Microsoft Expands AI Agent Capabilities Across Office Suite with Free Features Coming in 2026

Microsoft's new AI agents create your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint projects now

They can help to shrink the gap between ideation and production. In the era of AI chatbots, an increasingly wide variety of once time-consuming tasks can now be reduced to just a prompt or two. Now Microsoft is bringing this ease-of-use feature to three of its most popular platforms. Also: I tried Google's new trip-planning AI tool, and I'll never plan my own trip again As of today, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint have their own dedicated AI agents that can generate content via Copilot Chat, a pay-as-you-go service launched in January that added agentic capabilities to the preexisting free chat experience for Microsoft 365 commercial customers. Announced during Ignite 2025, the new agents -- like many of those that have hit the market over the past year -- are designed to minimize the gap between ideation and production. While Microsoft previously introduced agents for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in September, the new systems take automation a step further: Rather than just helping users refine content, they can generate material from scratch after a quick back-and-forth text conversation. "Simply type a prompt, and these agents will ask targeted follow-up questions to tailor the output to a user's goals in creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations," Microsoft wrote in the release. Also: I found an open-source NotebookLM alternative that's powerful, private - and free The agents have access to both user and web data, blending personalization with general contextual awareness. They can handle tasks like research, spreadsheet formatting, and presentation layout design, according to Microsoft. They're currently only accessible via Microsoft's Frontier early access program to Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed customers. Frontier access to Personal, Family, and Premium subscribers can be expected soon, the company wrote in its announcement. Microsoft also announced some other notable AI upgrades for Copilot as part of its Ignite 2025 conference: Microsoft has been leaning heavily into Copilot in recent years to compete with popular chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Also: Claude can create PDFs, slides, and spreadsheets for you in chat Part of that effort, as illustrated by the new agents, has been connecting the company's entire ecosystem of proprietary apps, making it easier for paid subscribers to interact with their Microsoft accounts through a single chat interface -- by, say, asking Copilot to summarize recent updates pulled from their Outlook accounts or transfer information directly from a spreadsheet into a PowerPoint presentation. The company has also been working to broaden the reach of its AI assistant by integrating it with a number of other popular third-party tools, including Claude and Google Drive.

Microsoft's Office apps are getting even more free AI features

Microsoft is adding even more AI features to Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. While the software maker has been adding plenty of features to its paid Microsoft 365 Copilot over the past year, a range of free additions are coming to its Office apps in early 2026 that don't require the $30 per month, per the user Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Microsoft first introduced the free version of Copilot Chat into Microsoft 365 apps in September, and it's now improving how this chatbot works in Outlook. Copilot Chat will soon be able to view content across an entire Outlook inbox, including calendar entries and meetings. This will allow you to use Copilot to triage an inbox or schedule and prepare for meetings, all without a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license. It goes far beyond the existing integration that's limited to just individual email threads. Agent Mode, which originally launched to paid Microsoft 365 Copilot subscribers in September, is also coming to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for all Microsoft 365 subscribers. Agent Mode in Excel and Word can generate complex spreadsheets and documents with just a prompt, and you'll be able to choose between Anthropic and OpenAI reasoning models in Excel. Agent Mode in PowerPoint can be used to update existing decks with a business's branded template, or create new slides, rewrite and format text, and add images. Microsoft says it's aiming to preview these free AI additions to Microsoft 365 subscribers by March 2026. Microsoft's move to bring Agent Mode to Microsoft 365 business plans and not charge extra follows a similar change earlier this year when it bundled its AI-powered Copilot features into Office apps for consumer Microsoft 365 plans. Microsoft also bundled its sales, service, and finance Copilots into the main Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription in October.

