A banner of the blog series, Work Smarter: Copilot Productivity Tips

I was catching up with a small business owner who said one thing that keeps them up at night is a competitor they don’t see coming. For that reason, they mentioned spending a lot of additional time staying updated on not only the latest that’s happening in their industry, but the macro-trends that could affect their business, including the latest tools and technologies that they could potentially leverage to stay on the cutting edge, and more importantly, ahead of the competition. A lot of it involved late nights reading reports, journals, and documentation, on top of running a business. 

Fortunately, Copilot in Word simplifies the amount of time you might need to spend on reading, so you have more time to instead think about how you should act on it. Not only that, but if you’re instead trying to author a report, Copilot can also help you overcome writer’s block, or simply overcome the inertia of getting started! Let’s explore different ways you can use Copilot in Word to make this a reality. 

Tip 1: Copilot in Word automatically summarizes documents for you 

The first thing to note is Copilot in Word automatically summarizes new documents that you open, providing you with a summary of the document and the top takeaways from it.

A screenshot of Copilot in Word providing a document summary.

If the 30 seconds you spend reading the summary fails to intrigue you, that’s already time-saved. If it does catch your attention, you can click on Open in chat and Copilot will give a more detailed summary in the Copilot pane. 

Tip 2: Use the Copilot pane to chat with Copilot 

Not only does Copilot provide you with a more detailed summary, it also cites sources from the document and you can click on it to jump to that specific section to learn more or check for accuracy.

A screenshot of Copilot giving a more detailed summary in the Copilot pane with links to citations in the document

Furthermore, you can chat with Copilot about content in the document. For instance, you can ask it questions about specific sections. For instance, I put in the prompt, “Tell me more about the labor market shifts discussed in this document. How should I as a small business owner think about these shifts and what are possible actions I could to stay up to date with the trends?” 

Copilot first provides more information about the labor market shifts, but then also goes further to give me ideas on what I could do to stay ahead. 

A screenshot of Copilot providing insights and providing suggestions on next steps

Tip 3: Use the on-canvas Copilot experience to help you draft content

Finally, let’s say instead that you are authoring your very own report. You can also use Copilot to help you draft content into any section of the document using the Draft with Copilot feature. 

A screenshot of the Draft with Copilot prompt pane

For example, you can ask Copilot to “Draft a 2-paragraph executive summary as an introduction to this document”. Alternatively, you can also edit specific sections of written content by highlighting it and asking Copilot to make changes or rewrite it.

Has Copilot in Word helped save you time? We’d love to hear about it! 

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