# Microsoft Copilot Notebooks: What It Is, vs Agents, Use Cases | We Call Shotgun > What Microsoft Copilot Notebooks does, how it differs from Copilot agents, six project use cases for UK companies, UK pricing, and the permissions check to run before the first shared notebook. Source: https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/microsoft-copilot-notebooks-uk-projects-guide Language: en --- AI Tools # What is Microsoft Copilot Notebooks, and how should your team use it? (2026 guide for UK companies) By [Toni Dos Santos](https://wecallshotgun.com/about) • Sep 15, 2026 • 21 min read SummaryMicrosoft Copilot Notebooks is a project workspace inside Microsoft 365 Copilot and OneNote: you add references (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, OneNote pages, Copilot Pages, SharePoint content, and since July 2026 Markdown, TXT and RTF) and Copilot grounds its answers on the first 100 of them and nothing else in the tenant. From a notebook you can generate Word documents and PowerPoint decks (Word and PowerPoint agents, general availability May 2026), Excel sheets, mind maps, infographics, study guides and audio overviews in eight languages. The rebuilt three-column experience reached general availability in July 2026, and since 11 June 2026 Copilot Chat users without a paid licence get Notebooks with standard sources and a capped number of references. A notebook serves one moving project and is built by the team in minutes; a Copilot agent (Agent Builder, no code; Copilot Studio, low code with actions and triggers) is built once for a repeated process, and costs Copilot Credits at $0.01 pay-as-you-go or $200 for 25,000 outside included internal use. Six use cases for UK companies: tender responses, client account workspaces, board packs, contract or regulatory reviews, handover and onboarding, research synthesis. UK reseller prices: Copilot Business £16.10 a user a month (£13.80 promotional to 30 September 2026), Microsoft 365 Copilot about £30. Sharing a notebook grants access to its referenced files and external sharing is not supported, so run a SharePoint oversharing check first. Microsoft Copilot Notebooks is a project workspace inside Microsoft 365 Copilot and OneNote. You pin the files, meeting notes, Copilot Pages and emails that belong to one piece of work, and Copilot answers only from that pile: it drafts the board paper, builds the mind map, records the audio overview. Since 11 June 2026 it is also available to Copilot Chat users without the paid licence. For a UK company, the shortest route to value is one notebook per live project: the tender, the client account, the board pack, the contract review. This guide covers what the feature does, where it beats a Copilot agent, six use cases we'd start with, and the permissions check to run first. ## In short - **A notebook is scoped context.** Copilot grounds its answers in the references you add and nothing else in the tenant, up to the first 100 references. That scope is the whole point: fewer hallucinated cross-references, answers you can trace back to a file. - **It makes things, not just answers.** From one notebook you can generate a Word document, a PowerPoint deck, an Excel sheet, a mind map, an infographic, a study guide and an audio overview. The Word and PowerPoint agents reached general availability in May 2026. - **Notebooks are for a project. Agents are for a process.** A notebook changes every week as the work moves. An agent is built once and asked the same kind of question a thousand times. Most teams need the notebook first and discover the agent inside it three months later. - **Licensing matters less than it did.** Microsoft 365 Copilot seats get premium sources and the creation tools. Copilot Chat users, included with the base Microsoft 365 subscription, get standard sources and a capped number of references per notebook. Both can share a notebook. - **Sharing a notebook shares its files.** Anyone you add gets access to every reference Copilot can grant. Run the oversharing check on SharePoint before the first shared notebook, or the notebook will do it for you. ![Illustration: an open notebook with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, Teams, email and OneNote documents pinned around one orange chat bubble, with headphones and a coffee cup beside it.](https://wecallshotgun.com/images/blog/copilot-notebooks-project-workspace.webp) ## What Copilot Notebooks actually is Every project in a UK company already has a notebook. It is spread across a Teams channel, three SharePoint folders, a spreadsheet someone owns and a chain of emails with "FINAL v7" in the subject line. Copilot Chat has been able to search all of that since 2024, and the results show it: ask about "the pricing" and it finds the pricing from the wrong tender. Copilot Notebooks fixes the scope problem by making you pick. You create a notebook, give it a name, and add references. Copilot then reasons over those references and nothing else. Microsoft's own