On Microsoft Word, you can enable an early preview of Copilot, and in this guide, you will learn how. Copilot is the new chatbot powered by AI technology designed for Office apps and other Microsoft products. The experience is similar to Bing Chat, but this one is tailored to work tasks, helping users be more productive and use their time more efficiently.
The Copilot features will depend on the application. In the case of Word, you can ask the chatbot to create content for a document on a specific topic or based on data available in another document.
Although it’s unclear when Copilot will roll out to everyone, XenoPanther on Twitter has spotted an early preview of the feature hidden in Microsoft Word Preview 16.0.16325.2000, which you can enable through the Registry.
Warning: It’s crucial to note that modifying the Registry can cause serious problems if not used properly. It’s assumed you know what you’re doing and created a full backup of your system before proceeding.
Enable Copilot in Microsoft Word
To enable the Copilot AI chatbot in Word, use these steps:
Open Start on Windows 11.
Search for regedit and click the top result to open the Registry.
Navigate to the following path:
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice16.0CommonExperimentConfigsExternalFeatureOverridesword
Right-click the Word key, select the New menu, and select the String Value option.
Name the key Microsoft.Office.Word.CoPilotExperiment and press Enter.
Double-click the newly created key and set its value to true to enable Copilot.
Click the OK button.
Once you complete the steps, launch or re-open Microsoft Word, and the Copilot experience should appear on the right side.
In the case that you want to revert the changes, you can use the same instructions outlined above, but on step 4, right-click and delete the Microsoft.Office.Word.CoPilotExperiment string inside the “Word” key.
If you are not using version 16.0.16325.2000 or higher release of the word processing app, you will have to enroll your Office installation to the Insider program. This process requires a Microsft 365 Family or Personal subscription.
To enroll in the Microsoft 365 Insider program, open Microsoft Word and navigate to File> Account, click the “Office Insider” menu, choose the “Join Office Insider” option, select the “Beta Channel” option, and click the “OK” button. After the enrollment, close the Office applications, open Word, and from the “Account” page, check for updates to make you have the latest preview version.
Source: Pureinfotech