Automatically summarize Word documents with Copilot

Hello, Microsoft 365 Insiders! I’m Stéphanie Visser, a product manager on the Word team. I’m excited to announce an exciting new feature that will help you quickly get to the heart of a Word document as soon as you open it.

Automatically summarize your Word documents with Copilot

As we live in a world rich in content, we are constantly looking for more efficient ways to process information. Microsoft Copilot can help alleviate this situation by providing automatic summaries at the top of your Word documents.

Copilot summaries summarize the most important information in an easy-to-understand format so you can quickly understand key points and ideas without reading the entire document.

How it works

1. Open an existing Word document. Notice the automatic summary that appears between the ribbon and the document.

   Copilot automatic summaries appear on top of your Word document.

2. Select to expand the summary: see more button.

   Copilot’s automatic summary capabilities are fully extensible.

3. To collapse the summary, select: Click the icon in the upper right corner of the dialog box.

Tips and Tricks

• If you wrote the document yourself or the document is saved locally, the automatic summary opens completely collapsed. Feel free to expand it and review the text to see how it will be communicated to your audience.
• If the auto-summary was collapsed when you last closed the document, it will remain collapsed the next time you open it. Likewise, if the auto-summary was expanded when you last closed the document, it will be semi-expanded when you open it again (see the first image above).
• After changing the document Check out the new summary A button will appear. When you select this button, Copilot will check if the changes are worth generating a new summary.

effectiveness

We’re slowly rolling this out to some users with a Copilot license in Word for the web, Word for Windows (Version 16.0.17928.20114 or later), and Word for Mac (Version 16.88 (Build 24081116) or later).

Not yet? It’s probably us, not you.

Features are released over time to ensure everything works smoothly. They are released slowly to a larger number of Insiders, highlighting features you may not have. Sometimes we remove elements based on your feedback to make them even better. This is rare, but we also have the option to completely remove a feature from the product, even if you, as an Insider, have had the opportunity to try it out.

feedback

We want to hear from you! Please submit your comments and feedback by selecting: help > feedback.

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