How to Use Copilot in Microsoft Word

All right. So let's do a little bit with Word before we take our lunch. In Word, you might open up a Word document that you want to summarize.

You can have it review your writing. Obviously, you can write new stuff. It could be based on a prompt that you type, or you can base it on a reference file to say, let's write something new based on some other file.

This is where it gets interesting, because if you have a certain proposal or report, and you're like, I want to write a new thing similar to this other thing, it can look at that and try to keep the same formula for the way that it's written. So, let's say, for example, with summarizing. If I go to Word, now remember, files must be stored in OneDrive, just like in Excel, the same applies to Word.

So I'm going to open up a file from my Mac and then save it into OneDrive. So here, I've got this Hawaii file. And I'm going to save it into OneDrive, online locations.

I don't know, got to go here. Yeah, I'm going to save it into there. Oh, I accidentally changed the names.

This was called Hawaii. Okay. Oh, they added a new Copilot summary button there.

So everything I teach here in this class should always be thought of as AI is changing rapidly. And so anything we teach today, who knows what it's going to be like in a month from now. Now they have a new, large summary button that wasn't there before.

I can just open the summary. Okay, they make that simple. So here they start to give the summary.

And if I want to read more, I can view more. So here they give a summary. So I don't have to read through all of that text.

I can get a quick summary. They also provide footnotes of where they're pulling those particular parts from. I could copy that summary if I wanted to, or I could open it in the chat if I want to chat with it further and get more specific.

If I click open in chat, that's like clicking the little Copilot button over here, which I could have also clicked on Copilot to open it up and said to give me a summary. And you can be more specific there to say, like, give me a two-line or two-sentence summary of things. The Copilot panel is not loading here.

Let's see why that's not loading here. Oh, there we go. Now it's loading.

So here I could say, if I want to be more specific, summarize this in two or three bullet points. And I could be more specific. Oh, actually, that's weird.

That was my previous file name. It is looking at the wrong file. Let me close this file.

I accidentally clicked on the wrong file name, but let me just reopen this. Okay, this is why. Okay.

Let's open this up. Summarize this in three bullet points. Also, as far as speed goes, speed can vary throughout the day depending on usage.

For example, if it's a busy day with many people using Copilot, things can take longer. If it's a lighter usage day, things can go faster. It's not always based on internet speed, although it can partially be based on internet speed.

But if you know, sometimes it'll go faster, sometimes it'll go slower. All of these things are being done on the cloud. So, depending on how fast and how overworked they are, sometimes it'll take longer, sometimes it'll take less time.

This is taking longer than usual, but sometimes that happens. If it happens, sometimes you just stop generating and try again to see if it goes faster that time. It could be because lots of people are using Copilot.

That’s much faster. There we go!

If it’s taking an unusually long time, something may have gotten hung up. Just stop it and try again.

So, there we go. We've got a quick little summary versus the quick Copilot summary right there. So, you can always interact with that over here.

Okay. Let's say there's writing you want to improve. I think, actually, yeah, actually, I can even just do that right here.

How could I improve this writing? When we get back from lunch, we'll do it on a different file, which is this quick thing before we break for lunch. Here, we'll see it on a longer document. So, here, we're saying, over here, 'Your writing is informative and detailed.'

Here are a few suggestions: clarity and conciseness, engagement, structure. So, they give us some specific things.

Then, here, they're providing us a rewritten version that we could copy and use if we want to. So, it's almost like we're using the chat, but we're having it here. Right? And I'm going to switch to another document that has some problems with it.

So, I'm going to close this one and open up from my computer. I've got this writing to improve. So, notice, I've got some spelling mistakes.

And I can go through and manually fix these, of course. But what are some things we can do? So, we could say, are there any grammatical errors? How could I improve this document? If I open up my Copilot over here on the right, notice, they give you like, summarize this document. Is there a call to action? And also, there's a 'View Prompts' button down here.

If I click 'View Prompts, ' this is what we saw earlier. They have these suggested prompts.

It's taking a moment to load.

So, this is like what we saw earlier. So, if you're thinking about, 'What can I do with AI?' and you want more ideas, you can view these prompts by your job type, by your task. And if there are certain ones you save, like your bookmarks, then you could look at the saved prompts for ones you regularly use.

