Forum Discussion
Copilot in Word - how to compile a list of style decisions
Hello, I was hoping to use Copilot to create a style sheet for a document I am editing – i.e., a list of style decisions I make as I go, choices about spelling of certain words, punctuation, etc. So far I have tried two different approaches, neither of which has worked:
- First, I asked Copilot if I could tell it these style decisions as I went, so that it could compile them all into a list at the end. It very confidently said that it could do that. But once I started giving it things to be included in the style sheet, it would instead reply with paragraphs of text about the word I'd given it. It clearly thought I wanted it to write things for me. I reminded it a few times that I only needed it to compile the specific words I was giving it. A couple of times it seemed to understand - but invariably it would go back to spewing out long slabs of text. Reminding it what I was doing each time (e.g. "Add to style list: use numerals for numbers greater than 99", or whatever) didn't help.
- Next, I tried highlighting individual words and phrases to be included in the style sheet. Then I asked Copilot to compile a list of every word highlighted in the document. It gave me a long list of words, a couple of which were highlighted, most of which weren't, and it left out many other highlighted words.
Can anyone suggest a method that might work for this task using Copilot's capabilities? I'm new to Copilot so may be coming at it the wrong way. It's an easy task to do myself, as I usually would - and I've now wasted way more time trying to prompt Copilot than it would have taken to do it myself. But I'm curious to know if there's a way to do it.
Hello! This sounds like a fantastic use case for Copilot, but unfortunately there's no indication that Copilot can reason at that level yet. There's basic functionality inside of Word, such as draft, summarize, convert lists to tables, create images, and auto-rewrite. More information can be found here Copilot in Word help & learning. Hope that helps.
Thanks! I'll have a look.
Just leaving this here in anyone else stumbles across it while trying to do the same thing. Copilot can't do this yet, but I've had success by highlighting words I want added to the style sheet, then using 'advanced find' to highlight all highlighted words, and copying and pasting them into a separate document to create a list.
A really basic solution that I could have been doing for years... asking Copilot to do it was probably overcomplicating it.
