Need help with MS Copilot

[ramzam82]

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Hi everyone we own a restaurant and we have a paid MS Copilot license: we are trying to create an agent which can basically save us a lot of time. We have a word document full of food items and their respective allergens - at the moment we need to sift through this document and take whatever we need for events, parties etc...we want to be able to tell the agent which food items we want and in turn it creates a new word document with only these items retaining the same format of the original document. Any help would be appreciated, we tried doing it but it doesn't keep the formatting of the original document at all. Thank you in advance

[nameless-web-master]

Subject: Using Copilot to extract menu items while preserving Word formatting

Hi there — yes, this is definitely possible, and the key challenge you’re running into is how Copilot is being asked to work with the document.

The good news is: Copilot can preserve formatting, but only if it’s instructed to reuse the original structure rather than “recreate” the content.

Recommended approach (simple & reliable)

1. Keep one “master” Word document

   • This should contain all food items, allergens, headings, tables, fonts, spacing, etc.
   • Make sure formatting is consistent (styles or tables help a lot).

2. Open the master document in Word

   • Use Copilot inside Word (not Copilot Chat or Teams).

3. Use a prompt like this (very important):

   “From this document, create a new Word document that includes ONLY the following food items:
   [list items].
   Preserve the original formatting, layout, headings, tables, fonts, and spacing exactly as they appear in the source document. Do not reformat or rewrite text.”

4. Let Copilot generate the new document

   • It will usually copy the existing sections instead of rebuilding them, which keeps formatting intact.

If formatting still breaks

• Check whether items are inside tables or consistent headings — Copilot preserves tables much better than free text.
• Avoid asking Copilot to “summarize” or “rewrite” — those commands force reformatting.
• If you want this fully automated later, this can be taken further using Power Automate + Copilot Studio, but for now Word Copilot alone should solve your problem.

If you’d like, I can also help you:

• Create the perfect prompt tailored to your document
• Restructure the master menu once so Copilot works flawlessly every time
• Design a reusable Copilot agent for events/parties

Hope this helps 👍

[jame-xplore]

Copilot is great at summarizing and rewriting, but it is not designed to reliably copy complex Word formatting (tables, headings, styles, spacing) from one document to another. When it recreates content, it essentially “retypes” it, which is why formatting is often lost.

Best-practice solution that does preserve formatting

To keep exact formatting, you should reuse Word’s existing structure rather than asking Copilot to recreate the document.

Option 1 (Recommended): Use Word styles + Copilot

In your master Word document, make sure each food item uses consistent Word styles, for example:

• Heading 2 = Dish name
• Normal = Description
• Table = Allergen information

Then ask Copilot something like:

“From this document, extract only the sections for Chicken Alfredo, Vegan Lasagna, and Caesar Salad and place them into a new document, keeping the original styles and layout.”

This works only if styles are clean and consistently applied.

Option 2 (Most reliable): Template + manual selection assisted by Copilot

• Keep one master allergen document

• Create a Word template for event menus

• Use Copilot to:

  • Identify relevant items
  • List page numbers or section titles

Then paste those sections directly into the template → formatting stays 100% intact.

Key takeaway: Copilot is best at finding and selecting content, while Word should handle layout and formatting.