“When we first shipped Copilot, foundation models were not powerful enough to use Copilot to command the applications,” admits Sumit Chauhan, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Office Product Group. “This meant Copilot was a passive partner in documents: it could answer questions but missed the mark when it was asked to take action on the canvas directly.”

The new Agent Mode is designed to better follow commands and edits in documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. “Over the past year, models have made meaningful leaps in instruction following, reasoning, and overall quality, and are now better at handling multi-step edits reliably without losing your intent,” says Chauhan.

You’ll be able to watch the Copilot AI agent work in real time, thanks to a sidebar that shows every step Copilot is taking on a document. In Excel it can make changes directly in a workbook, adding formulas or tables. Agent Mode in PowerPoint can also update existing decks with fresh information and keep the template styling that businesses use.

Microsoft is rolling out these new Copilot features as the default experience for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers, and they’re also available with Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans.