Quick Start: Your First Review in Word

A counterparty sends you their paper and you have to check every clause against your organization’s standards before you can negotiate. The Pactly Word Plugin does that pass inside Word: you run a playbook review, the AI flags each clause that deviates from your standards, and you act on it without leaving the document.

This is the short path from nothing installed to your first review. It gets you to a working result, then hands you off to the Word Plugin section, where each step is covered in full.

• Microsoft Word (Windows, Mac, or the web). The desktop app is best when you will send redlines back.
• A Pactly account with Word Plugin access. Access is gated by your Pactly role. If you sign in and the panel says your role doesn’t have access, contact your administrator or Pactly account manager.
• A counterparty contract to review, open in Word.

The plugin runs inside Word as a task pane. You install it once, and a Pactly button appears in your Word ribbon for every document after that.

1. Open Microsoft Word.
2. On the ribbon, click Home, then Add-ins (on some versions this is Insert, then Get Add-ins).
3. In the Office Add-ins dialog, search for Pactly and look for the entry published by Pactly.
4. Click Add and accept the permissions when prompted.

If your IT team has already deployed the plugin for your organization, you won’t need to do this. Look under Admin Managed in My Add-ins instead. For organization-wide deployment and manifest sideloading, see Installing the Word Plugin.

1. Open any Word document and click Pactly on the ribbon. The panel opens on the right side of Word.
2. Enter your email. Pactly reads your email domain and shows the right next step: your password, or a single sign-on button if your organization uses Microsoft sign-in.
3. Sign in. If your account has two-factor authentication, enter the 6-digit code from your authenticator app after your password.

The plugin uses the same account as the Pactly web app, so you sign in once per session. The full sign-in detail, including single sign-on, the authenticator code, and “I can’t sign in,” is covered in Signing in to Pactly.

Open the counterparty’s document in Word: a vendor agreement, an NDA, a service contract, anything you need to check against your organization’s standards. Keep the Pactly panel open alongside it.

For learning, any contract works. For a real review, use the actual document the counterparty sent.

A playbook review reads the whole document and compares it to a playbook, your organization’s stance on key terms. It reports each topic as a position with a compliance status.

1. On the plugin home screen, click the Review Contract card (“Analyze your document against your playbook”).
2. In the New Counterparty Contract dialog, enter a Name (at least 4 characters), pick the Contract type, and choose a playbook under Choose a playbook. The default playbook carries a Default badge.
3. Click Review. The plugin uploads the document and starts the analysis, which typically takes 3 to 5 minutes.

When the analysis finishes, the panel lists your positions, each marked with a status. A counter at the top tracks your progress, for example 3/22 positions completed.

Focus on Not compliant positions. Open one to see the evidence behind its status, your organization’s preferred clauses for the topic, and the AI’s reasoning. From there you can insert approved language with track changes, generate a fix, or record a justified decision.

That is a full review: you identified the clauses that don’t meet your standards and acted on them, with your edits in the document as tracked changes, ready to send back.

You have run your first review. The Word Plugin section covers each step in depth, plus everything beyond the first pass: tracking rounds, finalizing, the AI chat, and the clause library.

• Signing in to Pactly
• The Pactly Word Plugin
• Installing the Word Plugin
• Running a Playbook Review
• What is a Playbook?
• Word Plugin Not Loading