Microsoft upgrades M365 Copilot with Agent Mode

A new Agent Mode in Microsoft 365 Copilot will let users collaborate with the AI assistant on multistep tasks in Excel and Word, Microsoft announced on Monday. This will open up more complex application functionality for users and improve the quality of content created, the company claimed.

Microsoft also announced a new Office Agent that will help Microsoft 365 users create documents directly from the Copilot chat interface — a feature that uses Anthropic’s Claude AI model, rather than OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

In a blog post on Monday, Microsoft marketed the new agentic features as “vibe coding” but for office productivity tasks, with the ability to “steer” Copilot as it orchestrates multistep tasks. “It’s the new pattern of work for human-agent collaboration,” said Sumit Chauhan, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Office Product Group.

The news follows additional M365 Copilot announcements this month, including role-based AI assistants for sales, service, and finance and several team-oriented AI agents for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Viva Engage.

With Agent Mode, advanced modeling in Excel becomes “approachable for most everyone,” said Chauhan in the post, with the ability to “evaluate results, fix issues, and repeat the processes until the outcome is verified. It’s like you’re handing off work to an Excel expert — while you steer and guide.”

For example, an Excel user can direct the M365 Copilot agent to analyze sales data and provide visual insights. Agent Mode will then decide which formulas to use and get to work creating data visualizations. Finally, it will share a summary of results and validation steps taken.

Another example is a loan calculator that figures out monthly payments based on user inputs (e.g., load amount, interest rate, loan term) and then generates a payment schedule in a formatted table. Or a monthly financial analysis for a small business with a breakdown of product lines.

Microsoft claims that Agent Mode will make M365 Copilot more reliable in Excel. In its tests, Agent Mode received a score of 57.2% in Spreadsheet Bench accuracy results — that compares with 71.3% for humans, Microsoft said.

In Word, Agent Mode can take on tasks such as drafting content and suggesting changes while asking the user for input along during the process. This makes writing feel “more like a dialogue than a task,” said Chauhan, resulting in “faster iteration, better ideas, and a more engaging writing experience.”

Agent Mode is available in Excel and Word for Microsoft 365 customers with M365 Copilot licenses via Microsoft’s Frontier early access program. It will roll out to PowerPoint later, Microsoft said. Agent Mode will also be available to consumers with Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscriptions.

The new Office Agent in Copilot, also announced today, lets users create Word and PowerPoint documents directly from the Copilot Chat interface. Integration with Excel is “coming soon,” said Microsoft.

Once the agent is given a task, it will clarify the user’s intent, then conduct web-based research while revealing its “chain of thought” processing. The Office Agent will present a preview of the document it has created, before collaborating with the user on amendments to the final result, Microsoft said.

Office Agent is available today to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers via the Frontier program.  Microsoft upgrades M365 Copilot with Agent Mode – ComputerworldRead More