Microsoft Office is getting a major AI overhaul -- here are all the new updates coming soon

Microsoft is launching a suite of new AI features to its core Office services, including Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. These new features will be completely free, not locked behind the $30-a-month Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription like many of the company's other AI features. Microsoft has outlined the new features in a blog post, and although they're mainly focused on enterprise customers, the ubiquity of Microsoft software means many of us could find ways to utilize them outside the office. So, here's what you need to know about Microsoft's next big AI upgrade. A lot of these features revolve around Microsoft's Copilot function within apps like Powerpoint, Word and Outlook. Copilot chat will soon be able to analyze content across your entire Outlook inbox. That includes calendar entries, as well as meetings. Like the AI features that are being rolled out in Gmail via Gemini, these will allow you to use Copilot to track down niche emails, schedule and prepare meetings, and work across these different services. Meanwhile, Microsoft is also adding voice functionality to the Copilot app and combining it with your Office account -- so you can ask Copilot things like, "what are my top priorities for the day" or "catch me up on the meeting I missed." While Microsoft does already have Copilot built into these platforms, it's been pretty limited so far. The expansion in each case will allow users greater dexterity in searching and using information across the apps. Agent Mode, a feature that originally launched to paid Microsoft 365 Copilot subscribers early this year, will also come to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, no matter what subscription plan you're on for 365. Agent Mode allows an AI to complete functions on your behalf, generating complex spreadsheets or documents all from a prompt. You can even choose whether this is done by Claude or ChatGPT models. This feature will also come to PowerPoint and be able to update existing decks or make entirely new ones. Microsoft has said that it plans to bring these features by March 2026. This is a big push from Microsoft, looking to compete with Google's Gemini, which is currently its biggest competitor for these kinds of applications. Google recently announced the release of Gemini 3, the latest update for its powerful AI system. For Microsoft, this will prove to be the biggest competitor to its Copilot functions in apps like PowerPoint and Word. Google owns G Suite, which includes apps like Google Docs, Google Sheets and Gmail. AI functions have already been rolled out to these platforms, but Google is likely going to keep advancing on it. As the AI landscape gets more competitive, companies like Google and Microsoft are quickly trying to find ways to stand out, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so.

Your favorite Microsoft 365 apps are getting a load more Copilot AI Agents - Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint all get a boost

* Microsoft reveals many new AI agents at Ignite 2025 * Agent Mode also gets expansions across Word, Excel and PowerPoint * Outlook users also get extra AI services and tools Microsoft is launching a host of new AI Agents for Word, Excel and PowerPoint powered by Copilot as the company looks to boost agent adoption among its workforce. Announced at Microsoft Ignite 2025, the new agents will be able to create content for the specific program via prompts entered into Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. Microsoft says the process is as easy as typing a prompt, with the agent then asking follow-up questions to tailor the output to the user's needs, before transferring over to the desired program. Agents everywhere in Microosft 365 So what can the new capabilities do? In Excel, the agent would be able to turn data into charts, summaries and insights using built-in formulas and logic, making project plans much more immersive and informative. In Word, the agent can bring together and organize a variety complex information into clear, well-written documents, and in PowerPoint, it can builds presentations with storytelling and visual structure -- keeping your audience engaged and attentive. Early access is available through the Frontier program for Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed customers and will be coming soon to Frontier for Microsoft 365 Personal, Family and Premium subscribers. Elsewhere, Microsoft also revealed new Copilot updates for Outlook, helping its email users solve common issues around scheduling conflicts and email summaries. The email service will now allow users to schedule meetings directly from chat, with Copilot finding available times, books rooms, draft agendas and send invites. Copilot will also be able to help resolve scheduling conflicts for 1:1s and personal events, with users able to set preferences for which meetings are flexible, so Copilot can automatically reschedule when double-booked, notifying users of changes. Mobile Outlook users will be able to use their voice to ask Copilot to carry out a number of tasks, including summarizing unread emails, drafting replies, deleting, archiving, pinning and flagging. The company also revealed its Agent Mode capability, recently introduced in Excel and Word to allow Copilot to create, edit and format content directly within the app, has now been expanded with new features, as well as being extended to PowerPoint. The latter will mean that Agent Mode can now update existing PowerPoint decks using your company's branded template, and users can also create new slides, rewrite and format text, insert and style tables, add images and rearrange content. In Excel, Agent Mode can now easily bring external data into workbooks with an integrated web search capability, as well as being able to choose between Anthropic and OpenAI reasoning models - and in Word, Agent Mode can now use Work IQ to automatically select relevant sources like files, emails and meetings, ensuring documents reflect the latest and contextually accurate information. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button! And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.