Of course, you can always type anything you want, but that's just to give you some ideas. So, how can I improve this document? Yeah, you can just go in and access that saved one. It's like bookmarking it, just to give you quick access to it.

So, here, they're giving you some ideas to say, these are things, you know, they're giving you, in this case, spelling mistakes. They're also saying, these are things you could do. And if I copy that, I'm just copying this text.

It's not like I'm copying the improved version, right? This is just saying, okay, these are things for you to go and do, in this case. Or are there any grammatical errors? Yes, there are. So, it's saying, okay, there are spelling mistakes, grammar things, and punctuation.

So, this is if I'm chatting with it over here as a chatbot. The other thing you can also do is say, let me go into an area, and notice there's a little Copilot button over here. So, this is over here.

I'm chatting with the chatbot. It's looking at my stuff. It's analyzing it.

But the other thing I can do is say, well, let's maybe select this area here. And then there's a 'Rewrite with Copilot.' And I can just have it automatically rewrite it.

And it's suggesting some changes. So, they're suggesting kind of changing some stuff around. If I want to replace it, I can say to replace it.

Or I could insert it below. Because maybe I want to keep this copy and have another copy below. But also, they give me a couple of different alternatives here.

So, I can flip through. They've rewritten it three different ways. And I can see which one of them I like the most.

I can review them. Now, that was the auto rewrite. If there's something specifically I want to kind of change, I can say, like, make it longer and have it suggest those changes.

So, now that made it longer, I could have it try again. I can hit regenerate if I don't like these options. I can hit regenerate.

So, it tries it again. Gives it a different try. And if I like it, I can hit replace.

So, it actually changes that content. Sometimes you'd have to put in extra lines or something to create your paragraphs. So, you can select, you know, a little bit of text or a lot of text.

And you could either automatically rewrite it. Or you could do some sort of prompt. So, I could select this and write some sort of prompt of what do you want to do? Maybe I say fix spelling and grammar.

And hit generate. Yeah, it's a good question. Do they look at the whole file or just the selected text? I don't know.

They don't really say whether they look at the bigger picture or not. I have a feeling they just look at what's selected.

They don’t say they consider anything else. Just because, in terms of processing, the more they have to process, the more they'd have to consider. So, I don't think they do. But they don’t explicitly say if they do or not. Yeah, that might work.

I don't know. Even if you say it, I don’t know that it would necessarily do that. It might think it’s doing it, but might just not do it. It might think it’s doing it, but it might be hallucinating.

I have a feeling, because we selected something, I think it just processes what we select. There's nothing that indicates to me that it looks at the rest of the document other than just what we have selected. I can't say for sure.

Some of this stuff is a little bit of a black box that you don't know exactly what's happening behind the scenes. But there's nothing that makes me think that they’re looking at the bigger document in the context of this. And here they're giving me a preview to say, okay, this is what you had.

And notice they did fix the spelling mistakes, the grammar. So, see how going into the document actually changes it versus using the chat on the side? The chat on the side was more like you're using the chatbot, whereas here using this. So, let me discard this change.

Maybe I don’t want that change, right? So, if I undo all of this stuff I just did here, when you go into the chatbot on the right, you're using the chatbot to get answers. But because of the integration, if you select the text here and say, let me do something here, like write this, fix spelling and grammar, you know, over on the right, it just told you what was wrong. It wasn’t actually making the changes.

Here, I actually wanted to rewrite this stuff with that. And it actually made the change versus just telling me about what it could do to do that. So, you can do that for the whole document.

Or, if I undo that, I could also just do it for one thing. And, you know, maybe if I want to change this, I could say make this more friendly. And a bit longer.

And it will rewrite it. And also, it would use proper words. So, as it rewrites things, I'm sure it would fix spelling mistakes and stuff, because it’s not going to use misspelled words.

I could give additional back and forth, but I’m seeing this is what the new thing is. And if I like it, I could just say keep it. So, this is what I had before.

