To investigate the conditions of microwave digestion for determining Cu in milk powder by flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry, the content of Cu in milk powder was determined by flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry after the samples were microwavely digested under different conditions. The optimum parameters for microwave digestion were obtained by the orthogonal test and were that, the volume of digestion solution was 8mL, the reagent proportion for HNO3 and H2O2 was 4:1, the digestion time was 7min, the digestion pressure was 2.9 Mpa and the digestion powder was 1000 W. The content of Cu in assayed milk powder was 0.0280mg/g. Microwave digestion was a time-saving and practical pretreatment of samples.