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Microsoft Launches ‘Vibe Working’ in Office With Agent Mode and Office Agent

The preview brings GPT‑5 planning to Excel, Word, plus Anthropic‑powered creation in Copilot chat.

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Overview

  • Agent Mode is now live on the web for Excel and Word via Microsoft’s Frontier preview for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers and Personal/Family subscribers, with desktop support planned.
  • Office Agent runs in Copilot on the web for U.S. users in English, generating PowerPoint decks and Word documents from chat prompts with live slide previews and web research.
  • Excel and Word Agent Mode uses OpenAI’s GPT‑5 to plan multi‑step work, execute sub‑tasks, validate results, and show actions in a sidebar for auditability.
  • Microsoft reports Agent Mode in Excel scored 57.2% on SpreadsheetBench versus 71.3% for humans, outperforming several AI tools but underscoring the need for human review in high‑stakes workflows.
  • PowerPoint support for Agent Mode is coming later, and trying Excel’s Agent Mode today requires the Excel Labs add‑in; Office Agent is powered by Anthropic models as part of Microsoft’s multi‑model strategy.