Welcome to everything Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word at Microsoft Ignite 2024. Below you’ll find the latest and greatest innovation announced at Ignite. We’re thrilled to announce new capabilities that will help you easily create relevant documents, edit and iterate with ease, and get insights for quick comprehension.
Quickly create new, relevant documents
Imagine never starting from a blank slate again. New Copilot capabilities in Word help you create new written content from your existing information.
Reference meetings and emails in addition to documents when creating a new document with Copilot
With Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word, you can effortlessly create new written content from existing information in your files, meetings, and emails. This means that when you create, the content is deeply connected to your work, ensuring that your documents are not only relevant but enriched with the context and information that matter most to your projects. Whether you're drafting a report or composing an email, Copilot helps you build a new draft in minutes based on your existing work, making the writing process more efficient and less daunting. Available starting in November in Word on web and early in 2025 for desktop and Mac.
Write a prompt in Copilot in Word and reference meetings and emails in addition to files.
Copilot will help you find additional sources related to your prompt
Finding the right information and context can take up a lot of time. When you draft with Copilot in Word in Word, Copilot will look for related files, emails, and meetings that might be useful. This helps you see more information that could be important, gives you more options for what to include, and helps you make documents that better fit your needs. Available in early 2025.
After entering and a prompt, Copilot finds and shares additional files, meetings and emails that may be helpful sources of information to include in the draft.
Copilot will cite sources when drafting
It can be helpful to understand what sources Copilot is referencing when creating content. Copilot will include sources in the content it generates, indicating which document the information was referenced from, and give you the option to keep the citations in the final document. This ensures confidence in the accuracy of Copilot's output. Available in early 2025.
After creating a new document, Copilot will share sources and allow you to keep citations in the new document.
See example prompts to help you get started on a new document
Ever face a blank page and wonder how to begin? Copilot now offers example prompts to help you get started. Soon, these prompts will even be tailored to the files you work with. Example prompts are available starting in October 2024, and personalized example prompts will be available starting in December 2024.
Example prompts to try with Copilot, based on your work, are at the top of the blank document to help you get started.Copilot supports more referenced content, longer referenced content, and allows you to write longer prompts
How you create and what you create along with Copilot is incredibly important, and supporting rich content referencing and prompts is key to creating and editing documents with Copilot. We’re excited to share three key expansions:
- Include up to 10 references. When drafting with Copilot in Word, you will be able to include up to 10 references (instead of the current 3), including Word, PowerPoint, PDFs, meeting transcripts, and emails from your Microsoft 365 Graph. This gives more flexibility to include content and context that would be helpful when creating a new document.
- Total references used in a prompt can be 4x longer than before. The size limit for total of all the attached references combined has expanded to approximately 75k words.
- Longer prompts. The prompt limit has been effectively removed, allowing you to write prompts that are longer and more specified than before.
Available starting in November 2024.
Polish and fine-tune your document
Iteration is a crucial part of the writing process, and Copilot in Word makes it seamless. Copilot helps you edit and refine your documents with ease, whether it's helping you rewrite, transform, or share suggestions.
Copilot coaches you, sharing suggestions on structure, flow, and tone
Coaching with Copilot supports you as you review content for improvements that go beyond grammar and spelling—helping you clarify ideas and giving you suggestions to increase the impact of your writing with additions, organization, style and tone, supporting information, and more . Just select the text you’d like coaching on (a selection or the entire document), select the Copilot icon on the canvas, then “Get coaching”, and see the suggestions. If you like the suggestion you can apply it with one click. In public preview today, and the ability to apply suggestions will be available starting in January 2025. Learn more about Copilot coaching in Word here.
From a selection of text on the document, Copilot then Coaching is selected and Copilot shares a few different suggestions for the document that the user applies.
Add stock images or generate new images to add to your document
Create custom images using DALL-E 3 or find, add in stock image, or find a brand image from your organization’s SharePoint Organization Asset Library. Just type your prompt into the Copilot chat pane, and Copilot will find and retrieve those most relevant image assets to insert into your document. Available starting in November 2024. Learn more about generating images and including stock images here, and connecting SharePoint OAL to Copilot for brand images here.
Copilot chat pane is open with a prompt to generate an image of a parking lot, and showing 4 generated image options to choose from.
Understand and digest information
Understanding a document with all its content, sections, and changes can be time-consuming and difficult. Copilot in Word helps you quickly summarize the most important pieces and understand the document based on your specific needs and questions.
Get an automatic summary of your Word doc, right on the page
We often have too much information to read and understand. Microsoft Copilot helps by giving a brief summary at the top of your Word documents. This way, you can quickly get a grasp of the main topics without reading everything. This helps makes it faster and easier for you to find the information you need. Available starting in October 2024. Learn more about getting an automatic summary here.
When you’re opening a document with content, Copilot shares a summary at the top helping you get a quick understanding of the main topics.
Summarize longer documents in Copilot chat
One of the most popular features of Copilot in Word is the "Summarize this doc" option, but there was a limit to the length of the document Coiplot could summarize. Now Copilot can summarize documents up to 80,000 words, four times more than it could handle before, making it easier to get the main points from lengthy documents. Available today. Learn more here.
Copilot chat is open and able to provide a summary of a document that is 66 pages long.
Get a quick summary before opening a Word doc
Looking for a doc but don’t want to open each one? Now you’ll be able to preview a summary of the document before opening the file, saving you time and helping you stay focused. Available in the first quarter of 2025.
Now you can get a quick summay of the document in the start screen before you open the Word document.Thank you, and can’t wait to see what you create with Copilot in PowerPoint! If you want to watch what’s new in PowerPoint at Ignite, checkout the following sessions:
- Boost productivity with Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps
- Microsoft 365 Copilot: a power-user masterclass
And feel free to check out additional Copilot resources:
- Get started using Copilot in Word: Copilot in Word help & learning
- Learn more about Copilot and adoption best practices: Microsoft 365 Copilot – Microsoft Adoption
- Get inspired by the Copilot scenario library Microsoft Copilot Scenario Library – Microsoft Adoption
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