support pages put it plainly: Copilot only uses content from the sites, folders or files you add, and doesn't use other organisational content unless you add it. Microsoft introduced the feature in OneNote in mid 2025, brought it to OneNote for Windows in July 2025 and to OneNote on the web in November 2025, then rebuilt the experience in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app with a three-column layout (sources, chat, outputs) that reached general availability in July 2026. A notebook now lives in both places and stays in sync: a lightweight view in the Copilot app, a fuller workspace in OneNote. ### What you can put in it As of September 2026 a notebook accepts Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, PDFs, OneNote pages, Copilot Pages, Loop pages, SharePoint folders and sites, whole OneNote notebooks, and since July 2026 Markdown, TXT and RTF files for things like software documentation and transcripts. Copilot Chat users on the free tier are limited to standard sources: Office files, PDFs, Copilot Pages, images, audio and web links. You can add more than 100 references, but only the first 100 are used for grounding, so a notebook is a project, not an archive. Two limits from Microsoft's own guidance are worth pinning to the wall. Question and answer over a single document works best under about 7,500 words. Summarising works up to around 1.5 million words across the notebook. That's a lot of board packs, and not many contracts if you also want precise clause-level answers. ### What it produces This is where the 2026 releases changed the product. A notebook used to be a place to ask questions. It's now a place to make things: - **Word documents and PowerPoint decks** drafted from the notebook's full content by the Word and PowerPoint agents, then opened in the native app to finish. General availability since May 2026. - **Excel sheets** that turn narrative sources into structured data you can compare. - **Mind maps** that lay out themes and dependencies across long material. - **Infographics**, built through the Designer agent in Copilot Create, for the all-hands slide nobody had time to design. - **Audio overviews**, a two-voice podcast-style summary of the notebook, in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese and Chinese. It needs at least one reference file to run. - **Study guides and an overview page**, originally built for students and surprisingly useful for a new joiner on a project. Multimodal capture on Android, and in OneNote on iOS and iPad, lets someone record a site visit or a whiteboard and drop the structured notes straight into the notebook. The person who used to type up the meeting no longer has to. ### Who gets it, and what it costs in the UK | Licence | UK price (reseller-quoted, ex VAT) | Notebooks access | | Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat | Included with a qualifying Microsoft 365 subscription | Notebooks since 11 June 2026. Standard sources only, a capped number of sources per notebook, standard chat. | | Microsoft 365 Copilot Business (up to 300 users) | £16.10 a user a month on an annual plan, promotional £13.80 until 30 September 2026 | Full Notebooks with premium sources, Word and PowerPoint agents, audio overviews. | | Microsoft 365 Copilot (Enterprise add-on) | About £30 a user a month, annual commitment | Full Notebooks plus the Researcher, Analyst and Facilitator agents at no extra metered cost. | Prices come from UK resellers writing in 2026 (Compare the Cloud, Advantage, Syntax) and Microsoft's UK pages move. From 1 July 2026 Microsoft also began bundling Copilot capabilities into Business Basic and Business Standard at higher list prices, so a renewal after that date changes the maths. Check the invoice, not the blog post, including this one. ## What changes for a project team Three things, in our experience, and we'll label that as experience rather than a study. Microsoft's own Work Trend Index for 2026 found that organisational factors explain 67% of AI's impact on a worker, about twice the weight of individual mindset. A notebook is an organisational object. That's why it tends to work where a personal chat window didn't. **The context stops walking out of the door.** A project's knowledge normally lives in the heads of two people. When one of them goes on leave, the project slows down. When a notebook holds the references and the decisions, a colleague asks the notebook what was agreed on pricing in March and gets the answer with a citation to the Teams recap. This is the single most common reason clients keep using it after the novelty wears off. **Answers become checkable.** Copilot cites the reference it used. When the citation points at the old version of the tender, you see it and delete the old version. When a general Copilot Chat answer is wrong, you rarely find out why. **The output is the deliverable, not a summary of it.