Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

The Verge / 4/23/2026

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Key Points

  • Microsoft is rolling out a new “Agent Mode” across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, branded as “vibe working,” which extends the Office Copilot experience from passive help to more action-oriented assistance.
  • The company says earlier Copilot foundation-model capabilities were not strong enough to reliably command Office applications, limiting it primarily to answering questions rather than taking action on document content.
  • With this update, Agent Mode is positioned as a more powerful, agentic workflow for business users that better integrates into the “canvas” of Office apps.
  • Microsoft claims the feature has matured into a more generally available capability after initial efforts to sell Copilot’s agentic promise to enterprises.

Microsoft is rolling out a new Agent Mode inside Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint this week. Previously described by Microsoft as "vibe working," the Agent Mode is a more powerful version of the Copilot experience in Office that Microsoft has been trying to sell to businesses.

"When we first shipped Copilot, foundation models were not powerful enough to use Copilot to command the applications," admits Sumit Chauhan, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Office Product Group. "This meant Copilot was a passive partner in documents: it could answer questions but missed the mark when it was asked to take action on the canvas direc …

Read the full story at The Verge.