Microsoft"s Copilot generative AI assistant supports a number of the company"s productivity apps. That, of course, includes its Word app via Draft with Copilot. Originally, this allowed Word users to ask Copilot to create a draft of a document with just a few text prompts.
Today, Microsoft announced that it has expanded the use of Draft with Copilot in Word documents. In a blog post, it states it can now be used to rewrite or redefine a specific selection of text in a Word draft.
First, you must select the section of a Word document you want to change via Draft with Copilot. Once you do that, you should see a Make Changes option appear. Click on it, and then you can type in the prompt to change that selected text to another format.
Microsoft says users could select a text in a Word document, then type in a text prompt that turns that section into a bulleted list, or you can ask it to add headings. Alternatively, you could select a list in a Word document and then ask Draft with Copilot to turn that list into a paragraph or paragraphs.
Draft with Copilot can now also be used to turn a paragraph into one that is meant for a specific language or market. For example, for a paragraph that has a UK version of English, with specific spellings for words or the use of the pound for currency, you could ask Draft with Copilot to turn that paragraph into one that is designed for a US English market.
Microsoft says it will be making improvements to Draft with Copilot over the next several months. Those improvements will include a way to reference and attach new content from other files to the selected content in Word. It added:
We are also exploring additional functionality to preserve the formatting of original selected content or direct Copilot to apply formatting to newly generated content and as other modalities and capabilities become available with Copilot these will become available for Draft with Copilot as well.
It will be interesting to see how these changes will help Word users in the future.