** A first draft of the board paper, built from the MI pack, last month's minutes and the risk register, is a different thing from a summary of those three files. It's still a first draft, and the person who signs it still reads every line. It arrives on Tuesday instead of Thursday. Here's the honest constraint. The ONS Business Insights and Conditions Survey published on 20 July 2026 found that 29% of UK businesses use at least one AI technology, and only 10% of those describe their use as extensive. Notebooks sit exactly on that gap. A company that pins the files and never asks anything more than "summarise" has bought a nicer folder. The value shows up when the team changes how the board pack gets built, and that is a workflow decision, not a licence decision. > "The tool was never the problem. Nobody taught them to drive. A notebook is the first Copilot feature that makes the road obvious: you can see what it read, and you can see what it made from it." Toni Dos Santos, co-founder, We Call Shotgun You already pay for Copilot. Find out whether your teams are in the 10% who use it for real work or the 90% who summarise emails with it. [Run the free AI maturity diagnosis →](https://wecallshotgun.com/audit)[Book 20 minutes](https://cal.com/wecallshotgun/ai-adoption)Eight minutes, five dimensions, a scored report. No email gate, no sales script on the call. ## Notebooks versus Copilot agents: the difference that matters ![Illustration in two panels. Notebook: an open binder with a spreadsheet, charts and notes, a hand adding a checklist page, a question-mark bubble. Agent: a small robot at a fixed workstation taking a request card from a conveyor belt and pushing out a finished report, with a loop arrow for repetition.](https://wecallshotgun.com/images/blog/copilot-notebooks-vs-agents.webp) This is the question in every Copilot workshop we run, usually asked by the IT lead who has just been told to "build some agents". The two features look alike from a distance: both let you point Copilot at chosen files and ask questions. They solve different problems. A **notebook** is a workspace for a project that is still moving. You add this week's transcript, remove the superseded version, ask a new question nobody thought of last week. It belongs to the people doing the work. Chats inside a shared notebook are private to each person. An **agent** is a configured assistant built for a repeatable job. In Agent Builder (no code, inside Copilot) you give it a name, instructions, a knowledge source such as a SharePoint library, and publish it to colleagues. In Copilot Studio (low code) it can also take actions: create a ticket, call an API, run on a trigger. Microsoft's own guidance is that Agent Builder covers knowledge and productivity, and that anything involving approvals, transactions or deterministic business rules belongs in Copilot Studio. > "The agent does the heavy lifting." Opeoluwa Burnett, Microsoft, on the company's Inside Track blog, explaining when to reach for an agent rather than Chat, Search or Notebooks | | Copilot Notebook | Copilot agent | | Built for | One project or topic that changes over time | One job repeated by many people | | Who builds it | The project team, in minutes | A maker in Agent Builder (no code) or Copilot Studio (low code, IT-governed) | | Knowledge | References you add by hand, first 100 used | SharePoint sites, connectors, web, uploaded files, configured once | | Can it act? | No. It answers and it creates documents | Yes in Copilot Studio: actions, triggers, workflows | | Cost | Included in the licence | Included for internal use by licensed users; otherwise Copilot Credits at $0.01 each pay-as-you-go or $200 for 25,000 prepaid | | Sharing | Inside the tenant only, grants access to referenced files | Published to users or groups, or to the whole organisation via admin approval | | Dies when | The project ends | Somebody stops maintaining the instructions | The pattern we see: a team runs a notebook for a quarter, notices that the same eight questions keep being asked (what's our standard payment term, what did we say about data residency last time), and turns that stable subset into an agent. The notebook was the discovery phase. Skip it and you build an agent that answers questions nobody asks. Microsoft's Work Trend Index reports active agents across Microsoft 365 grew 15 times year on year. It doesn't report how many of them are used. If you're weighing this against Copilot's agentic mode for delegated multi-step work, our [guide to Microsoft Copilot Cowork](https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/microsoft-copilot-cowork-guide-2026) covers where that sits. For the everyday Excel and PowerPoint side, see [the Copilot workflows nobody teaches](https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/copilot-excel-powerpoint-workflows). ## Six use cases for UK companies ![Six line-drawn cards: a stamped tender document, a client folder with a handshake, a board pack with a bar chart, a contract under a magnifying glass, a new-starter badge on a lanyard, and survey