Tag: Word

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It’s Agent Mode the new way to do human-agent collaboration?

Microsoft Copilot development just doesn’t sleep… This time they have just announced “agent mode” which they claim could be game changer in the way we (humans) work with AI agents (Copilot). Called “Agent Mode” this latest update marks is not just about new features, but a significant shift in how we interact with Office apps through Copilot.

Agent Mode in Excel

What is Agent mode?

Agent Mode is Microsoft’s answer to the growing demand for intelligent, iterative workflows without needing to craft lengthy prompts. Agent Mode brings agentic reasoning into Excel and Word, (others will follow), allowing users to work along side Copilot through multi-step tasks ranging from data analysis to document creation – with a level of depth and refinement that feels like working alongside an expert.

“In the same way vibe coding has transformed software development, the latest reasoning models in Copilot unlock agentic productivity for Office artefacts.”

Sumit Chauhan |CVP |Microsoft Product Group

These are both application and context aware. As an example:

  • In Excel, Agent Mode “speaks spreadsheet” language. Whether you need to build financial models, loan calculators, resource calculators or budgets, Agent Mode in Excel means Copilot now understands the nuances of formulas, formatting, and validation. Rather than just generating outputs, it can evaluate your work, suggest fixes, and works with you until you get the result you need.
  • In Word, Agent Mode will be able to transform writing into a dialogue. Users can prompt, Copilot drafts, user can then asks clarifying questions, and Copilot will refines the content with native styling and formatting. Microsoft say this is vibe writing in action — fast, fluid, and focused.

Chat first creation…

Then, there is the new “Office Agent”, which will live inside Copilot chat. This is designed for when discussions start in a Copilot Chat, rather from within document or spreadsheet. In this context, the Office Agent will have the ability to create “proper” documents directly from your chat, using deep reasoning and live previews to guide the process and creation. These will be powered by Anthropic models and not OpenAI.

Microsoft have given (in their official article) some examples we can use.

In Excel

Financial Analysis Prompt: “Create a financial monthly close report for a bike shop business, including a breakdown of product lines across VTB, VTF, sequential, and year-over-year growth. Use standard financial formatting and best practices.”


Loan Calculator Prompt: “Build a loan calculator that computes monthly payments based on user inputs for loan amount, annual interest rate, and term in years. Generate a schedule showing month, payment, principal, interest, and remaining balance. Present the results in a clear, formatted table.”

Monthly Report Update Prompt: “Help me update this monthly report for September. Update the data table with the latest numbers from the /Sept Data Pull email. Summarise the key highlights including insights compared to last month’s /August monthly report.doc.”

In Word


Project Update Prompt: “Update the executive summary for clarity, bold all key findings, and insert a bulleted list of next steps based on the /Project update meeting. Make sure to add a conclusion“.


Document Style Prompt: “Can you clean up this document? Title case for section headers, branding updates per the ‘/Latest brand guidelines’ email, and italicize all external partner mentions. Feel free to ask if you need help identifying partners or guidelines.”

In Powerpoint (coming later)

Interestingly, Microsoft say that Copilot can now (finally) create good presentations in PowerPoint!

“PowerPoint is one of the most used tools for creating presentations, but over the last two years, AI (Copilot) has often fallen short when creating slides. Office Agent changes that. Office Agent creates tasteful, well-structured PowerPoint decks and well-researched Word documents. ”

Microsoft say that now… When you work with Copilot to create presentations you will get a totally transformed experience. It will

  • Clarify your intent
  • Conduct deep research
  • Produce high-quality content.

How to use “Agent Mode”

First thing first….. Not everyone can yet and it’s not available day one… OK now read on…

Currently, Agent Mode is available for organisations (and users) enrolled in the Frontier program for Microsoft 365 Copilot who have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license or that have Microsoft 365 Personal or Family with a Copilot Pro license.

Agent Mode works in Excel on the web but will be coming soon to desktop. Word is also coming soon.

For Excel, you will also need to install the Excel Labs add-in and choose “Agent Mode”.

Oddly, from what I have read, the Office Agent is only available for Copilot Pro subscribers on Microsoft 365 Personal or Family or Premium and not (yet) Microsoft 365 Commercial. It’s also limited to USA currently! 🙁

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Microsoft Word Introduces Automatic Document Summarisation with Copilot

Quicker, faster, easier is the goal with this new update for Microsoft Word and Copilot for Microsoft 365 users, which aims to make handling long documents much easier. The feature, known as automatic document summarisation, is now rolling out now to select users.

