Getting through massive documents of hundreds or even thousands of pages is a seriously tedious task, especially if you are running out of time. Fortunately, Microsoft has a solution for that problem. The company announced that summarization capabilities in Word have been upgraded so that users can generate summaries of significantly larger files—up to ten times larger.
Previously, Copilot in Microsoft Word could summarize a document with up to 300 pages. Now, detailed summaries are available for documents with up to 3,000 pages in a single file.
The updated document summarization is now rolling out to Microsoft 365 subscribers with desktop and web apps. You can access this feature by opening a document and clicking the Copilot button on the Home tab. Then, simply ask Copilot to generate a summary, after which you will be able to select the size: brief, balanced, or detailed. This is another new feature coming in this update, as Microsoft says the previous summarization was not good enough for certain documents:
We heard from many of you that the standard key-point summary at the top of the document is great for most documents, but not all. Some documents warrant a more detailed summary to better understand context, gather important information, or communicate effectively with your team. Additionally, some of you work with very long documents – up to thousands of pages – and want to ensure that the main points are represented in the summary.
A brief summary is just a short paragraph about the document. A balanced summary provides some key points, while a detailed summary generates a long-form recap of your document, which might be a preferred option when working with big documents.
If you are a Microsoft 365 subscriber, you can try the updated document summary in Word for Windows version 2503 (build number 18623.20042), Word for Mac version 16.96 (build 25031738), and Word for the Web.
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