Simplify and extract key information with Copilot in Word

  • 4 minutes

To start using Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word, you can open the Copilot pane by selecting the Copilot icon in the ribbon's Home tab.

Screenshot of the Copilot icon in the Word ribbon.

This helpful feature provides answers to questions—broad or specific—about your document. Have a back-and-forth discussion to iterate and refine your results, get a summary or specific information about the document content, or ask it to generate ideas, tables, or lists that you can copy and insert into your document.

Screenshot of the Copilot panel in Word upon first opening.

In the following example, we turn a basic prompt for Copilot in Word into a well-constructed, contextual prompt that gives you just what you need, in just the way you need it.

Let's get crafting

First, download Market Analysis Report for Mystic Spice Premium Chai Tea.docx and save the file to your OneDrive folder if you haven't yet done so.

Open the document in Word and then open the Copilot pane by selecting the Copilot icon in the ribbon's Home tab. Enter the prompts below and follow along.

Note

Starting prompt:

Summarize this Word document.

In this simple prompt, you start with the basic Goal: to summarize a Word document. However, there's no information about why the document needs to be summarized or what the summary is needed for.

Element Example
Basic prompt:
Start with a Goal		 Summarize this Word document.
Good prompt:
Add Context		 Adding Context can help Copilot understand the purpose of the summary and tailor the response accordingly.

"with a brief overview of the main points to discuss with my team during the tomorrow's Sales meeting."
Better prompt:
Specify Source(s)		 Adding Sources can help Copilot understand which document or part needs to be summarized and provide a more accurate response.

"...the section on Competitive Analysis..."
Best prompt:
Set clear Expectations		 Lastly, adding Expectations can help Copilot understand how to format the summary and what level of detail is required.

"Please keep the summary to 5 key points and use simple language."

Note

Crafted prompt:

Summarize the section on Competitive Analysis in this Word document with a brief overview of the main points to discuss with my team during the tomorrow's Sales meeting. Please keep the summary to 5 key points and use simple language.

Screenshot the crafted prompt results against the sample document using Copilot in Word.

This prompt has all the details it needs - Goal, Context, Source, and Expectations - so Copilot can give you the answer you're looking for.

Explore more

Try out the final prompt we crafted, but using your own Word document. Customize the Context, Sources, and Expectations so that you get what you need from the document, without any extra stuff you don't.

What are some other ways you can think of to add context or sources or expectations to your prompt? Can you think of other prompting strategies you could use to generate the desired response?

Important

This feature is available to customers with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license or Copilot Pro license. For more information, see Welcome to Copilot in Word.

In the next unit, we'll look at how to craft similar prompts for Copilot in PowerPoint.