Microsoft Copilot Notebooks: Mind Maps, Infographics, and Excel via AI

In May 2026, Microsoft released over 53 new features for Microsoft 365 Copilot. The highlight: Copilot Notebooks — previously a niche feature — is evolving into a versatile AI workspace that transforms notes, meetings, and documents into visual formats.

What are Copilot Notebooks?

Notebooks are project-based workspaces in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. You collect sources there (documents, email threads, meeting transcripts, web pages), and Copilot analyzes everything together. Unlike regular chat, context is preserved — you build on a project over days and weeks.

The key new features:

1. Mind Maps — Visually understand complex topics

Copilot creates interactive mind maps from your notebook content. The map shows key topics and their relationships. You can click individual nodes, read summaries, and ask Copilot to analyze specific areas in more depth. This is especially useful for:
- Large project documentation you want to quickly overview
- Meeting series where you need to find connections between decisions
- Learning material you want to structure

2. Infographics — Make content shareable

Copilot uses the Designer agent from Copilot Create to convert notebook content into polished infographics. Key points, relationships, and insights are visually presented. After creation, you can make adjustments via chat or manually edit the graphic. Ideal for:
- Project reports you want to present to the team
- Summaries for stakeholders who do not read long documents
- Internal communication that works better visually than text-based

3. Excel spreadsheet generation — Free data from text

Copilot identifies structured data in your sources — tables in PDFs, numbers in meeting notes, lists in emails — and creates real Excel workbooks from them. The Excel agent asks clarifying questions to tailor the spreadsheet to your specific needs. This solves a real everyday problem: useful data is often trapped as text in documents and has to be painstakingly transferred by hand.

4. Teams meetings as a source

You can now load complete Teams meetings into your notebook — including transcript, notes, chat, and shared files. This keeps decisions and tasks directly connected to the project context, instead of disappearing into individual meeting summaries.

Availability and requirements:

- Who: Microsoft 365 Copilot license required (Business, Enterprise, or Education)
- Where: Notebooks are available in the Microsoft 365 Copilot web app and desktop app
- Mind Maps: Already rolled out to all Copilot users
- Infographics: Rolling out from May to July 2026
- Excel generation: Currently in the Frontier program, broader availability to follow
- International: Available in all regions where Microsoft 365 Copilot is offered

Cost:

Microsoft 365 Copilot costs 30 USD per user per month (in addition to your existing Microsoft 365 license). There is no separate Notebooks subscription — all features are included in the Copilot license.

Practical example: Project report in 10 minutes

1. Create a new Notebook for your project
2. Add the last three meeting transcripts, two status reports, and the email thread with the client
3. Have Copilot generate a mind map — you immediately see which topics are connected
4. Generate an infographic with the key milestones and decisions
5. Create an Excel spreadsheet with all open tasks and deadlines

What used to take half a day is now done in minutes.

Tips for getting started:

- Notebooks over single chats: If you frequently work on the same topic, create a Notebook instead of starting new chats each time. Context is preserved and results improve
- Select sources carefully: The more relevant your sources, the better the results. Do not upload documents randomly — choose deliberately
- Mind maps as a starting point: Begin a new project with a mind map — it reveals connections you easily miss when reading individual documents

Privacy:

Copilot Notebooks processes data within your Microsoft 365 tenant. For European customers, Microsoft's EU Data Boundary commitments apply — data is processed in European data centers. Notebooks access the files and information you explicitly add. Still, check your admin settings to verify which Copilot features are enabled for your organization.

Sources: microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2026/05/28/introducing-a-new-design-for-microsoft-365-copilot, techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365copilotblog/whats-new-in-notebooks-may-2026, neowin.net/news/microsoft-365-copilot-notebooks-gets-new-tools-to-turn-documents-into-mind-maps-and-more