Copilot Notebooks: Teams meetings, Excel files and infographics from one AI workspace

From 11 June 2026, Microsoft has made Copilot Notebooks available to all users with a Copilot Chat licence — that is everyone with Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, or an E-series licence. Until that date, Notebooks was reserved for the full Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on. That threshold has now been removed, at no additional subscription cost.

At the same time, Microsoft rolled out four new capabilities that transform Notebooks from a simple AI chat environment into a fully-fledged project workspace. This article explains each of those capabilities, outlines the licence implications, and provides practical guidance for IT teams looking to get started quickly.

What is Copilot Notebooks?

Copilot Notebooks is a shared workspace inside the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and in OneNote. It combines AI conversations, reference material, and generated output in a single organised environment centred on a project or topic. You add sources — documents, websites, meetings — and consult Copilot based on exactly that context. It is a digital folder that thinks along with you.

The fundamental difference from ordinary Copilot Chat is that context is persistent. In a notebook, you build up knowledge that is preserved and shareable with colleagues. Everyone in the shared notebook works with the same AI context, without having to re-explain everything each time. A question asked and answered earlier informs the next analysis. A meeting from last week shapes today's decision.

Teams meetings as a knowledge source

The most requested new capability is integration with Microsoft Teams meetings. Notebooks can now import individual Teams meetings as a reference: the transcript, automatic notes, shared files, and chat messages from that meeting all become part of the notebook context. A meeting is no longer a one-time event, but a persistent knowledge document.

For project teams that meet weekly, this means all progress discussions accumulate in the notebook over time. Ask three months later which budget decision was taken, and Copilot retrieves it from the meetings themselves — without anyone having to document it manually. The feature was available to Frontier licence holders in May and rolled out to all regions in June. The Teams integration requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, because transcription runs via Intelligent Recap.

Generating Excel spreadsheets from a notebook

The Excel integration works via the Excel agent that is orchestrated from within the notebook. You instruct Copilot to build a spreadsheet based on the sources in the notebook. The Excel agent first asks clarifying questions to understand the desired format and structure, then delivers a ready-made worksheet that is directly editable in Excel.

A concrete example: a sales team holds a pipeline review in Teams. The meeting has been imported as a reference. With one request to Copilot, the notebook generates an overview of all deals discussed, expected close dates, and responsible team members, structured as an Excel table. What previously took half an hour of manual data entry is now done in seconds. The Excel agent capability requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.

Infographics: from notes to a shareable visual summary

The infographics capability is available to all Copilot Chat users. Based on the content in the notebook — notes, documents, meetings, external sources — Copilot generates a visual summary that is immediately shareable. The AI identifies the key points and relationships, and converts them into a clear visualisation.

This addresses a practical problem: communicating a complex situation to an audience that is not involved in the details. An IT team informing management about a security project, a project manager summarising the status of a multi-year programme, or a consultant presenting findings — the infographic is ready in seconds and can be adjusted to match the organisation's visual identity.

OneNote synchronisation: one notebook, two environments

The fourth update is less visible but structurally relevant: Copilot Notebooks in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and in OneNote are now fully synchronised. Work in the Copilot app and you see the same content reflected in OneNote — and vice versa. You can switch between environments without losing anything.

This makes the choice of interface situational. The Copilot app is suited to AI-intensive tasks: asking questions about sources, generating output, searching meetings. OneNote is suited to manually structuring notes and working in a familiar notebook tree. Anyone who already has an existing OneNote structure can now link it directly to a Copilot Notebook without changing their working habits.

Licences: who has access to what?

The expansion to Copilot Chat users is substantial, but the capabilities are not evenly distributed across licence levels. Copilot Chat users — anyone with a standard Microsoft 365 licence — have access to the core features: creating notebooks, adding sources, querying AI based on notebook content, generating infographics, and organising notes with OneNote synchronisation.

The Teams meeting integration and the Excel agent capability require a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. Microsoft allows the licence to be assigned per user, so the advanced capabilities can be rolled out selectively to the employees who benefit most. Project leads, managers, and consultants are the logical first target group; for employees in an operational role, the basic version of Notebooks is already a meaningful step.

How to get started quickly?

Three steps for the next two weeks. First, open the Microsoft 365 Copilot app via the Microsoft 365 portal and check whether Notebooks is visible in the left-hand menu. Microsoft is completing the worldwide rollout over the course of June 2026 — for European tenants, the feature is available now or within a few days. Second, create one notebook around an active project and add an existing Teams transcript or internal document as a reference. This immediately shows you the difference from a standalone AI chat. Third, invite one or two colleagues to share the notebook and validate whether the shared AI context works as expected in your workflow.

Copilot Notebooks addresses a recognisable problem: project knowledge is scattered across emails, Teams channels, loose documents, and meetings. A notebook centralises that knowledge and makes it searchable via AI. Want guidance setting up Copilot Notebooks in your Microsoft 365 environment, or with the broader adoption of Copilot within your organisation? Zarioh supports IT teams and management in the practical implementation. Contact us for a no-obligation conversation.