Join me exploring Microsoft Copilot through each letter of the alphabet. This week, N is for Notebooks.

UPDATE May 2026: Shortly after publishing this post, Microsoft released a blog post on new updates that address some of my points below! You can read it here: What’s New in Notebooks | May 2026 | Microsoft Community Hub

Watch this space for a proper hands-on revisit.

I’ve got Microsoft MVP Ben Lee to thank for my first foray into Copilot Notebooks back in 2025. At the time, one of my main work responsibilities was producing a weekly podcast. I needed a way to reliably crank out podcast summaries, based on the transcript of the discussion, in our preferred signature style. We had tried a few different AI prompts for this but the results were pretty variable and we kept tweaking the same things.

A Copilot Notebook turned out to be a perfect solution. 

Essentially a Notebook is a curated collection of pages and content that you can then query using Copilot chat.

Here’s all the context I gave my podcast Notebook across different pages:

• A summary of what the podcast was all about
• A copywriting ‘rules’ document explaining the style I wanted the transcript summaries written in – including what-not-to-say
• Examples of older podcast transcripts and the episode summaries we liked off the back of them
• Custom instructions for how the chat should behave when I interacted with the Notebook

Once I’d loaded it up with all this context, I could add a new page with a new episode transcript and ask the chat at the top:

“Use the Copywriting rules and example episode summaries to create an episode summary in our preferred style for [transcript].”

I remember being pretty shocked at how almost spot-on the output was. The key was that I’d given it enough context upfront; real examples, clear rules, a well-defined brief. It had everything it needed.

(If you want to try something like this yourself, I’ve put the example pages and prompts I used at the bottom of this post. Copy and paste away.)

Fast forward to now

For reasons too boring for this blog, I haven’t used that Notebook, or any Copilot Notebook actually, for almost a year. Then this N blog came looming and I thought I’d better dust it off.

The interface looks quite different now. I think I preferred the old version, but here we are.

I’ve been playing around with it to refresh my memory and honestly I’ve really struggled.

Struggle 1: I couldn’t find the ruddy thing

It’s hiding. Why’ve you hidden it here Microsoft??

Struggle 2: The blank canvas of doom

When you do find it and start adding pages, everything is such a blank canvas. I stared at it and drew, ironically, a blank.

There are some “suggested Notebooks” options to get you started, but the context materials it was pulling together felt pretty random and were definitely not relevant to the notebook subject. Nice try Copilot but not quite the helpful nudge I was hoping for.

A key point to note here is that the Notebook can only work with what you give it. Unlike Cowork, it doesn’t go off searching your emails or Teams chats, it only works with what you’ve deliberately put in. Which is actually quite reassuring.

Struggle 3: It’s still quite buggy

You may notice some of my screenshots say “Frontier.” This is Microsoft’s early-access programme for new Copilot features before they’re fully released, a sort of preview mode, which goes some way to explaining why things feel a bit wobbly. I regularly get error messages trying to rename pages. 

Sometimes I go back and the Notebook isn’t there in the browser, but it is in the app. These little friction points add up and put me off.

Struggle 4: What am I actually using this for?

I asked Copilot’s Ideas Coach agent to help me think through use cases. (Ideas coach is great to bounce things around with by the way.)

I landed on building a LinkedIn content factory. (Oh come on, everyone’s doing it.) I populated it with content pillars, a purpose page, an inspiration page, summaries of my high performing posts, and some vague brain farts about post ideas.

I used a prompt to generate a LinkedIn post and what came back was underwhelming. Generic waffle. And I knew exactly why. I hadn’t given the Notebook nearly enough context yet. Which brings me to the real struggle: you can’t spin up a Notebook quickly and get immediate value. It needs significant upfront curation, or lots of small additions accumulating over time. Unlike Copilot Chat, you can’t just jump in.

Side note: it turns out LinkedIn posting still gives me the ick however I approach it. That’s the real problem I was trying to solve but no AI tool was going to fix that… 

Struggle 5: Cowork vs Notebooks — what’s actually the difference?

Since I’ve been using Copilot Cowork I’ve been wrestling with the crossover here. Cowork already has access to loads of contextual information without me having to curate anything, so it feels much lower friction. Why would I bother with a Notebook?

