How to Summarize Articles Using Microsoft Word 2007

A cool feature in Microsoft Word is it lets you Automatically summarize articles and find key points of the document so you don’t have to read the entire thing. This saves you time and gets to the main points in a long document.

Note: Here I’m using Word 2007, but the feature is discontinued in 2010.

Summarize a Microsoft Word 2007 Document

Open the document you want to summarize and click on the Office button.

Then click Word Options.

Word Options comes up. Click on Customize from the sidebar.

Open the “Choose Commands From” dropdown menu and select the “All Commands” option.

Scroll down from the list of commands and find AutoSummary Tools, click on Add and click Ok.

Click on the AutoSummarize Tools button from the Quick Access toolbar and click on AutoSummarize.

The AutoSummarize dialog box opens and shows you different options. You can select the type of summary you want and the length of summary too.

The Highlight Key Points feature picks commonly used words and phrases from the document and highlights them.

Insert Executive Summary option will put the abstract of the document on top.

Create a new document option will use the summary above and paste it in a new document. Lastly, Hide everything option will paste the summary of the document and will remove any extra material.