Create a summary of your document with Copilot in Word
Applies To
Sometimes a Word document is long and you just want a quick idea of what it contains. You can ask Copilot to create a summary for you in Chat, or depending on your settings and license, you can see a summary at the top of the page when you open a Word document.Â
Note: If you don’t see Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote, it might not be included with your Microsoft 365 subscription or available based on your organization’s settings. Learn which Copilot license you have.
View and use the automatic summary at the top of the page
If you just received a lengthy document to review, save time by letting Copilot in Word help you distill it down to key points.
Depending on your license and organizational settings, you may see an automatic summary preview when you open a document. Select View More to see the full summary.
You can click on the suggestion pills underneath the summary to open Copilot Chat and chat about the document.Â
Tip:Â For documents saved on OneDrive or SharePoint, summaries are cached so that your computer performance remains as fast as possible.
Current limitations
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The automatic summaries only show as open if you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot (work) license and if the document has been saved in OneDrive or SharePoint. If you saved the document elsewhere, you'll see an option to open and generate a summary.
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For Copilot to automatically generate summaries, the reference content needs to have at least 200 words. If your doc has less than 200 words, you can still generate a summary by clicking on Summary at the top of the document.
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Although Copilot takes the entire document into account, it currently doesn't always provide citations to later document content. We are improving this.
Learn more
Frequently asked questions about Copilot in Word
Where can I get Microsoft Copilot?​​​​​​​
Microsoft Copilot help & learning
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