From Formulas to Conversations: How Excel’s Agent Mode Will Redefine Data Analytics

It used to be great to find others that ‘spoke Excel’ – understood the intricacies of the various lookup formulas or when to use index…match. I have spent some time working with Excel Labs Agent Mode and the ‘old’ Excel world is about to change dramatically.

Excel Agent Mode has arrived as part of Microsoft’s Frontier preview program, and after testing it myself to create survey data for my training courses, I can see this isn’t just another incremental update (spreadsheet link included in Further Reading section below). It might make those ribbon menus obsolete.

What Is It?

Think of Agent Mode as having an Excel expert sitting beside you, one who never gets tired and actually enjoys building complex spreadsheets (for those of us who have spent years buried in Excel it used to be fun).

Instead of navigating menus and memorizing formulas, you simply describe what you need in natural language. Agent Mode then reasons through your request, creates a plan, and executes it – it’s a leap in functionality compared to Excel Copilot.

It evaluates its own work, fixes issues, and iterates until the results match your intent. When I asked it to create sample survey data, it reasoned through the request, created sensible answers and explained it’s approach. I then took it a few stages further.

In practical terms? You can now ask Excel to “create a financial monthly close report with year-over-year growth analysis” and watch it build something that would have taken an expert an hour to construct.

What Does It Mean from a Business Perspective?

The implications here go beyond just faster spreadsheet creation. We’re looking at a shift in how organizations approach data work:

Productivity redistribution – Tasks that currently require specialist Excel skills can now be handled by anyone who can describe what they need. This doesn’t eliminate the need for Excel experts, but it dramatically expands what non-specialists can accomplish independently.
Onboarding and training costs – New employees won’t need weeks of Excel training to be productive. The learning curve shifts from “how do I make Excel do this?” to “what do I need Excel to do?”, a much more intuitive starting point.
Speed of analysis – The time from “I need to understand this data” to “here are the insights” compresses dramatically. Business questions can be answered in minutes rather than hours (or days), changing the pace of decision-making.
The interface question – For me this is the biggest potential change (remember the evolution from Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3 to the Excel ribbons): if text becomes the primary interface, what happens to Excel’s extensive menu system? Deep formula knowledge, the ability to “speak Excel”, may become less critical. The skill shifts from technical Excel proficiency to knowing what questions to ask and how to describe what you need.

What Do I Do with It?

This is a preview feature in the Frontier program, so approach it strategically:

Get access if you can – Agent Mode is available to Microsoft 365 Copilot enterprise license holders through the Excel Labs add-in on Excel for the web. If your organization qualifies, request access to the Frontier program.
Start with complex, time-consuming tasks – Agent Mode excels at multi-step scenarios like reshaping data, merging sheets, or building reports with multiple elements. Don’t use it for simple one-step tasks where regular Excel features are faster. Test it on the projects that usually take significant time.
Experiment with prompt writing – The quality of output depends heavily on how you phrase your requests. Try different levels of detail and specificity. I found that describing the desired outcome and context worked better than trying to prescribe the method – describing what I wanted worked fine.
Plan for the transition – If this preview is any indication of the future, start thinking about how your team’s Excel training and workflows might need to evolve. The skills that matter are shifting from formula syntax to clear communication and analytical thinking.
Mind the guardrails – Agent Mode only seems to work with the currently open workbook and doesn’t looks like it can access other files, emails, or enterprise data. It also makes direct changes to your workbook, so be cautious with shared or sensitive files. Familiarize yourself with version history before diving in.

Excel Agent Mode represents more than just a productivity boost – it’s a glimpse at how we’ll interact with analytical tools in the future (and I’m sure all other Microsoft apps – if we even need apps in the classical sense in the future). The barrier between “I need to understand this” and “here’s the analysis” is collapsing. It is early days and there are limitations, but the trajectory is clear.

If you’re working with data regularly, it’s worth getting your hands on this preview. Even if Agent Mode isn’t ready for production use in your environment yet, understanding how it works will help you prepare for what’s coming.