If you have a big document and no time to check it, the latest Word feature will help you get it done. Microsoft announced that Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word can now read aloud document overviews, letting you listen to them on the go like podcasts or audiobooks.
In addition to reading aloud document overviews, Word lets you customize the experience with reading speed controls, the ability to jump back or forward to key parts of audio, pause, and even save the recording to OneDrive to listen to it later or share with someone else.
Voice document overviews are now available in Word on Windows (version 2506, build 18925.20138) and Word for the web. If you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, you can try it out by opening a document, clicking the Copilot button in the Home tab, and asking the AI to generate an audio overview. Once the overview is generated, Copilot will present you with a media player and playback controls, such as speed, jump forward/backward, and pause.
To save the recording, click the three-dot button and select "Save to OneDrive." Finally, you can access previously-generated overviews in your Microsoft 365 Copilot chat history.
For now, audio overviews work only in English (Microsoft promises to add more languages soon), and they require a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. There are also two other limitations:
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Audio overview only works for online files that are in OneDrive and SharePoint, and not local files that are on your system or external drives.
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Files require a minimum of 100 words to generate an audio overview.
In case you missed it, Microsoft recently announced that the new GPT-5 by OpenAI is now available in Microsoft 365 Copilot, giving you a more powerful and modern AI assistant to help you work with documents. GPT-5 is also available in the Microsoft Copilot app on computers and mobile devices.