Create a summary of your document with Copilot in Word

Ask Copilot to create a summary or find references

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Note: To use this feature, an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription and/or Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required. See Where can I get Microsoft 365 Copilot?

To learn more, see the section about how to ask Copilot for a summary. With the right licenses though, you'll see a collapsed summary at the top of your page, automatically available.

View and use the automatic summary at the top of the page

If you just received a lengthy document to review, you can save time by letting Copilot in Word help you distill it down to key points.

When you open a document, you can expand the summary and scan it to see what topics are in the document. If you're the author of a long document, you can use the summary to quickly see if the content is organized the way you want.

If you saved the document on OneDrive or SharePoint, you'll see that it's already generated. Otherwise, it'll generate when you select View More to see the full summary.

Shows a Word for the Web document open, with a collapsed summary at the top, above the text of the document.

Customize the summary or ask questions

If you want to customize the summary or ask follow-up questions about the documents, select Open in chat at the bottom of the summary and enter a prompt.

Use the Discussion tab to catch up on comments

Copilot saves time by letting you view all conversations in your document under the Discussion tab, so you can easily stay up to date without checking each comment.

View the top-level summary: At the top of your document, you'll see a summary that gives you an overview of all the discussions happening within the document.
See key conversation threads: Bullet points below the summary highlight the main topics people are discussing, so you can focus on what matters most.
Expand for more details: Expand the summary to view individual comments and suggestions for deeper insight.

See document details

Note: We're rolling this feature out slowly. If you don't see it yet, keep watching for it in an update (see Delivering continuous innovation in Windows 11 for more information).

For a quick view of key numbers in the document, or example questions you could ask to get other details, select the Insights tab. Maybe you can’t remember where you saw the earnings per share in an annual report, or you want to see all the region’s growth numbers that were mentioned throughout the document—but you don’t want to search for them individually. Check the Key numbers section to get a quick view and save time. Or maybe you want some inspiration for other document details that Copilot can help find. In that case, check the Suggested Q&A section. If you have more questions, you can scroll down to the bottom, select Ask Copilot more questions, and enter a prompt.

Shows the key numbers and Q and A's that you'll see if you select the "Insight" tab in the Word summary.

Control the level of detail in your summary

Note: This feature is currently only available in Word for the web. It will be coming to other platforms soon.

You can now set the default level of detail for the automatic summaries by scrolling to the bottom of a summary and choosing between Brief, Standard, or Detailed in the drop-down menu.

Shows a Word for the Web document open, with the summary expanded at the top. A menu that says "Brief" is expanded at the bottom of the summary, and other options include "Standard" and "Detailed."

Tip: For documents saved on OneDrive or SharePoint, the summaries are cached so that your computer performance remains as fast as possible.

Ask Copilot for a summary if you don't see one automatically

You can see the automatic summaries if your document was saved on OneDrive or SharePoint and you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot (work) license—or you'll see an option to generate a summary for documents saved elsewhere.

If you still aren't seeing a summary, you can ask Copilot to show you one.

Select Copilot from the ribbon to open the Copilot pane.
In the Copilot compose box, enter "summarize this document" or click on the suggestion option.

Want to learn more about a summarized idea? In Copilot's summary, select References to view citations that Copilot pulled information from inside the document.

Review the results

Review the summary Copilot generated. How does it flow? Is it ready to share? Or does it need a little more work? Often the first response isn't perfect. AI works best with a little back-and-forth conversation. You can get better results by providing more context and details about what you want.

Provide more context and details. Include some context and a few details in your prompts to get better results with Copilot. Who's the summary for? Why do you need it? How do you plan to use it? Try using prompts like these:

What should business decision makers know about <subject in your document>? Why is it important to understand these things?
I need to share the main points of this document with my teammates. Write a few paragraphs that include why these points are important to our company.

Are there any calls to action? What should we do next? With each prompt, Copilot scans the document again, and then generates a response. You can continue submitting prompts until you're pleased with the results.

Try suggested prompts. Copilot offers suggested prompts to try, or you can always type your own prompts for Copilot. With each response, you'll see one or more suggested prompts. Give one a try and see what happens.

Current limitations

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.
For Copilot to generate summaries, the reference content needs to have at least 20 words.
Copilot is currently limited to a maximum of around 1.5 million words or 300 pages when generating Detailed summaries.
Although Copilot takes the entire document into account, it currently doesn't always provide citations to later document content. We are improving this.

For more information, see Keep it short and sweet: a guide on the length of documents that you provide to Copilot.