If you have been using Microsoft"s Copilot generative AI assistant to help with editing or writing Word documents, there"s a new update that might be very interesting to you. Microsoft has just announced that Copilot can now create summaries of much longer Word files compared to previous versions.
In a post on the Microsoft 365 Insider blog, the company stated:
One of the most used Copilot features in Word is Summarize this doc. To improve the experience, our goal has been to support longer document summarization, and your feedback confirmed that it was important to our customers as well. We’re excited to make this happen!
Now, you can summarize a document that contains approximately up to 80,000 words (depending on language), about 4 times more than Copilot was previously able to summarize.
This will likely be a huge help for people who use Word files for things like legal documents or financial records which tend to have huge word counts and file sizes.
In case you are unaware of how this feature works, you can just open up that long Word file, and then click or tap on the Copilot button on the Home tab. Then all you have to do is type in the text prompt Summarize this doc in the Copilot chat box and you should see that summary pop up. If you don"t like what Copilot created, you can try typing the same text prompt again to create a new summary.
This feature is currently rolling out for the versions of Word below:
- Windows: Version 2310 (Build 16919.20000) or later
- Mac: Version 16.78 (Build 23082801) or later
- Android: Build 16.0.16827.10000 or later
- iOS: Version 2.78 (Build 23082904) or later
All Copilot users on the web can now access this new feature as well for the web edition of the Word app.