Enable Copilot on Office Desktop Applications

Copilot Integrated in O365 Applications for a Dollar a Day

I have had an Office 365 E3 license the using OneNote, Outlook, Excel pretty much any day I work and other Office applications for years. I especially like OneNote which had the tantalizing Copilot icon dimmed:

I finally decided the time is right to get Copilot. Step one was buying the license which took a couple of tries. At first, Microsoft said it was not available in my tenant, then a refresh showed the $360 one-year Copilot license. I bought it and activated for my E3 account in my O365 tenant.

Turn it on for Desktop Apps

I assigned the license to my account in M365 admin, and immediately, Copilot was available online in Word, Outlook email composition and the Copilot app where you can prompt questions and get seemingly smart answers. Sweet!

Unfortunately, it was not available in my desktop apps. Turns out this is easy enough to resolve. From any desktop app, click File then

1. Account
2. Update License

   

   which I did from OneNote.

The next screen recommends restarting the Office application. Copilot in OneNote was immediately available in the Home ribbon, but other applications required restart.