Microsoft adds Agent Mode for Word/Excel and Office Agent in Copilot

Microsoft on Monday began rolling out two new artificial intelligence features inside Microsoft 365 Copilot that let AI take multistep actions inside Office apps to build and refine documents and spreadsheets, the company said. Agent Mode, built into the web versions of Word and Excel, uses OpenAI reasoning models to plan tasks, run validation loops and adjust outputs until they meet a user’s goals. A separate Office Agent, available inside the Copilot chat experience, uses Anthropic models to produce Word documents and PowerPoint presentations from conversational prompts.

Microsoft said the features are available now through its Frontier preview program for commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot customers and for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers enrolled in Frontier. Agent Mode in Excel and Word currently runs in the web apps, with native desktop support planned for a later date. Using Agent Mode in Excel requires installing the Excel Labs add-in, Microsoft said.

Agent Mode in Excel can analyze data, choose and apply formulas, create new sheets, and generate visualizations automatically, Microsoft said, enabling users to build reports, financial models or household...