Copilot Personalisation Settings: The Essential Guide
Your Copilot personalisation settings are the difference between a generic AI assistant and one that actually works the way you work. Most Microsoft 365 Copilot users never open them. They type a prompt, get a generic answer, and assume that is just how Copilot works.
It is not. Copilot does not know who you are unless you tell it, and the Copilot personalisation settings are exactly where you do that. In this post I walk you through every setting in the Personalization tab, step by step, so you can get answers that are actually useful.
Where to Find Your Copilot Personalisation Settings
To open your Copilot personalisation settings, go to Copilot Chat and sign in with your Microsoft 365 work or school account.
In the top right corner, click the three dots (‘Copilot chats and more’) and select Settings. A panel opens with five sections in the left menu: General, Data controls, Personalization, Notifications, and Agents.
Click Personalization. This is where your Copilot personalisation settings live. There are four of them: Custom instructions, Work profile, Saved memories, and Chat history. Let’s go through each one.
If you are new to Copilot and want to understand the broader adoption picture first, read our free Microsoft 365 Copilot whitepaper before continuing.
The Four Copilot Personalisation Settings Explained
1. Custom Instructions
Custom instructions are the most important of the four Copilot personalisation settings, and the most underused. This is where you tell Copilot exactly how you want it to respond, every single time.
To set yours up:
- In the Personalization tab, find the Custom instructions tile.
- Make sure the toggle is set to On.
- Click Edit instructions.
- In the compose box, write your instructions. You can pick from the suggested options or write your own.
- Click Save instructions.
The instructions you write here run in the background of every Copilot Chat conversation. Copilot uses them as a standing brief every time you start a new chat.
Be specific. Generic instructions like ‘be concise’ do very little. Instead, tell Copilot your job role, the terminology you use, how you prefer your answers formatted, and any context that is always relevant to your work. For example:
‘I am a Microsoft consultant. When summarising meetings, use bullet points for key details. Keep answers under 150 words unless I ask for more.’
The more precise you are, the better your results will be. According to Microsoft, custom instructions are part of the enhanced personalisation features available to Microsoft 365 Copilot licence holders. For more information, see Customize how Microsoft 365 Copilot responds to you.
2. Work Profile
The Work profile is the second of your Copilot personalisation settings. It shows you what data Microsoft 365 Copilot pulls from your organisational profile to make its responses more relevant. This includes your job title, your organisation, and the people you work with most frequently.
Click View work data to see what is available. This data comes directly from your Microsoft 365 profile and is read-only inside the Copilot settings panel. You cannot edit it here, but it is good to know what Copilot is using behind the scenes.
If the data looks incomplete or inaccurate, the source is your Microsoft 365 profile, not the Copilot personalisation settings themselves. Talk to your IT admin about updating your profile.
3. Saved Memories
Saved memories is one of the more powerful Copilot personalisation settings, and it is on by default. When you have a Copilot Chat conversation and share something useful about yourself, such as a preference or a working style, Copilot can save that as a memory and apply it in future sessions.
You can also explicitly ask Copilot to remember something. For example: ‘Copilot, remember that I prefer Excel over PowerPoint for reporting.’ Copilot saves this and applies it going forward, so you do not have to repeat yourself every time.
To manage your saved memories:
- In the Personalization tab, find the Saved memories tile.
- Click Manage saved memories.
- In the pane that opens, you can see all saved memories, delete individual ones, or click Delete all memories to start fresh.
If you toggle Saved memories off, Copilot stops creating new memories but does not automatically delete the ones already saved. You need to delete those manually.
For more information, see Manage Copilot Memory in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
4. Chat History (Frontier)
Chat history is the fourth setting in your Copilot personalisation settings panel, and it is labelled Frontier, meaning it is a preview feature. Not every tenant will have this available. Availability depends on your IT admin and whether your organisation has the Frontier preview enabled.
When Chat history is on, Copilot uses your previous conversations to personalise its responses, giving it context across multiple sessions rather than starting fresh each time. If you are comfortable with this, leave the toggle on. If you have privacy concerns or work with sensitive information, you can turn it off.
Turning Chat history off does not delete your existing conversations. It only stops Copilot from using them to inform future responses.
A Quick Look at the Other Tabs
Your Copilot personalisation settings are the most impactful place to start, but the settings panel has four other tabs worth knowing about.
General contains basic preferences like display and language options. Data controls is where you manage what data Copilot can access, which is especially relevant for privacy-conscious users or those working with confidential information. Notifications lets you control when and how Copilot pings you. Agents is where you can see and manage the specialised AI assistants available in Copilot.
Each of these deserves its own post. If you are managing Copilot at a tenant level, also read our guide on Copilot governance and admin controls for the IT perspective.
Admin Tips
If you are an IT admin, a few things to keep in mind about these Copilot personalisation settings. The Custom instructions, Saved memories, and Chat history settings are all governed by the Enhanced personalisation control at the tenant level. If you disable Enhanced personalisation in the Microsoft 365 admin center, end users will see these Copilot personalisation settings as greyed out and will not be able to enable them.
Chat history (Frontier) is a preview feature. If users are not seeing it, that is why.
For more on managing this as an admin, see Microsoft 365 Copilot enhanced personalization control.
Licences
The Copilot personalisation settings, including Custom instructions and Work profile, are available to users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. Saved memories are also available to Copilot Chat users without a full Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. Chat history (Frontier) availability depends on tenant configuration.
The Paul-Take
Most people who say Copilot is not that useful have never touched the Copilot personalisation settings. They are using a tool that knows nothing about them and then being surprised that the answers feel generic.
Custom instructions take five minutes to set up. Saved memories improve on their own over time. Together, they turn Copilot from a generic assistant into something that actually knows your context.
This is not about some advanced feature. It is about doing the basic setup that Microsoft built into the product from day one, but that most users walk straight past.
Set it up. Be specific. The difference is immediate.
MVP Reference List
- Customize how Microsoft 365 Copilot responds to you
- Manage Copilot Memory in Microsoft 365 Copilot
- Microsoft 365 Copilot enhanced personalization control
- Copilot personalization and memory (admin docs)