Documents

Editing a document with AI

Change a Word document by describing the edit in plain English, review changes before they land, and recover if one goes wrong.

Spyral can edit Word documents for you. You describe the change in ordinary language and Spyral makes it in the document itself, keeping the formatting.

Opening the editor

Word documents show a pencil icon in their row actions in the library. You can also open a document and choose Edit in Spyral.

The editor has the document on the right and a chat panel on the left. Manual editing is switched on when you open a document, so you can type straight into the page. The button in the header reads Done while editing is on, and Edit when it is off.

A formatting toolbar sits above the document while editing is on: bold, italic, underline, font, size, colour, highlight, heading styles, alignment, lists, links and clear formatting. Select some text first, otherwise the toolbar tells you to.

Your typing saves itself. The header shows Saving, then Saved with the current version number.

Asking for a change

Type what you want into the chat panel and press Enter. Write it the way you would ask a colleague.

• "Change the share capital to 30,000 euros."
• "Replace every mention of Alpha S.à r.l. with Beta S.à r.l."
• "Add a paragraph after the second one confirming the financial year ends on 31 December."
• "Set the total row in the second table to 45,000."

Spyral shows what it is doing as it works, then a small card for each individual change it makes, with a plain description such as "Replace text" or "Update table cell".

Messages are limited to 2000 characters.

The starter suggestions under an empty chat fill in templates like "Delete paragraph 0". These count paragraphs from zero and are awkward to use. It is easier to describe the paragraph in words, for example "delete the paragraph about late payment interest".

Auto and Accept changes

The toggle at the top of the chat panel controls what happens to a change once Spyral has worked it out.

Auto is the default. Each change is applied to the document straight away.

Accept changes works the change out but holds it. You get Accept and Reject buttons and a banner telling you a change is waiting to be reviewed. Accept writes it into the document. Reject discards it.

Sending a new message while a change is waiting discards the waiting one, and Spyral tells you it has done so. Deal with the pending change first.

Comments are always added immediately, in both modes, because they do not alter the text.

Rewriting a passage in place

Select text in the document, between a couple of characters and roughly a sentence or two, and a small bubble appears with two options.

Edit with AI opens a box showing your selection. Describe how it should read, then choose Apply.

Comment adds a real Word comment anchored to the selection, which stays in the file when it is downloaded.

If the document has moved on since you selected, Spyral tells you the paragraph has shifted and asks you to select again. Do that and repeat the instruction.

Referring to other documents

Type @ in the chat panel to pick another document you have access to. Spyral reads it and can use it while making changes, which is how you say things like "update the manager names to match the RCS extract I attached".

You can attach up to ten documents to a message.

Every change is a version

Each applied change is recorded, so the whole editing session can be walked back later. See Versions, branches and restoring.

Downloading and printing

Download in the editor header gives you the document as it stands now, including every change made in this session. Print opens your browser's print dialog with only the document showing.

Messages you may see

• "The text to change wasn't found in the document." The wording you asked to change does not appear, often because of a difference in punctuation or spacing. Quote it exactly.
• "The document changed since this edit was planned." Someone edited it while Spyral was working. Ask again.
• "No change was needed." The document already says what you asked for.
• "Can't delete the last paragraph in the document." A document cannot be emptied completely.
• "The document file appears corrupted." Contact us.
• "You're editing very quickly, wait a moment and try again." Pause briefly and repeat the request.

Who can edit

Editing, restoring a version, and every AI change all need permission to update documents. Without it the pencil icon is greyed out and explains why when you hover it. Ask your administrator.