What Is Copilot Memory?
Copilot Memory is a new capability within Microsoft 365 Copilot (similar to what ChatGPT has) that allows Copilot to remember key facts about your preferences, working style, ongoing projects, and other things you want it to know about you. This enables it (think PA) to be able to tailor its responses over time. You can add and change this as needed so it evolves with you, reducing repetitive prompts, adapting to your style and speeding up your daily tasks.
Key Capabilities
- Persistent Facts
Copilot picks up on explicit instructions like “Remember I prefer bullet points in my writing” or “Always use a formal tone in emails” and retains these details across sessions. - Custom Instructions
Beyond passive memory, you can proactively shape Copilot’s baseline behavior. Ask for brevity, wit, or a specific document style, and Copilot applies those instructions automatically in Word, Excel, Outlook, and other 365 apps. - Contextual Recall
Copilot integrates with Microsoft Graph and ContextIQ to ground conversations in your files, meetings, and chats, ensuring its outputs align with your latest work context.
How It Works
- Explicit Memory Prompts
Copilot only stores information when you ask it to. This prevents unwarranted data collection and keeps your AI focused on what matters to you. - Memory Updated Signal
Whenever it logs a new fact, you’ll see a subtle “Memory updated” badge—confirmation that Copilot has learned something new about your preferences. - Privacy Controls
You can control its memory: You can view, edit, or delete entries in Copilot’s Settings pane and if you need to can wipe it’s memory and start fresh by simply toggle the Memory function off entirely. - Admin and Compliance Oversight
Organisations can disable Memory for specific users or tenant-wide, and all memory actions flow into Purview eDiscovery for audit and compliance purposes.
Timeline & Availability
Rollout date: July 2025 (staged)
Why Copilot Memory Matters
- Efficiency Gains
This is really about efficiency and personalisation since you will no longer need to keep telling Copilot your preferred tone or formatting preferences. This speeds up document creation, email drafting, and data analysis. - Deep Personalisation
By remembering your recurring topics—Project Alpha, Python for data science, or icon-size images—Copilot provides responses that are more tailored to each user, not generic AI outputs. - Enhanced Adoption
For organisations, personalised AI interactions drive higher engagement and adoption of Copilot across teams, leading to greater ROI on AI investments. - Trust & Transparency
Visible memory updates and clear controls build user confidence in the AI, ensuring you always know what Copilot retains and why.
Enabling Copilot Memory
Memory is an option feature and can be enabled, modified and disabled as needed. To enable it, follow the instructions below.
- Open Microsoft 365 Copilot and head to Settings › Account › Privacy.
- Under Personalisation & memory, toggle Memory on or off.
- Tell Copilot what to remember: “Remember I prefer bulleted lists,” or “Keep my summaries under 100 words.”
- View, edit, or delete memories any time from the same settings pane.