If you have been “less than impressed” with the reality of Copilot in Office apps, I urge you to reset expectation and take a fresh look– because “Edit with Copilot” is here and I think it will change your perception of Copilot in app experience.
The last couple of months have seen huge capability shifts with Microsoft 365 Copilot across the core Copilot Chat experience, Copilot Notes and most recently Edit with Copilot (which replaces Agent Mode in these apps). Edit with Copilot is the clearest and closest realisation yet of Microsoft’s original 2023 Copilot vision – an AI that moves beyond chat into Agentic / Vibe working.
Copilot does just chat, it actively coworks inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to execute multi‑step tasks directly on the canvas with really professional results.
2023 Vision vs Today
When Microsoft introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot back in March 2023, the company released a now‑iconic sizzle video showing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint responding to natural language – drafting documents, analysing data, and building presentations automatically.
You can watch the original 2023 Copilot launch future vision video below:
The original teaser demos which set the excitement factor and innovation positioned Copilot as “your Copilot for work”, combining large language models with your Microsoft Graph data to create a new way of working.
….But in 2023 and in reality through to 2025, Copilot, whilst had some great value, wasn’t able to take reliable, multi‑step actions inside Office which is needed for complex, business level interactions. It was great at drafting text content, summarising and re-writing but it wasn’t an in‑document collaborator and also wasn’t an expert of how those Office apps worked and what they could do.
With Edit with Copilot – (formerly Agent Mode) this is the moment that vision becomes real.
What can “Edit with Copilot” do
Microsoft’s powerful new agentic capabilities bring true multi‑step execution to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint whilst still being powered by Work IQ data about you, your role, team, and business data. It is also powered by multi-model reasoning engines including those from Open AI’ GPT as well as Anthrophic’s Claude. There is also different image creation models in use too.
Word
in Word, this means you can:
- Do real co-create and editing direct on canvas using real Word styles, templates, images, layouts and brand-styling.
- Rewrite, restructure, and reformat entire documents
- Undertake multi‑step updates across tone, layout, and sections
Excel
In Excel this means you can
- Work across all basic and advanced features using Excel’s native artifacts, meaning you can create multi-sheet spreadsheets and models
- Peform Iterative modelling – whereby Copilot can choose, build and write formulas, evaluates results, corrects errors etc.
- Create appealing and on-brand Charts, tables, pivot tables, and deep analysis generated from natural language
PowerPoint
In PowerPoint we are starting to see real time savings and flair.
- Entire deck creation, refinement and re-formatting at slide deck (not just slide) level aligned to your corporate templates and personal styling
- Slide restructuring with consistent hierarchy
- High Quality and consistent visual generation and layout optimisation
- Next Generation Image Creation with GPT-Image2
Check out my Edit with Copilot for PowerPoint video here:
This is exactly the workflow depicted in the original 2023 launch video – now delivered with real reliability in 2026 with Microsoft’s multi-modal support and Work IQ along with the assurance of ethical AI, Secure AI and Enterprise Grade Security as part of the wider Microsoft 365 suite.
Models, Work IQ, and Microsoft’s Open Multi‑Model Strategy
Work IQ
Work IQ is what grounds Copilot in your emails, files, meetings, and organisational context, enabling personalised reasoning and action.
The Models Powering Edit with Copilot
Microsoft uses a multi-modal approach to AI. Copilot is not tied to a single model vendor, instead it uses best‑of‑breed models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others, selecting the right model for each task. This open approach is a major reason Edit with Copilot now works as originally envisioned.
At time of writing:
- Edit in Excel (formerally Excel Agent Mode) uses OpenAI’s latest reasoning models.
- Office Agent / Copilot Cowork uses Anthropic‑powered technology (Claude‑based multi‑agent orchestration).
- Edit in PowerPoint uses a mix of Anthropic Claude and Open AI GPT
- Edit in Word uses Anthropic Claude
Agent Mode Changes Everything
Microsoft’s original vision for Copilot was to
- Start from natural language
- Stay in the flow of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
- Let AI handle the drudgery
With Cowork and Edit in Copilot, this is finally coming to life.
- Copilot acts directly in your document and app and not in a sidebar
- Multi‑step tasks run agentically, not as single prompts and can run over time
- Work IQ provides deep organisational context
- Multi‑model routing ensures best‑fit intelligence across the apps based on the task and creation being performed.
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