Moving Insights Between M365 Apps

The cross-app workflow

Simple explanation

Business insights don’t stay in one app.

You analyse data in Excel, present findings in PowerPoint, email the summary to stakeholders, and discuss it in Teams. The same information travels through 4 different apps.

Without Copilot, you’d copy-paste between apps, reformat, and manually adapt. With Copilot, you can ask it to move and transform insights between apps — turning Excel charts into presentation slides, or converting meeting discussions into emailed action items.

Common cross-app flows

From	To	How
Excel analysis	PowerPoint slides	In Copilot Chat: summarise Excel data, then create slides referencing the summary
Word report	PowerPoint deck	In PowerPoint: “Create presentation from /Report.docx”
Meeting transcript	Email follow-up	In Outlook: “Draft a follow-up email based on today’s meeting with action items”
Multiple sources	Executive summary	In Copilot Chat: “Using /Report.docx and /Budget.xlsx, create an executive summary”
Teams discussion	Document	In Copilot Chat: “Summarise the recent Teams discussion about X into a formal memo” (then paste to Word)
Copilot Pages	Word document	Export option from Pages to Word

Real-world: Jordan's end-to-end pipeline workflow

Jordan at Peak Solutions does this every Friday:

Excel: Asks Copilot to analyse this week’s pipeline data and highlight deals at risk
PowerPoint: Creates a 5-slide pipeline review from the Excel analysis
Outlook: Drafts an email to the sales team with the key takeaways and the deck attached
Teams: Posts a summary in the Sales channel for discussion

Each step references the output of the previous one. Copilot acts as the bridge between apps, transforming the same data for different audiences and formats.

Total time: 30 minutes (used to take half a day).

Copilot Chat as the bridge

For complex cross-app tasks, Copilot Chat is your best tool because it can reference multiple files from different apps:

“Using /Q3-Sales.xlsx and /Customer-Feedback.docx, create a summary of our top 5 accounts: revenue, satisfaction score, and any open issues. Format as a table.”
“Based on yesterday’s Teams meeting about the product launch and the /Launch-Budget.xlsx spreadsheet, draft an email to the marketing team with the approved budget breakdown and key deadlines.”

Key concept: Copilot Chat is the only surface that can pull from multiple apps simultaneously. App-specific Copilot (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) works primarily with the current document or file.

🎬 Video walkthrough

Flashcards

Question

Which Copilot surface is best for combining data from multiple M365 apps?

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Answer

Copilot Chat — it can query across all your M365 data (emails, files, chats, calendar) through Microsoft Graph. App-specific Copilot (Word, Excel) primarily works with the current document.

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Question

How do you create a PowerPoint presentation from Excel data?

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Answer

In PowerPoint, use Copilot and reference the Excel file: 'Create slides from /filename.xlsx'. Copilot reads the data and generates relevant slides with charts and key findings.

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Knowledge Check

Ava has campaign performance data in Excel and needs to present it to the client in PowerPoint, then email a summary to her boss. What's the MOST efficient workflow?

Next up: Meetings are where decisions happen. Learn how Copilot helps you prepare, participate, and follow up on meetings more effectively.