Auto Summarise in Word


Key Highlights include:-

  • Automatic Summaries: With this new feature, Copilot licensed users will receive an automatic summary at the top of their Word documents. This summary synthesises the most important information, allowing users to quickly grasp key points without reading the entire document.
  • Interactive Summaries. Users can expand the summary by clicking the “View more” button, copy it, or even start a new chat with Copilot to discuss the content further. After making edits, a new summary can be generated to reflect the latest changes.
  • Availability: The new feature is gradually rolling out to users with Copilot licenses on word for Windows (version 16.0.17928.20114 or newer), Mac (version 16.88, build 24081116 or newer), and the web. If you don’t see it yet, check back in a few days.


This new feature is part of Microsoft’s ongoing efforts to enhance productivity and make information processing more efficient. For more details, you can visit the official Microsoft 365 Insider blog.

Want to see this in action?

I’ve created a YouTube video that dives deeper into this feature and demonstrates how it works.

Be sure to check it out for a more detailed video  walkthrough!

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Prompt-a-long with Copilot in Word

Goal: Perfecting Prompting in Word

The goal of this blog post is to provide some field experience tips and coaching to help you get the best out of using Copilot in Word. For this you need to have either a Copilot Pro license or a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license and be signed into Word (or Word Online).

In this example, our Goal is to take a Marketing Analysis document we have been sent, and to draw out key information we can use in a “sales meeting” that we have coming up. The document contains lots of information relevant to different parts of the business.

I have provided a link to the document I used (courtesty of Microsoft) so you can either follow along or reference the videos included in this post. Welcome your comments – so please let me know how you get on.

Scenario: Using Copilot to pull key info from a Marketing Report

Instructions:

To work on this example with me, speak to your marketing team and obtain a Market Analysis Report for other similar document. For this example, I am using a public sample document Microsoft have shared called “Mystic Spice Premium Chai Tea.docx” which you can access here. The password for the link is “Copilot”. Once you have done that, save the file to your OneDrive so you can use it to test out and experiment with these prompts.

  1. Open the document you obtained (or use my link above) in Word and then
  2. Open the Copilot pane by selecting the Copilot icon in the top right of the “ribbon”
  3. Enter the prompts below and follow along.

The Starting Prompt

Enter the Starting prompt “Summarise this Word Document” or click the suggested prompt to do the same thing…

In this simple prompt, we have started with what I call the “Alexa Prompt” – we are asking a simple question with a basic goal “to summarise the Word document”.

Using a standard/simple Copilot prompt to Summarise a Doc in Word.

This has done we asked but since we gave no context or information about what we wanted and why we needed it, Copilot has just read throught the document a pilled out key bits of information from each section.

The “better” prompt

To improve on this, we are going to repeat the prompt, but this time, we will add some more context to help Copilot understand the purpose of the summary and tailor the response for us accordingly.

Write a new prompt: “Summarise this document and create a brief overview of the main points to discuss with my team during the tomorrow’s Sales meeting“.

Here we are giving Copilot some more context specific about what information we want. It now knows why we need the information (for a sales meeting) and it knows to keep the ouput brief.

Using a more specific Copilot prompt to Summarise a Doc in Word.

If you run the prompt yourself (or check the video above) you will see that this time Copilot has pulled out specific around Market Trends and Demand inluding stats around CAGR. It has told us about the key competitiors, distribution and sales channels and also Sales Strategy, Outcomes and the Challenges in selling.

The Super Prompt

For the final prompt (I call it the “super prompt”), we are going to be even more specific with the ask to get just the information we need.

Use this prompt “Summarise this word document but focus on the Competitive Analysis section only. Provide a brief overview of the main points to discuss with my team during the tomorrow’s Sales meeting. Please keep the summary to 5 key points and use simple language.”

If you compare the output of this prompt to the previous ones, you will see that since we have been specific about where we want Copilot to focus, the response we get is specific to what we have asked. It’s still a summary, but it is focussed on the just the Competitor Analysis section and we have kept the response concise and in simple language. It knows to keep this simple and make it relevant to sales…

Follow along – or check out the video below where I run the prompt.

Our “Crafted” Super-Prompt in Copilot in Word

So there you go – we have started with a simple prompt and I have hopefully shown you that by thinking about what and why we want the information and also the audience the response is indended for, Copilot can produce information just the way we need it.

Summary and Lesson

So, I am pretty happy with that result. To recap – here is what we did to perfect our prompt…

  1. We started with our Goal (which was to summarise the document)
  2. Added some Context (that we want the information for a sales meeting)
  3. Specified the Source of the information (we asked to focus on competitive analysis), and
  4. Set clear Expectations, (we asked for five key points using simple language). 
Our Final Prompt: 

"Summarise this word document but focus on the Competitive Analysis section only. Provide a brief overview of the main points to discuss with my team during the tomorrow's Sales meeting. Please keep the summary to 5 key points and use simple language".

This prompt has all the details it needs to give us the results we need. It has a Goal, Context, Source, and Expectations.

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