or just specific ones within your PDF. To rotate a single page: Open the OneDrive iOS or Android app, then open the PDF with the page you want to rotate. Scroll to the page which you want to rotate. Press anywhere there isn’t text. Once a menu pops up, tap Rotate to rotate the page 90 degrees clockwise. To rotate multiple pages: Open the OneDrive iOS or Android app, then open the PDF with the pages you want to rotate. At the top of your screen, tap the grid icon to show a thumbnail view of the PDF’s pages. Tap Select. Tap to select the pages which you want to rotate or tap Select all if you want to rotate them all. Tap the rotate icon on the toolbar along the bottom of your screen to rotate all the selected pages 90 degrees clockwise. Exploring OneDrive’s Premium PDF Features Now that we’ve explored all the free PDF features available, let’s dive into some exciting features available to our M365 Consumer customers with M365 Basic, M365 Personal, or M365 Family, and to our M365 Business customers with SharePoint Premium.. Extract Pages from PDFs For our M365 paid customers, you can easily split a PDF into multiple smaller PDFs using the Extract tool. This makes it simple to pick and separate the pages you need, creating a brand-new (shorter) PDF file in just a snap! How to split a PDF file using the Extract feature on OneDrive for Web: Open the PDF file you want to split. At the top left of the screen, click Extract action Select page(s) to extract then click Extract on top left of the screen. Choose where you’d like to save the new PDF file. You can also rename the file at the bottom of the save dialog then click Save here. When finished, a confirmation dialog appears at the bottom of the screen. This feature also works on OneDrive on iOS, iPadOS, and Android. Here’s how: Open the PDF file you want to split. At the top left of the screen, tap see more button (…) to see the new menu. Select Extract from the menu options. Merge Multiple PDFs While the Extract feature let’s you pick out individual pages from a PDF, the Merge feature lets you easily combine multiple PDF files into a single PDF. It’s a simple as picking the files you want to merge, and voila – you’ve got a brand-new, merged PDF saved directly to your OneDrive or SharePoint Document Library. Here’s how you can easily merge multiple PDF files into one PDF on OneDrive for web: Open one of the PDF files you want to combine in OneDrive for Web. At the top left of the screen, click Merge action. Choose two or more PDF files you want to merge from the merge dialog box. You can drag and drop the files to rearrange their order. Once done, click Next. Choose where you’d like to save the new PDF file. You can also rename the file at the bottom of the save dialog then click Save here. When finished, a confirmation dialog appears at the bottom of the screen. Just like Extract, you can also use Merge on OneDrive on iOS, iPadOS, and Android: Open one of the PDF files you want to combine in OneDrive. At the top left of the screen, tap see more button (…) to see the new menu. Select Merge. Thanks We've been on a focused journey enhancing the PDF features in OneDrive, because we know that for so many of our customers, it’s their file format of choice. We hope you find our new and existing PDF features in OneDrive useful in your life at work or at home. But we don't want to stop here, and we need your feedback to keep improving! Dive into these features, give them a spin, and let us know what you think. What works great? What could be better? And most importantly, what do you want to see next? Drop your comments below or fill this short survey directly. Your insights are invaluable, and together, we can make OneDrive the ultimate tool for all your PDF needs. Happy exploring! 📄✨ About the Author Belle Podeanu is a product manager at Microsoft. She collaborates with Office, Edge, and other platforms to provide comprehensive cross-device functionalities for OneDrive and SharePoint, including productivity features and Copilot-enabled experiences. In her free time, she enjoys playing soul-like games, ARPGs, MMOs, and asymmetrical games. Stay updated on OneDrive and SharePoint news by connecting with Belle here.
Copilot in PowerPoint: Status of Word-from-OneDrive Feature for Personal Accounts
I’m trying to get clarity on the availability of a particular Copilot capability in PowerPoint for personal Microsoft accounts. From Microsoft’s guidance, Copilot Pro users with personal (non-work) accounts should have the option to build a presentation directly from a Word file stored in OneDrive. This is reportedly done by selecting a paperclip icon or entering “/” in the Create a presentation command to choose the Word document. Here’s what I’m experiencing: - In both PowerPoint desktop and web, there’s no paperclip icon, and typing “/” doesn’t surface any OneDrive files. - In Word for the web, I can connect to a document, but the desktop version doesn’t provide this option. - I’ve seen mixed reports online—some say it’s working, others suggest it’s only live for Microsoft 365 Insider builds or specific regions. I’d like to know: 1. Is this feature currently active for all personal accounts with Copilot Pro? 2. Could it be restricted to certain build versions, Insider channels, or geographic areas? 3. Are there prerequisites (AutoSave, file location in OneDrive, privacy settings, etc.) needed to make the option appear? Any official confirmation on whether this is rolled out globally and the exact requirements would be very helpful.NOW ON DEMAND | OneDrive Office Hours | May 2025
Are you ready to connect with OneDrive product makers this month? We’re gearing up for the next call. Join the OneDrive product team live each month on our monthly OneDrive Customer Office Hours to hear what's top of mind, get insights into roadmap updates, and dig into a special topic. Each call includes live Q&A where you'll have a chance to ask the OneDrive product team any question about OneDrive - The home of your files. New way to register and watch on-demand! We heard your feedback, and we now have a single destination for all of your Office Hours content. From registration, to watching our previous sessions, you can find it all on our new homepage: Go to: aka.ms/OneDriveOfficeHours to see upcoming session to register, and rewatch previous topics! Save the calendar invite so you never miss a call-https://aka.ms/OfficeHoursCalendar Each call is recorded and made available on demand shortly after. Get ready for our next call Our next call is Wednesday, May 21st, 2025, 8:00am - 9:00am PDT. This month's special topic: "Microsoft 365 Conference Recap & News" with the OneDrive team. We will have our product teams on call ready to answer your questions. Our goal is to simplify the way you create and access the files you need, get the information you are looking for, and manage your tasks efficiently. We can't wait to share, listen, and engage - monthly! Anyone can join this one-hour webinar to ask us questions, share feedback, and learn more about the features we’re releasing soon and our roadmap. Note: Our monthly public calls are not an official support tool. To open support tickets, go to see Get support for Microsoft 365; distinct support for educators and education customers is available, too. Stay up to date on Microsoft OneDrive adoption on adoption.microsoft.com. Join our community to catch all news and insights from the OneDrive community blog. And follow us on Twitter: @OneDrive. Thank you for your interest in making your voice heard and taking your knowledge and depth of OneDrive to the next level. You can ask questions and provide feedback in the event Comments below and we will do our best to address what we can during the call. 😎 Register and join live: aka.ms/OneDriveOfficeHours.
How to remove Copilot from showing up on web-based apps?
Hello, I predominantly use Outlook through the website via Chrome. I also use OneDrive, Excel, and Word through Chrome quite often. I had a tech person walk me through removing Copilot from my computer's apps - the actual programs - but it's still showing up on my website uses. I do not support AI, AI is absolute trash, and I want Copilot completely eliminated from everything I use. I am tired of having to close the Copilot 'summary' that automatically pops up at the top of all my emails. Is there an easy way to completely eliminate this, or am I doomed? Thank you!
Capabilities of Copilot in Web Browser vs. in Excel
Hello, I have noticed differences of Copilot capabilities of M365 Copilot in web browser vs. in Excel itself. For example, I want to count the number of lines in Excel file based on some parameters. When I put the prompt "Count the number of rows that have 'VTT' in column 'Product'." into Excel Copilot, it counts the correct number of rows. When I put the same prompt, just starting with "In file /Sample_data.xlsx" into M365 Copilot in Teams or in the web browser, it returns incorrect count every time. The same happens when I upload the file directly to the Copilot window and not link it to Onedrive. Mostly less (correct is 202 and Copilot returns 64 or so). I suspect it cannot access the entire document. I have tried many similar simple tests with other prompts and it is often the same result - in Excel good, elsewhere bad. Why does this happen? Is it because the file is indexed only partially in some sort of index and web Copilot draws from that and cannot see the data itself? How can I allow the Teams/web Copilot to access the data so the results are correct? I don't want to open Excel everytime to use the data inside. Thank you very much!! PS: When I test the same prompts with ChatGPT 4o mini, it responds correctly every time, so the data is AI-readable.
