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It's like a genie for your Office apps such as Docs and Excel.
Microsoft
If you think vibe-coding was an overhyped fad that could turn ideas into software, wait until you hear what Microsoft has cooked up for the rest of us mortals working with Office tools. Say hello to “vibe working,” a set of new AI-driven experiences that hope to take the drudgery out of studying documents and turning them into meaningful material.
What’s the big take?
Remember Deep Research, which takes a brief input, performs comprehensive research, and then creates a detailed report? Or the Researcher agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot that does the same with your own local files? Well, a similar convenience is coming to Office apps, starting with Word and Excel. And soon, in PowerPoint, as well.
Microsoft is officially referring to it as Agent Mode in Office apps. Think of it as an expert in Excel or Docs, but one that works for you with simple, natural language commands. For example, you can feed a line like:
“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.”
Once you do that, the underlying Copilot AI will create the formulas, generate graphs, and create full-fledged Excel sheets. Likewise, in Word, the AI agent will sift through boring numbers and turn them into well-formatted documents featuring all the modifications you want.
There’s more for Copilot users
A few days ago, Anthropic announced that its Claude chatbot can now create as well as edit Excel spreadsheets (.xlsx), PowerPoint presentations (.pptx), Word documents (.docx), or PDF documents using natural language prompts. Users don’t even have to open these documents to make modifications, as Claude can handle it all in the background.
2/ Tell Agent Mode in Excel what you’re trying to achieve, and Copilot generates outputs, checks results, fixes issues, iterates, and verifies all of it. pic.twitter.com/dLteV5GIJO
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) September 29, 2025Well, a few days later, Microsoft announced that Claude will soon coexist with OpenAI’s GPT model in the Office suite. And today, the software giant is introducing Office Agent in Copilot. The core premise stays familiar. “Office Agent creates tasteful, well-structured PowerPoint decks and well-researched Word documents,” says Microsoft.
Agent Mode in Copilot for Excel and Docs will be available starting today for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers and Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscribers on the web, and will soon be available in the desktop apps, too. The Claude-powered Office Agent is also available for subscribers in the US starting today.
Nadeem is a tech and science journalist who started reading about cool smartphone tech out of curiosity and soon started…
I never use my Microsoft Copilot subscription. I still think it’s worth it
If you have a regular subscription, you’re likely well-versed in the dance of paying for something and wondering if it’s worth the value. For many people, that might be a streaming service that hasn’t been used in six or more months or a membership for a gym that hasn’t been visited since before that last holiday. For me, I grapple with what to do with my Microsoft 365 subscription, specifically after the recent price hike due to the addition of Copilot+ features.
Microsoft 365 is one of those interesting computer suites that you don’t realize that you need until you need it. It's likely why I’ve allowed Microsoft to snatch money from my bank account for several years, when I only use one or two programs and one or two features.
Microsoft Copilot gets an AI agent to browse the web for you
Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event was quite loaded, but the company reserved most of its attention for the Copilot AI stack. The buzzy event introduced two crucial upgrades – Actions and Deep Research — which firmly push Copilot into the realm of agentic AI.
Agentic AI is essentially a fancy way of describing an AI tool that can perform multi-step web-based tasks autonomously, or semi-autonomously, on your behalf. In Copilot’s case, the fancier one is Actions. So far, AI chatbots have mostly been able to give answers based on a certain input, but haven’t been able to perform autonomous multi-stage actions.
Microsoft announces major AI upgrade for Windows with smarter Copilot feature
Microsoft announced improvements to Copilot in a blog post today, including a new Vision feature that allows the AI assistant to view and interact with users' Windows screens in real time.
As part of Microsoft's 50th anniversary, it announced a huge improvement to Copilot, making it more personalized and guiding users through tasks at every step. Microsoft introduced Vision in Copilot for the web last year, but the announcement is now for Windows and mobile. You can use the native Windows app to use Copilot when working across various apps, files, and browser tabs. Vision in Copilot will read your screen and interact with it.