forms with a speech bubble.](https://wecallshotgun.com/images/blog/copilot-notebooks-uk-use-cases.webp) These are the six we'd pick first for a UK mid-market company, chosen because each has a clear owner, a repeating cycle and a measurable cycle time. None of them requires a Copilot Studio budget. ### 1. The tender or bid response Pin the invitation to tender, the evaluation criteria, your last three winning bids, the case study library and the current rate card. Ask the notebook to map every evaluation criterion to the evidence you hold and flag the gaps. Draft the method statement in Word from the notebook, then let the bid manager rewrite it in the company's voice. The audio overview lets the technical lead absorb a 90-page ITT on the train. Bid teams in the UK public sector live on deadlines set by someone else; taking two days out of a ten-day response window is the difference between bidding and not bidding. ### 2. The client account or matter workspace For a law firm, an accountancy practice, an agency or a consultancy: one notebook per client engagement. Engagement letter, scope, the Teams meeting recaps, the deliverables sent, the correspondence that matters. A partner asks, "What did we commit to on timing in the June call?" and gets the recap with the line quoted. A new associate joining the account in month four reads the overview page instead of interrupting three people. Our [Copilot in UK banking article](https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/microsoft-copilot-banking-use-cases-uk) walks through the relationship-manager version of this in a regulated setting. ### 3. The board or committee pack Monthly MI, the previous minutes, the risk register, the strategy paper and the CFO's commentary go into a notebook that persists from meeting to meeting. The company secretary asks for the open actions from the last three meetings as a mind map, then generates the first draft of the CEO report in Word. Nobody publishes the draft. Somebody who used to spend a Sunday assembling it now spends Sunday elsewhere. ### 4. The contract or regulatory review project A supplier contract renewal, a Consumer Duty review, a UK GDPR policy refresh after new ICO guidance. Pin the current policies, the new guidance, the contract set and the internal Q&A. Ask for a clause-by-clause gap list against the new requirement. Copilot's own limit applies: precise answers work best on documents under about 7,500 words, so split long contracts into schedules. For where the data itself sits and what your DPIA should say, read our [UK AI governance and ICO framework guide](https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/ai-governance-uk-ico-framework). ### 5. Project handover and onboarding The project manager is leaving in three weeks. Instead of a handover document nobody will read, they spend an afternoon building the project's notebook: the charter, the decision log, the stakeholder map, the recaps of the meetings that mattered, and a OneNote page titled "things I wish I'd known". The successor asks the notebook questions for the next month. This is also the quietest fix we know for the "the only person who understood the spreadsheet has left" problem. ### 6. Research and survey synthesis Customer interviews, an employee survey export in Excel, competitor material and the brief. Ask for the themes with the supporting quotes, generate the Excel sheet that tabulates them, then the infographic for the all-hands. One caution from practice: verbatims get paraphrased. Check every quote against the transcript before it goes on a slide with someone's name under it. What all six share: a defined set of sources, a real deadline, and an output someone was already producing by hand. Where those three are missing, a notebook becomes a well-organised place to store things nobody asks about. We covered the general version of that failure in [why AI adoption fails in companies](https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/why-ai-adoption-fails-in-companies). Pick one of the six. Put a number on what it costs the team today, before you argue about seats. [Open the AI ROI calculator →](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-roi-calculator)[Book 20 minutes](https://cal.com/wecallshotgun/ai-adoption)Built on ONS salaries and HMRC employer costs, methodology shown. Bring the workflow you'd trial first to the call. ## Setting one up without an oversharing incident The permissions model is simple and that's the danger. Microsoft's documentation says that anyone you share a notebook with gains access to all the files referenced in it, and that access to linked files is granted automatically where possible. Files keep their SharePoint and OneDrive permissions, so a file you couldn't share yourself stays restricted and the recipient has to request access. External sharing isn't supported at all. Read that again from the point of view of the HR business partner who pins the salary review spreadsheet into the "People project" notebook and shares it with the Microsoft 365 Group for the department. The March 2026 update made sharing to a Group one click, and access follows the Group's membership as people join and leave. Convenient, and exactly how the spreadsheet ends up with the graduate. What we set up with clients before the first shared notebook: - **The SharePoint oversharing pass first.