Use ChatGPT

Go from idea to useful result

ChatGPT is an AI agent that you communicate with in natural language:

Choose how you want to work

Open Quick Chat to start an ordinary ChatGPT chat for a question or conversation. Use ChatGPT Work when you want to carry a larger task through to a reviewable result. For software development and technical tasks, use Codex.

Quick Chat is a good place to begin when you want to:

• Ask a question, search the web, or learn about a topic.
• Get an unfamiliar idea explained in simpler language.
• Brainstorm possibilities.
• Draft a message, outline, or piece of content.
• Rewrite something for a different tone or audience.
• Summarize notes, text, or a file.
• Compare options or think through a decision.
• Clarify what you need before starting a larger task.

When you need a substantial, reviewable result, switch to Work and describe the outcome you need. See Get started with Work for example tasks, prompts, and best practices.

Talk to ChatGPT naturally

Write as if you were explaining the request to a helpful colleague. State what you want to accomplish, add the details that change the answer, and describe the format you need. Your first prompt is only a starting point—you can add context or refine the result with follow-up messages.

You can continue with simple directions such as:

• “Make this shorter.”
• “Give me three different approaches.”
• “What assumptions are you making?”
• “Ask me questions before you continue.”

Learn more about prompting, or take the AI Foundations course for guided practice.

Bring the right context into ChatGPT

Give ChatGPT the information, tools, and instructions that matter to the task. You don’t need to provide everything—include the context that changes what a good result looks like.

Keep related work in a project

Projects help you organize ChatGPT around a topic, goal, or ongoing body of work. Keep related conversations, tasks, files, and instructions in one project when the work will continue over time or depend on the same context. Learn more about projects.

Attach files

You can upload or attach documents, presentations, spreadsheets, PDF files, images, and data exports. Use them when you want ChatGPT to:

• Summarize or compare them.
• Find patterns or inconsistencies.
• Extract, clean, or reorganize information.
• Use them as source material for a new file.

When ChatGPT creates a file, open the preview and check its contents. You can then ask for changes without starting over. Learn more about working with files.

Connect tools with plugins

Plugins can connect ChatGPT to the tools and information you use for work, such as Google Drive, SharePoint, Salesforce, or Gong. Use them when a task depends on information outside the conversation, actions in another system, or a repeatable workflow.

Plugin availability depends on your plan, workspace settings, and the plugin itself. Learn more about skills and plugins.

Make the result ready to use

Treat the first result as a draft you can inspect, challenge, and improve. A polished response can still be incomplete or wrong, so review the details that matter before you use or share it.

Check the work:

• Verify important numbers, names, dates, quotes, and claims.
• Open generated files and inspect every section, tab, slide, or page.
• Confirm that ChatGPT used the correct and most current source material.
• Look for missing information and unsupported assumptions.
• Ask for focused revisions when the result misses the goal.

Then ask ChatGPT to pressure-test the result:

• “What sources did you use for this?”
• “Cite the source for each major claim.”
• “What assumptions did you make?”
• “What information were you unable to access?”
• “What would change your recommendation?”
• “Check this result against the original files.”

If ChatGPT couldn’t access a source or complete part of the task, ask it to say so plainly. An explicit gap is easier to address than a confident guess.

Next steps