If you are a document creator, you know how challenging it can be to produce high-quality, engaging, and informative content. You must research, write, edit, format, and proofread your work while keeping your audience and purpose in mind. Sometimes, you may need to generate new content from existing sources, update your content to suit different contexts, organize your content more clearly, or transform your content into different formats or languages.  

To support these workflows, it’s often easier to reference or build upon existing content. That’s why we’ve added the ability to draft with Copilot based on a specific selection in your Word doc. This will help to:   

Refine, rewrite, or paraphrase an existing selection  
Elaborate on, expand upon, or explain your selected content in more detail  
Enhance your content with statistics and additional information  

Here are some use case examples of how Draft on Selection can help you as a document creator. All you need to do is select the content you want to work with and choose the “Make changes” option that appears. 

Transform content into different formats or languages 

Sometimes, you may need to transform your content into different formats or languages, such as converting a paragraph into a bullet list, or translating a paragraph into another language. For example, you may need to take a list and expand it to a paragraph with some added context or take notes and turn them into well-formed thoughts with references and statistics.  

A computer screenshot showing a highlighted section of copy with a Draft with Copilot prompt window.

To do this, simply select the content you want to transform, and type in the prompt that describes the nature of the proposed change. Draft will use natural language generation to transform your content accordingly.  

A computer screenshot showing a highlighted section of copy with a Draft with Copilot output in the document and a confirmation UI.

Update content to suit different contexts 

Sometimes, you may need to update your content to suit different contexts, such as different audiences, regions, or purposes. For example, you may need to update your content to reflect a US audience’s needs, such as changing the currency, spelling, or cultural references. Instead of manually editing your content or using a generic find-and-replace tool, you can use Draft to update your content contextually. 

To do this, simply select the content you want to update, and type “update this selection to reflect a US audience” in the prompt. Draft will use natural language understanding and cultural awareness to update your content accordingly. For example, if you select the text “The programme costs £50 per month and includes access to a variety of online resources. You can cancel anytime without any hassle. Please note that this offer is only valid for UK residents.”  

Draft with Copilot may update it to: “The program costs $65 per month and includes access to a variety of online resources. You can cancel anytime without any hassle. Please note that this offer is only valid for US residents.” 

Organize content more clearly 

Sometimes, you may need to organize your content more clearly, such as adding headings, bullet points, or paragraphs. For example, you may need to take the text in a table and turn it into sections of content with section headers. Instead of rearranging and formatting your content manually, you can use Draft to organize your content automatically. 

To do this, simply select the content you want to organize, and type “take the text in this selected table and turn it into sections of content with section headers” in the prompt. Draft will use natural language processing and document structure analysis to organize your content logically and coherently. The example below illustrates transforming a table outlining various figures of speech into clear paragraphs structures with headings.  

A computer screenshot showing a highlighted section of a table and content from Copilot that was transformed from the table into rich paragraphs.

Try Draft with Copilot on selected content today 

Using Draft with Copilot on selected text, a list, or a table can help you with your content creation tasks. Whether you need to generate new content, update, organize, or transform your content, Draft with Copilot can do it for you with ease. You can use this to create high-quality, engaging, and informative content for any audience, purpose, or context, and save time, improve quality, enhance creativity, and increase productivity.  

This is our first iteration on draft on selected text, a list, or a table and you can expect continued enhancements over the coming months that will include: 

An affordance to more quickly and directly replace the original selected content with the new output 
The ability to attach and reference additional content from other files in this workflow; as you can already do using Draft with Copilot in blank document or new line scenarios. 

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.  

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