** SharePoint Advanced Management and Restricted SharePoint Search exist for this. If your tenant has sites shared with "Everyone except external users" by accident, a notebook will find them. - **One owner per notebook**, named in the title. "Q4 Tender, Highways England, owner J. Patel" beats "Tender stuff". - **A source rule.** Final versions only, or a "drafts" folder that never gets pinned. The 100-reference grounding cap makes this a productivity rule as well as a hygiene rule. - **A retention decision.** Notebooks are stored in the owner's OneDrive or SharePoint, so they inherit those retention labels. Decide what happens to the tender notebook after award, and to the client notebook after the engagement ends. - **A line in the AI use policy.** What may go into a notebook, who may share one, and that personal data follows the same UK GDPR rules it follows everywhere else. Our [shadow AI and governance guide](https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/shadow-ai-enterprise-governance-risk) has the template thinking. Where the data is processed hasn't changed with Notebooks. It's Microsoft 365 Copilot's existing commitments, EU Data Boundary included for UK and EU tenants where configured, and the same questions apply as for any Copilot use. We compared the retention promises of the four big vendors in [zero data retention: what OpenAI, Claude, Gemini and Copilot actually offer](https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/zero-data-retention-ai-models-comparison). ## What Notebooks won't do - **It won't act.** No ticket gets raised, no email gets sent, nothing runs on a schedule. That's an agent, or Copilot Cowork. - **It won't watch for changes.** A new version of a pinned file is picked up. A new file in the folder isn't, unless you pinned the folder. - **It won't reach outside the company.** No external guests, no client-facing notebook. Send them the Word output. - **It won't hold the whole archive.** First 100 references ground the answers. Everything after that is decoration. - **It won't replace reading.** A generated board paper, bid answer or clause summary is a first draft from a system that paraphrases. The signature stays human, and in regulated firms, so does the audit trail of who checked what. ## How we'd run the first 30 days This is a report of what we do on a Copilot adoption sprint, so you can copy it or ignore it. Pick one of the six use cases above and one team of six to ten people who already own that deliverable. Measure the current cycle time on the last three instances: days from kick-off to final draft, and hours of the senior person's time. That's the baseline, and without it the renewal conversation in twelve months will be about vibes. Build the notebook together in a two-hour working session on a live piece of work, with the source rule and the owner agreed in the room. Run the next two cycles of the deliverable inside it. Measure again. Where the cycle time moved, write down the three prompts and the two outputs that did it, and that becomes the team's playbook. Where it didn't move, the source set was wrong or the deliverable wasn't the bottleneck, and both are worth knowing before you buy 200 seats. Then look at the questions that repeated across both cycles. If eight of them are stable, you've found your first agent, and you've found it from evidence. For the broader plan, our [guide to moving teams from prompting to task delegation](https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/from-prompting-to-task-delegation-ai-uk-2026) covers the skills side, and the [UK mid-market consulting page](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-consulting-uk-sme) covers how we run the sprint. ## We sit in the passenger seat for this exact problem We're We Call Shotgun, a founder-led AI adoption practice working across the UK and France. We're tool-agnostic across ChatGPT Enterprise, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Claude, and every engagement starts with a baseline and ends with a measured change in cycle time on real workflows. 