Draft Documents with Copilot

Quick reference

• 00:04 We can use Copilot in Word to help us draft and edit documents.
• 00:08 And all of the same rules apply, our document must be saved to OneDrive, and
• 00:13 we must have autosave toggled on.
• 00:14 Now, the first thing you'll notice when you open up a Word document is that we now
• 00:18 have this little tag that says Draft with Copilot.
• 00:20 Notice the keyboard shortcut of Alt+I.
• 00:23 If we open this, it's going to open up a little window that's going to help us
• 00:27 draft a document from scratch.
• 00:29 So this is where we type our prompt in.
• 00:32 So I'm going to get Copilot to draft a document that outlines the benefits of
• 00:36 Microsoft Teams for effective collaboration and communication.
• 00:40 Notice we have a reference or file button just here, so
• 00:42 if you do have a file that you want to include you can select it from here.
• 00:46 Now, we're not going to do that in this case.
• 00:48 We're just going to check the Generate button and see what Copilot comes up with.
• 00:53 And off it goes.
• 00:54 And one of the things that I really like about this is that it will add in
• 00:58 formatting.
• 00:58 So you can see we have the title formatted and all of the headings and
• 01:02 bullet points are also formatted.
• 01:04 Once it's finished adding the information into your document, notice we still have
• 01:09 that draft a document window at the bottom where we can make further changes.
• 01:12 Now, notice this is showing version 1.
• 01:15 We could choose to discard it, we can regenerate.
• 01:18 So let's give that button a go.
• 01:19 We would generally regenerate if we aren't keen on the wording that Copilot
• 01:24 has used for the first version.
• 01:26 So now it's going through and it's regenerating that text.
• 01:29 And now notice in the little window at the bottom, it's saying version 2 of 2.
• 01:34 So this is cool because if we want to go back to the previous version,
• 01:38 we can do that and then we can choose to keep it.
• 01:40 Now, something else we can do is we can choose the tone from here as well.
• 01:44 For example, if I want this document to sound more professional,
• 01:48 I can just say make it professional.
• 01:50 I could type in make it casual, make it formal,
• 01:53 there's many things we could type into that.
• 01:56 So once again, Copilot is going to take that information, that instruction, and
• 02:00 it's going to regenerate the document.
• 02:02 And you can carry on working through this process until your document sounds the way
• 02:06 you want it to sound.
• 02:07 So I'm happy with that, I'm going to click on Keep it.
• 02:10 Now, aside from that little window that pops up,
• 02:13 we can also open up Copilot by clicking on the button on the Home ribbon.
• 02:17 And this pane is very similar to the panes that we've been using in
• 02:20 the other Microsoft applications.
• 02:22 Notice we have our suggested prompts underneath, so
• 02:25 I'm going to choose Summarize this document.
• 02:28 Now, this type of prompt is great,
• 02:29 particularly if you have a long document in front of you.
• 02:32 Imagine a document with hundreds of pages.
• 02:35 If we just want to very quickly summarize the main points, we can select
• 02:39 that prompt or simply type in, summarize this document into the prompt area.
• 02:43 And what it will do is it will cherry-pick out of that document those key points,
• 02:48 list them out like it has done just here.
• 02:50 And then we can copy those into an email or
• 02:53 even copy them into the document as a kind of summary section at the bottom.
• 02:58 Now, I want to make my summary a bit shorter.
• 03:00 So I'm going to use that suggested prompt, make the summary shorter.
• 03:04 So we're going to get something similar.
• 03:06 Those summary points, they're just going to be a little bit more concise.
• 03:10 And there we go.
• 03:11 I'm happy with that, so I'm going to click on the Copy button, I'm going to go to
• 03:15 the bottom of my document and I'm just going to paste those in.
• 03:18 And just to separate this off from the main document,
• 03:20 I'm going to add a quick heading, I'm just going to call it Summary.
• 03:24 So that's how you can use Copilot to draft a new document and
• 03:30 refine the results until you get exactly what you want.

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