How it works
Install the PlotLens Word add-in
PlotLens is listed in the Microsoft Store. In Word, go to Home > Add-ins, search for PlotLens, and click Add — or open the listing at marketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA200012216 and click Get it now. It appears as a sidebar panel in your editor.
Validate the document body against your Story Bible
The add-in reads the paragraphs in the document body and checks them against the Story Bible of the PlotLens project you choose.
Review findings in the sidebar
Continuity issues appear in the sidebar, and in the document they are anchored to the text they reference.
What Aria needed
No more copying to another tab for validation
The PlotLens sidebar lives inside Word. Write, validate, and review without switching tools. Findings are anchored in the document to the text they reference.
Get started
Install the PlotLens add-in
PlotLens is listed in the Microsoft Store. In Word, choose Home > Add-ins, search for PlotLens, and click Add — or open the listing at marketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA200012216 and click Get it now.
Open the PlotLens sidebar
Click the PlotLens icon in your Word ribbon to open the validation sidebar.
Write and validate in one window
Your manuscript and validation findings live side by side. No tab switching required.
Limitations
PlotLens is listed in the Microsoft Store (marketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA200012216): in Word, go to Home > Add-ins, search for PlotLens, and click Add. Admins can deploy the listing org-wide with Centralized Deployment in the Microsoft 365 admin center instead of installing it per person. A tenant that blocks the Microsoft Store for add-ins can still sideload the manifest at https://microsoft.plotlens.ai/manifest.xml directly, following Microsoft’s own sideloading instructions for the platform.
An integration session lives for 24 hours and heartbeats automatically while Word is open. If a session goes more than 24 hours without a heartbeat, the next request returns 401 and you sign in again from the task pane. Each session also enforces a maximum content length set by your plan and a requests-per-minute limit; validation requests over the size limit are rejected rather than silently truncated, and the Word client backs off on its own when it hits the rate limit.
Word supports roughly 5,000 content controls per document. When PlotLens reaches that ceiling, the oldest annotations are dropped to make room for new ones — so on a very long manuscript with a large number of findings, the in-document annotations are a moving window rather than a complete set. The task-pane list is not subject to that limit. If your team drops below the Plus tier mid-session, active sessions finish their 24-hour window and new sessions are blocked until you upgrade.
Microsoft Word is where millions of writers draft their manuscripts. PlotLens brings narrative intelligence directly into your Word environment with a sidebar add-in that validates continuity and catches contradictions without leaving your editor.
The add-in reads the paragraphs of the document body. How tracked changes (pending insertions and deletions) are handled when the add-in reads a document with Track Changes on has not been verified against a real Word host, so do not rely on it: accept or reject pending changes before you validate. A .docx you upload to the PlotLens web app is different and documented: pending tracked changes and hidden text are left out, table and text box text is read, and headers, footers, and footnotes are not.
Ready to add PlotLens to Microsoft Word?
Start free — no credit card required.