How to Use Claude AI in Microsoft Word Effectively (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Today, I'm gonna help you get set up and working with Cloud AI inside of Microsoft Word. And we'll see some use cases to help you write better documents and even work across Microsoft Office applications. Now, of course, Microsoft's Copilot AI is already built into Microsoft Word. And if you're looking for some advice on whether you should use Cloud in Word or Microsoft's own Copilot, I'll talk a little bit about that at the end of this video. Because I know most people just wanna start by diving in and getting Cloud set up. So to start, you will need a paid Cloud subscription, either Cloud Pro, Max, or one of the Enterprise subscriptions. Then you can go directly to Microsoft Word on Mac or Windows. In the home ribbon, click the Add-ins button, then search for Cloud. Now, if you're seeing two options, Cloud for Word and Cloud for Microsoft 365, they basically work the same. But Cloud for Microsoft 365 will set up the add-in for Excel, PowerPoint, and the other Office apps as well. Once you set up the add-in, you'll see the Cloud button in the home ribbon. That opens the Cloud panel, and then you just need to sign into your Cloud account. So what am I using this for? Well, of course, if you're starting with a blank document, you can ask Cloud to help you write a draft. You can simply describe the draft you want, but we can make it a little more interesting by attaching another file. It's as easy as dragging a file to the chat field. This is my company's employee manual. So Cloud will refer to that file, and then I can tell it to draft an operations manual using information from the document I attached. And after a moment, we get that draft. This is a good start, and I can keep working and add more content asking for Cloud's help to revise as I go. But when I work with Cloud in Word, I'm usually starting with an existing document. And in that document, I might ask Cloud for feedback or to help me make revisions. So I might say something like, give me your feedback on section one. And I prefer to not have AI write for me, so I might also add something like, do not offer me a rewrite, just give me feedback. And this can help me identify problems or find something that's missing, and then I can address it myself. Or if you want to ask Cloud to make changes to a document, you certainly can, but I recommend you take a look at two things before you do that. First, there's a menu in the chat field where you can automatically accept all edits, or you might want Cloud to ask for your approval before making any edits, which is a much more cautious way to work. The other thing I like to do, and this is purely optional, but you can go to the review ribbon and enable track changes on your document. I also like to set it to display all markup. That way, I'll be able to see and reverse any changes that Cloud makes. And with that set, I'll drop a spreadsheet into the Cloud chat, and I'll tell it to rewrite the section about paid time off using updated information from that spreadsheet. After a moment, Cloud shows me the edits that it wants to make, and I can choose to allow them. And since track changes has been enabled, all of those changes are marked in the document. I can review them later using Word's built-in change tracking tools, or I can switch the markup view to only show simple markup. So the changed areas are marked with a red line, but I don't have to see all of the details. Now, at this point, I want to loop back to that question. Why would I choose Cloud over Copilot? It's like a constant arms race between the different AI assistants. One will do something that the others don't do, and then another will add similar features, and they'll go back and forth. So they are similar in many ways. Of course, one reason to use Cloud is if you already have a Cloud subscription. If you're already paying to use Cloud Code or Cloud Cowork, why not take advantage of that same subscription and use Cloud inside of Word? And there are some very cool things that Cloud can do in Word that at least for the moment, Copilot does not do. For that, we'll start with Cloud skills. And if you've already used Cloud, skills may be familiar to you. If not, you can almost think of these as pre-written prompts, but that's really an oversimplification. When you start a new chat, we see that there are some skills listed that you can try. So if I wanted Cloud to flag any issues in this document, I can choose that skill and run that prompt. And after a moment, we see the issues that Cloud found in the document along with some recommended changes that I could allow or ignore. But there's a lot more depth here. Each skill contains specific parameters or instructions. Many of them can even direct Cloud to reach out to external libraries. If you start a new chat and type the forward slash key, you get a larger list of pre-made skills. And of course you can create and organize your own specialized skills. If there are any complex tasks that you do on a regular basis, you may want to build some skills and let Cloud streamline those jobs. Now, another very powerful thing that Cloud can do is work across different Microsoft applications. Cloud can see and pass information between Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. So first, go into any of those other applications. I'll go into Excel. And make sure you've installed the Cloud add-in like we saw earlier. Then in the Cloud panel, go to settings. And there's an option to allow Cloud to work across files. For teams and enterprise groups, your administrator will need to enable that. So check and make sure that this is enabled in each application. And then a menu will appear in the Cloud panel showing all of the documents that are open in the other applications. So Cloud in Excel can see that I have the employee manual open in Word. So here in Excel, I can open a spreadsheet. And this is that same spreadsheet that has the revised structure for vacation time in my company. And with this open in Excel, I can select some cells to focus down on specific relevant data. Then in the Cloud panel, I could tell it to make a summary graph of this information and add it to a new Word document. Or I could tell it to add it to the PTO section of the employee manual, which I already have open in Word in another window. I can see Cloud working in Excel. Then it will hand the task over to the relevant document in Word. And I can switch over to see the progress there. In this case, Cloud wants to make changes to the document. So I'll have to grant permission if I want to allow that. And now we have that summary graph generated from data in Excel added to the Word document. And this works in the other direction as well. You can start in Word and ask it to pull information from a spreadsheet that you have open in Excel. So there are some nice reasons to use Cloud in Word rather than using Copilot. But since we are making comparisons, I can think of a few reasons why people might prefer to work with Copilot instead. First, Copilot can generate images that you can add to your document. At least at the time of this recording, Cloud does not generate images. Second, the entire Cloud experience inside of Word happens within the Cloud panel. But if you use Copilot in Word, there are Copilot tools that are outside of the Copilot panel. For example, with Copilot, you can select some text and a floating panel appears that includes a Copilot rewrite tool. Or when you start a new blank document in Word, there is a Copilot field that you can use to generate a draft. And third, Copilot has a deeper integration with the Microsoft 365 system. So Copilot can easily reference documents, emails, messages, and meeting transcripts from your Microsoft account. And if you use Microsoft 365 in a business or enterprise, it can leverage information from your organization. This is known as Work IQ. And this also means that everything you work on with Copilot is governed by the same security features as the rest of your Microsoft 365 account. If you do use the Cloud add-in, then information from your documents may be shared from Microsoft's secure Azure system to Cloud's separate secure system. Now, of course, Cloud does have its own security features, but the fact that data is leaving one secure environment and moving to another could be a concern for your organization. And it may be something that your IT security team will need to evaluate. So there are some real benefits to using Cloud as well as some reasons to favor Copilot. It's good to know the variables and understand the trade-offs. Okay, one last thing I wanna share is a quick tip that may save you some trouble later. If you're using the Cloud panel, you can choose which AI model you want to use. Anthropic is always updating and publishing newer, faster, more powerful models. Just be aware, some Cloud subscriptions have usage limits. With a Cloud Pro subscription, whenever I hit the usage limit, I have to wait five hours for those limits to reset. But here's the trick. The newest AI models use up more credits. So if you have less sophisticated tasks or if you're not in a rush, you might choose an older model. For example, you might choose the Sonnet model rather than the newer Opus model. Then you won't burn through as many usage credits. And there's a link in the description for more information about how to manage usage credits in Cloud. So now you should be able to set up Cloud inside of Word and get right to work. I love that we have different options and you can choose between different AI assistants when you're working in Word and the other Office apps. For more on Cloud, Copilot, and much more, be sure to subscribe to this channel.