I asked Copilot. (Yes, there is a lot of Inception-style asking Copilot about Copilot going on in this post.) It made a distinction that I can almost get on board with:

Cowork = smart intern with access to your files 

Notebook = your personal instincts, made queryable

Cowork can reconstruct what’s in your emails, meetings, and chats. What it can’t see is your interpretation of all of that. Gut feels, open loops, the “I don’t trust this is going to happen” feeling you’ve had three weeks running. The patterns that live in your head and nowhere else.

That’s actually the sort of thing a Notebook could be useful for. As long as I write them all down…

I’ve started logging things like this. The jury’s out on how useful it’ll be, and whether I’ll keep it up. Which brings me nicely around to…

Struggle 6: Getting things in there quickly

For a Notebook to become truly valuable you need to build it into your daily muscle memory. And like embedding any new habit, that’s hard to sustain.

Unless you keep the Notebook tab open constantly, I can’t find an easy way to quickly get things in there. I tried Copilot Voice on my phone. It told me it couldn’t add to Notebooks. The mobile app takes forever to load. I’m used to dumping a brain fart into ClickUp list via a shortcut on my phone in about five seconds and moving on with my day. I want the equivalent for Notebooks.

For now my solution is: one Notebook, permanently open on a screen. Three sections; managing up, managing down, worry list. We’ll see what happens.

I’m also curious about whether there’s a useful crossover between Notebooks and Cowork; building up instincts in the Notebook and then using Cowork to act on them. That’s an experiment for another day.

If you’ve found a low-friction way to get things into a Notebook quickly, please tell me in the comments. I’m genuinely asking.

TLDR

Copilot Notebooks work brilliantly when you’ve put the time into building them up properly. My podcast summary Notebook proved that. But you can’t jump in and get value straight away. It’s a long game that needs upfront investment and a habit that sticks. The interface is still quite buggy in places, it’s hard to find, and there’s no great low-friction way to capture things quickly on mobile. 

The use case that’s actually convinced me to persist: capturing the instincts and gut feels that live in your head and nowhere else – the stuff Cowork can never see. I’ve got one Notebook, three sections, and a lot still to figure out. Check back with me later for developments.

Have you tried Notebooks? Did it click for you straight away, or did it take time to see the value and have you found an easy way to get things in there quickly? Drop a comment below, I’d love to know.

As promised, here’s the context to give your Notebook if you want to have a go at setting one up to generate content (like podcast summaries): 

Copywriting Rules page 

The style of summaries and social media posts should be professional, informative and moderate in tone. They should be clear and concise without too many leading hooks or social bait.

Avoid expansive, fluffy language like ‘delve in’ and ‘dynamic insightful discussion’.

Any spelling should be in British English, not American.

Summaries for Podcast episodes should always finish with “thanks to [sponsor], this episode’s sponsor, for their continued support of [our company name]”

Phrases to avoid:

• key topics include
• hear from
• find out
• discover
• changing the game

When mentioning guests, always refer to them as [Name], [role title], at [company name]

Always use these hashtags: [insert hashtags]

#[putyourhashtaghere] is not a valid/used hashtag don’t use it

For social posts only (not summaries) always use orange bullet points like this:

🟠 bullet 1

🟠 bullet 2

never “in case you missed it” redundant

it’s never an interview, it’s a discussion (peers)

Notebook instructions 

These go here:

This notebook contains information about a weekly Podcast hosted by [host] who is a [what kind of expert] in the [industry] space.

The podcast runs for between 15-30 minutes and contains latest news and industry trends.

In the sources “Example Episode Summaries”  contains a list of episode titles and the summaries that were posted to social media for them.

The style of the posts should be professional, informative and moderate in tone. They should be clear and concise without too many leading hooks or social bait.

Avoid expansive, fluffy language like ‘delve in’ and ‘dynamic insightful discussion’. 

Any spelling should be in British English, not American.

Phrases to avoid: “key topics include” “hear from” “find out” “discover” 

Always start linkedin posts with 🎙️New Podcast Alert🎙️

The prompt

“Use the Copywriting rules and example episode summaries to create an episode summary in our preferred style for [transcript].”