Microsoft has expanded its Copilot AI assistant to Office. Copilot is designed to work alongside your Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, providing assistance and producing polished final versions.
The new features were rolled out on Monday for users in Microsoft’s Frontier program. The program is open to commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot customers and individuals with a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription.
Three AI feature sets are now available in Office:
- Agent Mode in Copilot for Excel
- Agent Mode in Copilot for Word
- Office Agent
Agent Mode in Copilot for Excel can use formulas and more
In Excel, the AI agent can autonomously analyze data, use formulas, and create new visualizations of spreadsheet data. Microsoft stated that it uses OpenAI’s latest reasoning models, automatically switching between models, including GPT-5, based on the context.
Microsoft shared an example prompt in its announcement blog: “Run a full analysis on this sales data set. I want to understand some important insights to help me make decisions about my business. Make it visual.”
Users will need to install the Excel Labs add-in to use Agent Mode in Copilot. Agent Mode is currently only available on the web, with a desktop version expected soon.
More Microsoft news
- Inside Microsoft’s Real-Time War Against Cybersecurity Threats
- Project Ire: Microsoft Tests AI That Autonomously Detects Malware
- Microsoft Targets ‘Critical AI Talent’ from Meta to Dominate Next AI Breakthroughs
- Windows 10 Support Ends Soon, Though Extended Security Updates Offers Are Available
Agent Mode in Copilot for Word can create to-do lists based on documents
In Word, Copilot can summarize documents or extract specific information, according to Microsoft. Agent Mode enables the AI to update data tables, generate next steps based on a project document, or apply edits across an entire document.
Microsoft calls this “vibe writing,” but its capabilities aren’t much different than the suggestions GPT-5 provides for next steps. Agent Mode in Copilot for Word conveniently sits within Word itself, though, so it might be a time-saver for Microsoft power users.
Like Agent Mode in Excel, Word’s Agent Mode is currently only available in the web version. Microsoft said desktop functionality is coming soon.
Do you like to work in the chat window? Office Agent in Copilot adds functionality
Separate but related is the Office Agent in Copilot, which Microsoft says was developed in response to demand for a chat-first approach to work. Within the Copilot chat box, Office Agent lets users create PowerPoint presentations or Word documents.
The deep reasoning capabilities of the underlying AI models mean that reports from Office Agent can be more thorough than those created by older large language models.
To use Office Agent in Copilot, select Office Agent (Frontier) from the navigation pane in the Copilot web app.
Anthropic just released its most powerful AI model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, which can code autonomously for more than 30 hours.