1,500+ professionals coached, 50+ companies, 4.98/5 average rating. UK engagements from £3,500. [Run the free AI maturity diagnosis](https://wecallshotgun.com/audit) [Book a free 20-minute call](https://cal.com/wecallshotgun/ai-adoption) ## Sources and further reading - [Microsoft, Meet the updated Copilot Notebooks experience](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft-copilot-blog/meet-the-updated-copilot-notebooks-experience-your-home-for-understanding-work-p/4501383) — the rebuilt Copilot app experience, general availability July 2026 - [Microsoft, Copilot Notebooks: enhancements to support creation, collaboration and learning](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365copilotblog/copilot-notebooks-enhancements-to-support-creation-collaboration-and-learning/4505360) — Word and PowerPoint agents, Group sharing, mind maps, infographics; Frontier from 23 March 2026, general availability by May 2026 - [Microsoft, Copilot Notebooks and Study guide now available to Copilot Chat users](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/educationblog/copilot-notebooks-and-study-guide-now-available-to-copilot-chat-users/4527320) — rollout from 11 June 2026 and the standard-sources limits - [Microsoft, What's new in Microsoft 365 Copilot, July 2026](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft-copilot-blog/what%E2%80%99s-new-in-microsoft-365-copilot--july-2026/4538332) — Markdown, TXT and RTF references - [Microsoft Support, Copilot Notebooks FAQ](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/frequently-asked-questions-about-microsoft-365-copilot-notebooks-d5a87ed7-886c-4c59-b39d-a840470aad21) — grounding on the first 100 references, supported file types, the 7,500-word and 1.5-million-word guidance - [Microsoft Learn, Overview of Copilot Pages and Copilot Notebooks permissions](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/loop/cpcn-permission) and [Share a Copilot Notebook](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/share-a-microsoft-365-copilot-notebook) — what sharing grants, no external sharing, private chats - [Microsoft Support, Get an audio overview of your notebook](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/get-an-audio-overview-of-your-microsoft-365-copilot-notebook) — the one-reference minimum and the eight supported languages - [Microsoft Learn, Choose between Agent Builder and Copilot Studio](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/copilot/extensibility/copilot-studio-experience) — the knowledge-versus-actions split - [Microsoft, Copilot Studio pricing](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/pricing/copilot-studio) — Copilot Credits at $0.01 pay-as-you-go, 25,000 for $200 prepaid, included internal use for licensed users - [Microsoft Inside Track, Picking the right Copilot for the job](https://www.microsoft.com/insidetrack/blog/picking-the-right-copilot-for-the-job-tips-from-our-experience-at-microsoft/) — Chat, Search, Notebooks and agents from Microsoft's own IT - [Microsoft, 2026 Work Trend Index](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/agents-human-agency-and-the-opportunity-for-every-organization) — organisational factors at 67% of AI impact, active agents up 15x year on year - [ONS, Artificial intelligence in UK businesses: 2023 to 2026](https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/businessservices/articles/artificialintelligenceinukbusinesses/2023to2026) (20 July 2026) — 29% of businesses using AI, 10% of adopters describing use as extensive - [Compare the Cloud, Microsoft 365 Copilot for UK SMBs](https://www.comparethecloud.net/articles/getting-microsoft-365-copilot-working-for-a-20-person-uk-company-without-an-enterprise-agreement) and [Syntax, Copilot costs for UK businesses](https://www.syntax.co.uk/blog/microsoft-365/microsoft-365-copilot-costs-and-options-for-uk-businesses/) — UK reseller pricing quoted above Microsoft's pages were checked through search on 15 September 2026. Feature availability differs by tenant release ring. The use cases and the 30-day plan are our practice, not Microsoft guidance, and no client is named because none gave permission. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is Microsoft Copilot Notebooks? Copilot Notebooks is a workspace inside Microsoft 365 Copilot and OneNote where you gather the files, pages, meeting notes and emails for one project and have Copilot reason only over those references. From the notebook you can ask questions with citations and generate Word documents, PowerPoint decks, Excel sheets, mind maps, infographics, study guides and audio overviews. ### Do I need a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence to use Notebooks? Not since 11 June 2026. Copilot Chat users, included with a qualifying Microsoft 365 subscription, get Notebooks with standard sources (Office files, PDFs, Copilot Pages, images, audio and web links) and a capped number of sources per notebook. Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Business licences add premium sources and the full set of creation tools such as the Word and PowerPoint agents. ### What is the difference between a Copilot Notebook and a Copilot agent? A notebook is a living workspace for one project: the team adds and removes references as the work moves and asks new questions each week. An agent is configured once, in Agent Builder or Copilot Studio, with a role, instructions and knowledge sources, then published so many people can ask it the same kind of question. Agents built in Copilot Studio can also take actions such as creating tickets or running on triggers. Notebooks cannot act. ### How many files can a Copilot Notebook use? You can add more than 100 references, but Microsoft's support pages state that only the first 100 are used for grounding. Microsoft also advises that question and answer over a single document works best under about 7,500 words, and summarisation across the notebook works up to roughly 1.5 million words. ### Is it safe to share a Copilot Notebook in a UK company? Sharing stays inside the tenant, and chats in a shared notebook are private to each person. The risk is that anyone you share with gains access to every referenced file Copilot can grant, and sharing to a Microsoft 365 Group follows its membership automatically. Run a SharePoint oversharing check first, name an owner per notebook, pin final versions only, and treat personal data under the same UK GDPR rules as anywhere else. ### Can Copilot Notebooks be shared with clients or external partners? No. Microsoft's documentation states that external sharing is not supported. Generate the Word or PowerPoint output from the notebook and send that instead. ### What are the best Copilot Notebooks use cases for a business? The six we recommend starting with are tender and bid responses, client account or matter workspaces, board and committee pack preparation, contract or regulatory review projects, project handover and onboarding, and research or survey synthesis. Each has a defined source set, a real deadline and an output someone was already producing by hand. ### How much does Microsoft 365 Copilot cost in the UK in 2026? UK resellers quote Microsoft 365 Copilot Business at £16.10 a user a month ex VAT on an annual plan for organisations up to 300 users, with a promotional £13.80 rate running to 30 September 2026, and the enterprise Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on at about £30 a user a month. Copilot Chat, which includes Notebooks with standard sources, is included with qualifying Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Prices changed with Microsoft's 1 July 2026 licensing update, so confirm on your own renewal quote. ## Keep Reading [AI Tools Sep 12, 2026 ### ChatGPT vs Claude plans for companies: which subscription to buy, and for whom (2026 buyer's guide) OpenAI and Anthropic each sell seven plans and most companies buy the wrong one. Every ChatGPT and Claude tier explained for UK buyers, from Free to Enterprise, with prices in pounds, VAT treatment, training defaults, admin controls, the need each one solves, a full comparison table and the rule we use before a company signs. 24 min read Read →](https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/chatgpt-vs-claude-plans-for-companies) [AI Tools Sep 8, 2026 ### AI model fatigue in the enterprise: four labs shipped in one week, and your comparison deck is already stale Anthropic, Meta, Google and OpenAI shipped four frontier models in three days, and CNBC reported enterprise buyers describing model fatigue. Here's what shipped, what it costs next to Copilot and Mistral, and the reusable test set we use so a new release costs an afternoon instead of a quarter. 17 min read Read →](https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/ai-model-fatigue-enterprise) [AI Tools Sep 8, 2026 ### ChatGPT Images 2.5 for business: what's new vs Images 2.0, and how it compares to Nano Banana Pro OpenAI's Images 2.5 is up to 50% faster, holds a reference photo through edits, and adds Sketch, Templates, on-image comments and shared prompts. What that changes against Images 2.0 and Nano Banana Pro, and six workflows we run with business teams. 20 min read Read →](https://wecallshotgun.com/blog/chatgpt-images-2-5-business-guide) ## Related AI Training Solutions Programs tailored to your role, industry, or function. [Financial Services](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-financial-services) [Healthcare](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-healthcare) [Legal Teams](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-legal) [Operations](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-operations) [Product Teams](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-product) [Marketing](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-marketing) [Sales Teams](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-sales) [Customer Support](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-customer-support) [HR Teams](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-hr) [Data & Analytics](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-data-analytics) [Executives](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-executives) [C-Level](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-c-level) [UK Hub](https://wecallshotgun.com/ai-training-uk) ## Need help with AI Adoption? We take the passenger seat and lead your teams to adopt AI for real work. [Book a Call](https://wecallshotgun.com/#contact)