The latest updates and final rollouts enabled a full set of Copilot features for all commercial users in Microsoft 365. Now you can ask the Copilot for files, Q&As, and even compare files. So let’s dive into OneDrive and check what, how, and why not😊

Introduction

Copilot appears in 2 different sections in OneDrive – one is when you want to share a file, and the second is when you select a file or files. Each section has different actions available for a user.

Sharing a file – you can create a short summary of the shared file

Selecting one file – you can summarize a file, create a Q&A from its content, and ask a question

Selecting more than one file – you can summarize a file, compare selected files, and ask a question

Features

Sharing a file

When you select a file (1 file at a time, it must be a Word file) and try to share it, the Copilot icon appears in the Add a message section. When you select it you get a message that will summarize the file content as a message.

The summary is pretty short which is obvious because it will be sent via email as a message, so it should be a 4-page long essay about the file.

The invited user gets a message with a tiny little description. Definitely, it can be helpful when you share a file with colleagues and you want to make it easier to understand what’s inside. It only requires 2 additional clicks and a short time to process the files so why not use it? For me, it is a big plus because sharing files without any info is really annoying.

Summarize a file

When you select a file and then click the Copilot icon on the action bar a few additional actions appear. One if Summarize.

It just generates a short summary of the selected file. It contains basic information about the files with some bullet points etc. Can be helpful when going through many files and you want to quickly get an overview of what’s inside.

Ask a question

When you click the Ask a question action then a full Copilot pane will appear on the right-hand side of the OneDrive window.

This pane has full Copilot options that you can find in the main Copilot window in M365. There are some predefined prompts that you can immediately use and a prompt window connected with the selected file. Using the pane you can dig the file, extract information, format output, etc. For me, it works great when I need to deal with large documents (e.g. project files) and need to extract specific portions of data in a specific format (I love tables😊).

Create Q&A

The next action uses the selected file and generates Q&A.

You can get the same output using the Ask a question action and ask for the Q&A 😊 It’s a great option but only if you need to generate a Q&A. I doubt that I will use it often.

Compare files

This is the most interesting feature for me because I often work with different versions of the same files (modified, translated, edited, etc.). When you select 2 files and click the Compare files, the Copilot will generate a table with detailed information about those files.

1. The Aspect column depends on the selected files. In this case, it contains information about the language (I compared the same file but the 1^st  was in English and the 2^nd was in Polish), title, content, and so on. As you can see the formatting is bad – the column is narrowed too much.
2. Info about the 1^st file
3. Info about the 2^nd file

Comparing 3 files looks the same – just 3 columns instead of 2 😊

In the next example, I compared 2 pptx files. In this case, the compared areas are different because the content is different. This is a great feature – it doesn’t compare basic information 1:1 (for example Title, overall content, etc.) but it is based on the real content and then generates output.

You can select up to 5 files and compare them in 1 action. I like this option but the usage depends on your work type and your needs.

Summary

OneDrive is ready for the Copilot era right now. Those options give a lot of possibilities and allow users to work with documents directly from the OneDrive page. The most important is Ask a question because it gives the full Copilot capabilities in one page. Comparing files looks nice and I will play with it. Generating a file summary for shared files is nice and can be helpful when used more often. The last one (Q&A) is the least useful in the stack and can be replaced with something more helpful (or maybe it’s just my bias).
But that’s not all – there are many new Copilot features on the way. For example, meeting recap from the OneDrive page and convert files directly to presentation.