Microsoft 365 Insider Blog:
Hi, Microsoft 365 Insiders! My name is Darren Doyle and I'm a Product Manager on the Word team. I'm excited to share with you some ways we have made referencing additional data in your Word documents better and easier with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Expanding reference capabilities with Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word
We heard from many of you that you’d like to be able to reference more data, more quickly, when creating, reviewing, and finalizing Word documents. We’re happy to share three improvements, developed based on your feedback.- Reference folders when using Copilot. Up until now, when using Copilot, you could reference files, emails, and even meetings, but had to add them one by one. Today, we are enabling you to reference a whole folder (stored on OneDrive or SharePoint). NOTE: Copilot will use the 10 most recent files as the basis of the content it generates.
- Support for larger documents in Word Copilot. We continue to expand the size limits of what we support and we are expanding our ability to referencing large documents up to 1.5 million words or 3000 pages.
- More files can be referenced in Draft with Copilot in Word. You can now reference up to 20 items such as files, emails, and meetings when using the Draft with Copilot command.
How it works
- To reference a folder as part of a prompt, type a forward slash (/) or select the paperclip icon, select the Upload icon, and then select Browse files from the cloud.
- In the file picker window, choose the OneDrive or SharePoint folder you want to reference, and then select the Attach button.
- To test the improved ability to reference large documents, point to one or more documents totaling up to 1.5 million words or 3000 pages, and review the output generated by Copilot.
- To reference more files when writing a prompt, select the paperclip icon, and then select up to 20 files.
Availability
The ability to reference a folder is available to all Word for the web users and coming to Word for Windows and Word for Mac users with an Enterprise Copilot license (learn more about licenses for businesses) in July 2025.Other capabilities coming later in April 2025 in Word for the web, Word for Windows, and Word for Mac:
- The ability to reference up to 20 files when drafting a document with Copilot
- The ability to reference larger files (up to 1.5 million words or 3,000 pages)
Feedback
We want to hear from you! Please submit your comments and feedback by selecting Help > Feedback in Word or by using the thumbs up or down buttons. Source:
Expanding reference capabilities with Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word
Find out more and better ways to reference additional data in your Word documents with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
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