Microsoft has beefed up Copilot’s capabilities in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, claiming its Agent Mode will help speed up workers’ output.

The new features, announced last year, mean that Copilot can work more efficiently with Office applications, for example, understanding the richness of a pivot table in Excel or the use of animations in PowerPoint.

In tests with customers and researchers, Microsoft has learned a few things about how to improve the way Copilot is deployed, and laid out some of them in a post to a company blog. Now, it said, Copilot takes action rather than just suggesting steps — although ensuring that users maintain control. Other improvements include the ability to work with different models and better integration of Work IQ to deliver higher quality output.

Further developments are in the pipeline, Microsoft said, including improved editing for complex workflows such as finance spreadsheets and legal documents, more visibility on changes, and a more seamless integration of Copilot into the software, so that the experience for users is the same for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

The updates are available now and are the default experience for customers with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Premium subscriptions, the company said.

See PCWorld’s first impressions of the new Copilot agents in Word and PowerPoint.