How to Use AI in Word to Create and Edit Documents [Complete 2026 Guide]

Microsoft Word now comes with Microsoft Copilot built in, an AI assistant that can draft documents, rewrite paragraphs, and summarize reports. The catch changed in 2026. Microsoft retired the standalone Copilot Pro add-on, and support for it ended on August 1, 2026, so the $20/month upgrade people used to buy no longer exists. If you are not sure which version you have, our guide to what Microsoft Copilot actually is covers every tier and what each one costs.

Copilot now rides along with a Microsoft 365 subscription instead, from $9.99/month for Personal up to $19.99/month for Premium, the only consumer tier Microsoft gives extensive Copilot usage. For the wider picture of which version you have and how it behaves across the Microsoft apps, see our guide to using Microsoft Copilot across every app. The best AI tool to pair with Word right now is Fello AI. It creates fully formatted .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, and .pdf files directly from a chat conversation, gives you access to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini in one app, and works on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. You skip the copy-paste cycle entirely and get native files you can open in Word immediately.

The Key Takeaways

• Fello AI creates complete, formatted .docx files from chat for $9.99/month, half the price of Microsoft 365 Premium
• Fello AI Skills also handle Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and PDFs, making it a full Office companion
• You get access to multiple AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) in one app, so you can pick the best model for each task
• Copilot Pro is retired. Copilot in Word now needs a Microsoft 365 plan, $9.99/month Personal to $19.99/month Premium, and only works inside Office
• ChatGPT’s official add-in now runs inside Word on every plan, including Free, and switches on by default from October 1, 2026, but every message it sends is metered

What You Can Do with AI in Word

Before picking a tool, here is what AI can handle for your Word workflow today:

• Draft entire documents from a short prompt, complete with headings, bullet points, tables, and images
• Rewrite and improve any text with different tones, levels of detail, or styles
• Summarize long reports into key points, executive summaries, or bullet lists
• Format and structure plain text into tables, organized sections, and consistent layouts
• Proofread and edit for grammar, clarity, conciseness, and tone
• Translate sections or entire documents into other languages
• Analyze uploaded documents, extract data, and create follow-up documents based on existing files

The question is not whether AI can help with Word, it is which tool gives you the most for the least friction and cost.

How Fello AI Works with Word Documents

Fello AI is a Mac and iOS app that puts multiple AI models in one place. With version 6.5.0, it introduced Skills, a feature that generates native Office files directly from your chat. The Word Skill creates professionally formatted .docx files with proper heading hierarchy, tables, images, and consistent styling.

Here is how to create a Word document with Fello AI:

1. Open Fello AI on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad
2. Enable the Word Skill in the Skills menu
3. Type what you need, for example: “Write a 5-page project proposal for migrating our company email to Microsoft 365. Include an executive summary, scope, timeline, and budget estimate.”
4. Fello AI generates the document and delivers a downloadable .docx file
5. Open the file in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Apple Pages, or any compatible app

The output uses native .docx format with real formatting. No proprietary viewers, no web-only previews. You own the file and can edit every element.

What You Can Create with Fello AI’s Word Skill

The Word Skill handles practically any document type you would normally build from scratch. Here are the most common use cases.

Business documents. Proposals, quarterly reviews, business plans, and strategic reports with executive summaries, section headers, and data tables. Ask for a specific structure and Fello AI builds it with proper formatting.

Meeting notes and summaries. Paste your raw notes or bullet points and get an organized document with attendees, discussion points, decisions, and action items, all formatted and ready to share.

Project briefs and plans. Structured project documents with timelines, deliverables, milestones, and resource breakdowns. You can specify the level of detail and Fello AI adjusts accordingly.

Cover letters and resumes. Professional documents formatted for job applications. Describe the role, your background, and the tone you want, and Fello AI creates a polished, ready-to-send file.

Reports from existing data. Upload a .docx, .pdf, or spreadsheet and ask Fello AI to create a new document based on it. It can summarize, restructure, extend, or completely reformat your existing content into a new Word file.

Educational and academic content. Research summaries, lesson plans, study guides, and assignment outlines with proper citation formatting and academic structure.

You can also upload an existing .docx file and ask Fello AI to revise, extend, translate, or completely reformat it, all without leaving the chat.

Where Fello AI Fits Now That ChatGPT Runs Inside Word

ChatGPT’s add-in changed this comparison in September 2026. The sidebar reads the document you have open and writes into it, so the old complaint about pasting plain text into Word and rebuilding the headings, tables, and styling by hand no longer holds. What is left is a narrower question: the add-in only helps with a document you already have open in Word, it cannot reach other files on your computer, and every message it sends is metered.

Fello AI answers a different need. It produces actual .docx files with real headings, formatted tables, images, and consistent styling, with Word never entering the picture. The file is ready to use the moment you download it, and it opens in Word, Google Docs, or Apple Pages.

There are three other advantages worth knowing about:

Multiple AI models in one app. Fello AI gives you access to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and more without switching between apps or managing separate subscriptions. You can choose the best model for each task, use GPT for creative drafting, Claude for detailed analysis, or Gemini for research-heavy content.

Works across the entire Office suite. Beyond Word documents, Fello AI’s Skills also create Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and PDFs. If you need a quarterly report in Word plus a summary deck in PowerPoint plus a budget spreadsheet in Excel, you can create all three from the same chat conversation.

Half the price of Microsoft 365 Premium. At $9.99/month, Fello AI costs half of the $19.99/month Microsoft charges for Premium, the only consumer plan with extensive Copilot usage. Microsoft 365 Personal matches Fello AI on price at $9.99/month, but it rations Copilot to what Microsoft calls higher usage than free, and it locks you to Microsoft’s own model. Fello AI works independently, so you do not need any Microsoft subscription at all to create Word-compatible files.

