Excel for Windows can now build complex solutions on your behalf

Back in September 2025, Microsoft launched Agent Mode in Excel for the web for customers. This AI-powered workflow is designed to offer an agentic experience that can do work on your behalf, as long as you offer a decent prompt as an input. Now, after a few months of availability for web customers, Microsoft is finally ready to roll out Agent Mode in Excel for Windows.

This is not simply an expansion in platforms for Agent Mode, Microsoft is also making it a lot better. Agent Mode integrates directly with Copilot in Excel, but customers have the option to choose which model they to use through a new model selector. It currently offers GPT-5.2 from OpenAI and the latest Claude variant, Claude Opus 4.5, from Anthropic.

The Redmond tech giant says that this enhancement is in response to customer feedback which suggested that some models work better for fast, structured problem-solving, while others are more suited to detailed task-based exploration. Agent Mode in Excel will default to the "Auto" mode so you don't have to worry about choosing the best model, if that is not your forte.

Apart from this, Agent Mode can pull real-time data from the web when required, and it is also much faster and reliable across "core" Excel scenarios, which includes the generation of visualizations, creation of workbooks, and repairing of formulas.

In order to check out Agent Mode in Excel for Windows, click on the Copilot button and select Agent Mode from the Tools menu. After that, provide an outcome-based prompt like "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", and then sit back and relax; you should still validate your output though.

Agent Mode is now available in Excel for Windows and web. It should be landing for Mac customers shortly as well. You do require a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot license or be a member of Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, or Premium plans. However, Agent Mode is not available for users in the European Union and the UK.

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Posted Wednesday 28 January 2026 at 7:13 am AEST (my time).

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