And this is the new part. So, you know, if I want to incorporate anything, you know, and then once I'm done with the old part, I could just delete that old part and get rid of it. Whereas the plugin chatbot, it gives you the choice when you insert it.

This chatbot wasn’t actually letting me, like, I could copy it and paste it if I wanted to. But it wasn’t actually, like, actually rewriting it directly in there. It would just give me the result.

Like, here, I could copy and paste these things, but I couldn’t have it actually, like, I’d have to copy and paste it. Right? Like, if I said, like, what are the spelling mistakes, it would tell me what they are. But I’m not going to go and manually do those.

Right? Unless I want to check somebody's work. Like, if I just want to see, like, hey, I'm hiring a new person. And I want to see, like, I'm going to give them a test, maybe.

And say, like, fix this document. And I want to see if they missed things. Then I might know the mistakes that were made.

And I want to test them. And I want to see, like, hey, is there anything left that they didn't catch? Because I just want the information. If you want to do things, come out here and use this little AI button to write it.

Yeah. If you're doing this little button here, yes. So, well, no, you don’t have more control there.

Because you're saying it prompts. So, you don’t get more control on the right. You get the same prompts here that you do on the right.

So, let’s say I select this. And I'll say rewrite the selected text to be longer. Let’s see if it can actually do that.

So, it could look at the selected text, rewrite it to be longer. But now I have to copy and paste it into the document. If I did that over here and said, make this longer.

First of all, I don’t have to say select the text. So, in a case like this, I think it’s easier to do it here versus in the chat on the right. Right? And I could hit regenerate.

There's not a regenerate button over here. You actually get more integration easier if you do it out here. Yeah.

So, you have both options. But they kind of do different things. And sometimes people get used to the chat on the right.

So, they’re just thinking of doing that. But this is where it’s different. Because when you're using these integrated buttons, this is where you can do it more directly.

So, you want to be looking for those things. It's not just this button over here on the right. Yes, that's useful.

But you want to look for other places in the interface of where do they incorporate chat as a copilot into the actual app to maybe give you more flexibility, make things easier for you. Don't just look for that chat bot on the right. You can say, am I consistently using the same tone through this document? This would be more of a question here.

Am I using a consistent tone? Yes, your document maintains a consistent tone. It's informative and engaging. With a focus on the transformative.

Hey, stop moving. Let it finish writing its thing. All right.

You effectively balance technical details with accessible language, making the content understandable and interesting for a broad audience. Here are some examples that illustrate this consistency. So, they go through and give me some examples.

Would you like any further adjustments or additions to ensure the tone remains consistent? So, I could follow up with additional stuff if I wanted to. So, this was the working in the document versus the chat that I just showed. Same button there.

Correct spelling and grammar like I showed. Make it more optimistic. Make it shorter.

Those are all doing it by selecting something and doing it this way. Now, I think where things get interesting is you can write from a prompt. Right? So, let’s say, for example, if I create a document, notice here, I can say, let’s draft, right? It says select the icon or in this case, command this slash.

On Windows, it would be regular slash, the other slash. Or click this little button here. So, you could describe, give it a prompt of something you wanted to write.

So, let’s say, write five paragraphs on the impact of EV battery mining. Write five paragraphs on the impact of EV mining. Generate.

So, it has the knowledge of ChatGPT filled in, right? All that pre-training that it has. And it can search the internet as well. So, it can kind of do this research for you.

You can give it follow-ups, like, you know, use more bulleted lists. So, then we’ll go through and kind of use more bulleted lists, which I kind of like. Or maybe use shorter, more short paragraphs.

Things like that. And so, you know, if you get something you like, you can keep it and then go from there. But what I think is very interesting is the idea that, yes, you can have it write something completely from scratch.

But what if you have a document that is something that you’ve created the document kind of similar to it before or you found something within your company and you said, I’ve got this file that I want you to reference. And I want you to create something similar to this using the same kind of general format and try to replicate that. That’s where this kind of gets interesting.

So, let’s say I have a file in my OneDrive or SharePoint because everything has to be in those. So, let’s see here. Which one do I want? I’ve got this business plan.

Okay. So, I’m going to open this up in the business plan. I’m going to open this up in Word so we can see this.

