AI tools are excellent at reading long documents quickly: policies, contracts, reports, meeting transcripts. The trick is asking for the kind of summary you actually need.
Say what kind of summary
Ask for
Good for
5-bullet executive summary
Busy readers
Obligations / deadlines with section numbers
Contracts, compliance
Decisions, action items, owners, dates
Meeting notes
Risks for [our company]
Reviews
Explain like I’m new to this
Learning
Make it checkable
“For each point, quote the exact sentence that supports it, with the section number.” You can verify quickly, and invented points stand out because they have no real quote.
Very long files
If a file exceeds the tool’s limit, split it by chapter, summarise each, then summarise the summaries. Keep headings so references stay meaningful.
💡 Comparing versions: ‘List every change between A and B as a table: section, old wording, new wording, impact.’ It’s faster than reading both side by side.
⚠️ Don’t upload confidential documents to consumer AI tools. Use your company’s approved tool (for example Copilot with your work account) or remove sensitive details first (Lesson 8 of AI for Office Work).
Practice
Run the three prompts on a public, non-confidential document.
📎 Practice files for this article
📄
Lesson 6 prompt worksheetCopy-paste prompts and exercises to try in ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini or Claude.
