Writing a personal invitation or customer letter for fifty people by hand usually takes a lot of time. Copilot in Word writes an initial letter text, which Word’s mail merge function then automatically connects with names and addresses from a list. The result is a finished, personally addressed letter for every recipient, without typing each line by hand.
Copilot supplies the text, Word handles the personalization
Copilot takes over the first draft in Word. A short prompt like “Write an invitation to the customer event” produces a finished draft with a subject line, placeholder salutation, and closing sentence. According to the Microsoft help page on drafting content, Copilot only generates a suggestion that can be kept, discarded, or regenerated.
The actual personalization - name, address, individual salutation - is then handled by Word’s mail merge function, which has existed long before Copilot. The two features complement each other: Copilot supplies the text, mail merge handles the bulk processing for many recipients at once. Depending on the Word version and the Copilot rollout, the exact menu item may be named or placed slightly differently.
How the mail merge comes together in six steps
An example from office life: an assistant sends an invitation to the annual party to fifty business partners. The whole process runs inside Word, with no extra program needed:
- Open a Word document and draft a base letter text with Copilot
- Prepare a mailing list with name, salutation, and address in Excel or the Outlook address book
- Start mail merge from the “Mailings” menu and link the mailing list
- Insert mail merge fields such as salutation and name into the Copilot text at the right spots
- Check the preview of the individual letters and adjust the wording if needed
- Finish the mail merge and combine all letters into one file or print them directly
A clerk types the letter only once and never has to enter names or addresses by hand. Copilot already applies this same pairing of text and automation in Outlook, where it adjusts email drafts directly in tone. In Word, Copilot only handles the text - distributing it to many recipients remains the job of mail merge.
Costs, availability, and requirements at a glance
The mail merge function is included in every version of Word and costs nothing extra; a mailing list in Excel or the Outlook address book is enough as a data source. Copilot, on the other hand, needs a paid add-on license on top of an existing Microsoft 365 subscription. According to the official Microsoft price list, Microsoft 365 Copilot Business currently costs 15.60 euros per user per month, a promotional price running until the end of September 2026; the regular price of 18.20 euros applies after that. Both features are available in Germany and across the EU, for Windows, Mac, and the web.
Since the mailing list contains real customer or employee data, it falls under the same access rights as other customer data. Copilot itself only reads the entered letter text, not the entire mailing list automatically.
Copilot does not replace a final review: with sparse prompts, it sometimes suggests an inappropriate tone or incorrect details that should be corrected before sending. Very elaborate mail merges with conditional text blocks - different paragraphs depending on customer group, for instance - still need the classic Word field function; Copilot only supplies the first text draft, not the logic behind it.
