Important
Microsoft Copilot Cowork for personal accounts is currently in Preview.
This information relates to a prerelease product that may be substantially modified before it's released. Microsoft makes no warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to the information provided here.
Before Cowork takes certain actions, including writing files, it asks for your permission.
Approve actions
The approval dialog shows a preview of what Cowork plans to do and a button labeled with the specific action.
- Approve button (for example, Send, Post, or Create): Allow this specific action to proceed.
- Cancel: Stop this action.
You can also pause Cowork at any time (to finish the current step, or immediately), resume when you're ready, or cancel the task entirely.
Important
You are responsible for actions Copilot takes on your behalf.
Always review the details in the approval dialog before proceeding. Verify that recipients, content, and other parameters are correct. Do not skip approval prompts for actions you are not certain about, as Copilot can make mistakes, misinterpret instructions, or be deceived.
When is user approval required?
Copilot will ask for your approval or hand control back to you for some actions to help reduce the risk of unintended outcomes. Copilot might ask you to take over if a site restricts automated interaction, requires additional sign-in steps or manual interaction (such as for purchases, bookings, or accessing protected content), or presents other challenges.
These include:
- Monetary transactions, such as completing a purchase or submitting payment.
- Submitting personal information to external websites, such as names, addresses, or phone numbers.
- Actions involving other people, such as sending emails or messages.
- Account altering actions, including deleting files, modifying cloud storage, canceling subscriptions, or changing account settings.
- Sensitive actions, such as health related submissions, government documents, or security related changes.
Copilot only submits personal information when you approve an action that sends it to another service or website. For these scenarios, you remain in control and must explicitly approve or complete the action yourself. For scheduled or recurring tasks, Copilot may ask for required approvals during setup so the task can run unattended in the future.
Review files and results
When Cowork creates or modifies files during a conversation, they appear in the side panel on the right. The side panel shows the task Progress, the Input folder with files you provide as context, and the Output folder with files Cowork creates. Each output file has Download and Preview buttons.
Select any file to open an inline preview, expand it to full screen, or open it in its native app. You can also open files Cowork creates in OneDrive.
Tip
When Cowork produces multiple output files, select Download All at the top of the output file list to download every file as a single zip archive.