A new feature is coming to Microsoft Word for people using Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. This will soon allow users to add an AI-generated summary to their documents when sharing via OneDrive.
Microsoft’s file hosting service is widely used within businesses and by consumers, allowing people to share documents, large files and presentations directly from the Microsoft 365 software suite. According to MSPowerserthe feature will be available exclusively to users with Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, which requires a specific paid license (unlike OneDrive itself).
While this may be disappointing for those who want to try out the feature without having to pay for it, there is some hope that we’ll see it trickle down to Microsoft’s free Office for Web suite (formerly known as Office Online), which also includes Microsoft . Word and 5 GB OneDrive storage.
Quick and easy
It may seem like a fairly simple addition to Copilot’s handy AI-powered skills, but the new feature could be very useful. If you work in an industry where you’re bombarded every day with new documents from different people, for different tasks or projects, it can be difficult to not only keep track, but also remember what everything is about!
With that in mind, having a quick automated summary for each document means you can understand at a glance what the document is about. It also saves time for the person sending you the Word documents because he or she doesn’t have to write a summary themselves; Copilot does this for him. The summary is part of the email notification you receive when the document is shared, so you get the gist of what you’re looking at before you open the document.
While it’s a bit disappointing to see this feature behind the license, it’s not surprising: Microsoft has been gradually building out Copilot’s capabilities, giving 365 professional users the first taste of each new feature. Either way, it offers a glimpse into the future of Microsoft’s steady rollout of AI tools – and we hope to see more that prove to be as simple and useful as this one.