Best Prompts for Creating Word Documents with AI

The quality of your AI output depends heavily on how you ask. These prompts work in Fello AI, Copilot, or any AI tool you use for Word documents.

Drafting a full document

“Write a [document type] about [topic]. Include sections for [list sections]. Use a [formal/casual/professional] tone. Target length: [number] pages.”

Example: “Write a quarterly business review for Q4 2025. Include sections for revenue summary, key achievements, challenges, and Q1 2026 goals. Professional tone. 3 pages.”

Rewriting existing text

“Rewrite the following text to be [more concise / more formal / simpler / more persuasive]: [paste text]”

Summarizing a long document

“Summarize this document in [number] bullet points, focusing on [key decisions / action items / financial data / main arguments].”

Creating a formatted table

“Create a comparison table with columns for [list columns] and rows for [list items to compare].”

Building a document from raw notes

“Turn these meeting notes into a formatted document with sections for attendees, discussion points, decisions, and action items: [paste notes]”

In Fello AI, these prompts generate a downloadable .docx file. In Copilot, they produce text inside your open Word document. In the ChatGPT chat window, they give you text you then have to copy into Word and format by hand, while ChatGPT’s Word add-in writes straight into the document already in front of you.

How Fello AI Handles Excel and PowerPoint Too

One of the biggest advantages of using Fello AI for your Office workflow is that it is not limited to Word. The same Skills feature handles all major Office formats.

Excel spreadsheets. Ask Fello AI to create budget trackers, data analysis sheets, project timelines, or any structured data and it delivers a formatted .xlsx file with proper formulas, headers, and styling. You can also upload an existing spreadsheet and ask it to analyze, extend, or restructure the data. See our full guide on using AI in Excel to create and edit spreadsheets.

PowerPoint presentations. Describe what your presentation needs to cover and Fello AI builds a .pptx file with slides, layouts, and content structure. It handles everything from sales decks to training materials to conference talks. See our complete guide on how to use AI in PowerPoint.

PDF files. Fello AI can generate PDFs for reports, invoices, and documents that need to look the same everywhere. It can also analyze existing PDFs, extract information, and create new documents based on the content.

This means you can handle your entire Office workflow from a single app. Need a Word report, a supporting Excel dataset, and a summary PowerPoint deck? Create all three in one conversation.

Where to Get Fello AI

Fello AI is available on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. You can download it from the App Store or learn more on the Fello AI FAQ page. The app costs $9.99/month and includes access to all AI models and all Skills (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF).

There is no free tier for the Skills features, but the app comes with a free trial so you can test document creation before committing. Fello AI has a 4.7-star rating with 27,000+ reviews.

Other AI Tools for Word

If Fello AI is not what you are looking for, here are the other main options. Each has trade-offs in price, convenience, or capability.

Microsoft 365 with Copilot ($9.99 to $19.99/month). The most seamless option if you want AI directly inside Word. Copilot can draft, rewrite, summarize, and chat about your documents without leaving the app, and Agent Mode has been the default Copilot experience in Word, Excel and PowerPoint since April 2026, handling multi-step editing tasks on its own. Since the standalone Copilot Pro add-on was retired, Copilot ships inside the consumer plans instead: Personal at $9.99/month ($99.99/year), Family at $12.99/month ($129.99/year, Copilot for the subscription owner only), and Premium at $19.99/month ($199.99/year), which is the tier with extensive Copilot usage and the advanced Researcher and Analyst agents. All three come with a one-month free trial.

ChatGPT (Free / $20 per month for Plus). OpenAI’s official add-in puts ChatGPT in a Word sidebar, and it reaches every plan including Free, which Microsoft’s own Copilot does not. It reads the document you have open and drafts, rewrites, and edits inside it, so a draft no longer arrives as text you have to paste and reformat, and from October 1, 2026 it is switched on by default. The catch is that it is free to install and metered to use: Word is billed as tokens at the API rates for the model you pick, drawn from the same allowance as Codex, so using it reduces what is left for those other features. It also cannot see your ChatGPT memory or chat history and cannot open other files on your computer. Our guide to the ChatGPT Word add-in covers the install and the running cost.

Grammarly (Free / $12 per month annual). Integrates directly into Word for real-time proofreading, tone detection, and rewriting suggestions. It is excellent for polishing existing text but cannot draft full documents. The free tier handles grammar and spelling. Grammarly Pro adds clarity, tone adjustments, and full-sentence rewrites.

Google Docs with Gemini AI (Free). If you are flexible about your word processor, Google Docs includes Gemini AI for drafting, rewriting, and summarizing. You can export as .docx to open in Word, though some formatting may shift on export.

GPT for Word Add-in (API costs). A third-party add-in by GPT for Work that puts an AI sidebar directly inside Word. Now that OpenAI ships a sidebar of its own, this one earns its place on model choice: it supports OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini through your own API key, and charges on token usage rather than against a chat plan’s allowance.

AI in Word: Pricing Comparison

Conclusion

AI in Word is no longer limited to spell-check. You can draft entire documents, rewrite content, create formatted tables, and produce ready-to-use Office files, all from a simple text prompt. The question is which tool fits your workflow and budget.

Fello AI at $9.99/month is the strongest option for most people. It creates native .docx files with real formatting, gives you access to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek and more in one app, and handles Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files too. If you want AI working inside the document itself, Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99/month goes deepest, at twice the price and with only Microsoft’s own model behind it, and ChatGPT’s free add-in gets you a sidebar in the same app for nothing, as long as you already own Word.

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