So, this could be a file that maybe you found online, you found within your company. Wherever you got this file, if there’s a file that you’re like, hey, this is very similar. I want to create a similar document with the same kind of things, but for a different company.

Like this is a business plan. So, maybe I want to give it information about my company and I wanted to use this business plan format and create another document that’s very similar to this. So, I’m going to save this into my OneDrive so it’s accessible.

I’m going to put this into my OneDrive here. So, that’s available. Close up my other files here.

And so, now let’s say I want to create a social media marketing company that focuses on short-form video. Now, if you’re creating a business plan, you’d have to give it more details. Obviously, this is very generic.

A real business plan would need more details, targets, and things like that. But, just to keep this short, just kind of for this demonstration, if I create a new file here, I’m going to save as into here as Dan’s business plan for social media marketing. And so, I’m going to describe what I want to do.

Create a business plan for a social media marketing company that focuses on short-form video. Normally, obviously, I’d have to give it more details than this to fill in like, you know, profit targets and milestones and various different things. But, I could reference a file here.

And, let’s see here. Reference a file. And, I’m going to start typing, what was that called? That was called business plan, right? Business plan.

There we go. So, you start typing in the name of the file. I wish there was a browse button that you didn’t have to know, that you didn’t have to remember the name of the file.

But, you have to remember the name of the file. You start typing, it kind of searches, and then you can choose the file. There’s not like a browse.

You just have to start typing. I’m hoping they’re going to add a browse button at some point. So, now it’s referencing that.

And, they have to be stored in OneDrive for you to reference them. And then, I can generate it. And, let’s see what it does.

That file had a table of contents. It’s adding a table of contents that matches. The executive summary, the company overview, mission statements.

All of these things were things that were in that business plan. Now, I know it doesn’t match the formatting and everything exactly. But, as far as content goes, it is following a lot of the kind of text formats of that other file.

It even created a table and completely made up numbers. Now, obviously, I’d have to put in real information here. But, as far as the format goes to kind of get started, you know, a little bit about the business.

I mean, I gave it a very, very generic thing. But, as far as like a type of like, hey, this is a start, go fill in stuff. It’s kind of amazing how it tried to follow that same kind of general format.

Let’s just see how good it did that business plan. And, just see how close it got. I know it didn’t keep the design.

But, in terms of just the format of stuff. So, there was a table of contents here. Let’s check out the table of contents.

Executive summary, company overview. But, like the same table contents. So, all the same order.

There’s an introduction. Notice how it tried to keep like paragraph, bullet points, executive summary. Now, part of this is I didn’t give it enough information for it to fill everything out because I was too generic about things.

Obviously, if you’re writing a business plan, you need to give it more details about your business plan. But, it did. These are subheadings.

Kind of like that. They made them subheadings instead of bullet points. And then, you can go in and fill out more stuff.

So, it did try to keep very close to the same format. Operating plan. Some things it moved over just exactly as it is, waiting for you to fill out the details.

Some of the stuff is just direct copy and pasting. Probably because I didn’t give it enough information to write a complete business plan for everything that I need to do. Right? So, in this sense, because some of these things are just directly brought over, where maybe there’s some parts that it could fill in the blank if I had given it more details, this could help to try to keep some of the tone of what you had previously done, the structure of what you had previously done.

This could be any document. Right? Yeah, it doesn’t have to be a document you created. It could be any document, one you find online, one within your company, just any file.

It’ll try to create some writing in a very similar fashion to that. So, I mean, anything that you create, technically, whether you say copyright or not, there is copyright implied. Now, as far as court protections go, unless you legally file a copyright, it’s hard to win in lawsuits unless you filed a copyright.

Copyright is kind of automatically given, but you might not have the court protection if you didn’t literally file a copyright on that thing. So, just saying the words copyright, I mean, everything is copyrighted, whether you say it’s copyrighted or not. As far as legal protections, can you sue somebody for that? Well, if you don’t actually file a copyright, then to some extent, your legal protections are limited because you didn’t file a copyright.

Most people don’t file a financial copyright for everything they do because it costs too much money, too much time, except for the very important things that they do. Then they might file a copyright for those things.