Expanding reference capabilities with Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word

Originally posted by Microsoft Apr 24, 2025 Uncategorized 0 Comments

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word now allows referencing entire folders, supports larger documents up to 1.5 million words or 3000 pages, and can reference up to 20 items. These features will be generally available by early December 2025. Folder referencing is available now for Word for the web and coming to other platforms in July 2025.

We heard that customers would like to be able toreference more data, more quickly, when creating, reviewing, and finalizing Worddocuments using the Draft feature with Copilot in Word. We’re happy to share three improvements, developed based on yourfeedback.

• Reference folders when using Copilot: Upuntil now, when using Copilot, you could reference files, emails, and evenmeetings, but had to add them one by one. Today, we are enabling you toreference a whole folder (stored on OneDrive or SharePoint).

  NOTE: Copilotwill use the 10 most recent files as the basis of the content it generates.

• Support for larger documents in Word Copilot: Wecontinue to expand the size limits of what we support, and we are expanding ourability to referencing large documents up to 1.5 million words or 3000 pages.
• More files can be referenced in Draft withCopilot in Word: Youcan now reference up to 20 items such as files, emails, and meetings when usingthe Draft with Copilot command.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): Rollout has begun and expected to complete by early December 2025.

How this will affect your organization:

This further extends the richness of grounding support for customers, enabling more complex scenarios with Copilot in Word that support a broader set of customer document and folder reference needs.

What you need to do to prepare:

The ability to reference a folderis available to all Word for the web users and coming to Word for Windows andWord for Mac users with an Enterprise Copilot license (learn more aboutlicenses for businesses) in July 2025.

Other capabilities coming later inApril 2025 in Word for the web, Word for Windows, and Word for Mac:

• The ability to reference up to 20 files whendrafting a document with Copilot
• The ability to reference larger files (up to 1.5million words or 3,000 pages

You can manage Copilot for specific apps or users through either the Microsoft 365 Admin center or Group Policy.

Message ID: MC1060858