You don't have to open the chat panel to get Copilot's help. Two of its handiest modes live right where your cursor already is.
Selection AI
Highlight any text and the AI ✨ button appears in the floating toolbar. Pick a quick action:
Improve the writing
Make it shorter or longer
Change the tone
Translate it
Summarize it
Or type your own instruction
Copilot shows its rewrite as a diff with Accept and Reject buttons — nothing changes until you say so. Not quite right? Hit Run again to regenerate without retyping your instruction.
The inline /ai block
Type /ai in the slash menu to drop an AI block right at your cursor. Write a prompt, press Enter, and Copilot fills it in on the spot — perfect for "write a 3-bullet summary of the section above" without ever leaving the document.
When to reach for the sidebar instead
These inline modes are deliberately single-shot, so they stay fast. For anything that needs a few steps — researching a topic, reasoning across several documents, turning a messy paragraph into a clean table — open the sidebar Copilot. It can call search and web tools and work the problem in stages.