Agents for Documents, Slides, and Spreadsheets
Use agents to draft documents, build slide decks, and clean or analyze spreadsheets — and check their work before it reaches anyone else.
A surprising amount of office work is producing files: the proposal, the quarterly deck, the tracker spreadsheet everyone updates, the policy document nobody wants to write. Agents can now produce real versions of all of these, not just text you paste somewhere. They can draft a ten-page document from your source material, turn an outline into a slide deck, and build a spreadsheet with working formulas.
What they can't do is take responsibility for those files once they leave your hands. A wrong number on slide 7, a formula that silently skips the last row, or a paragraph "summarizing" a policy that says something else will go out under your name. This lesson gives you playbooks for documents, slides, and spreadsheets, and the checks that catch problems before anyone else sees them.
Three ways agents work on files
Before the playbooks, know which kind of tool you're using, because each produces a different kind of output.
| Approach | How it works | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chat assistant that creates files | Upload sources, ask for a document, deck, or spreadsheet, download the file | One-off drafts, first versions | Formatting may not match your templates; spreadsheets may contain typed-in values instead of formulas |
| Assistant built into your office app | The AI panel inside your word processor, slide tool, or spreadsheet | Editing a file you already have, in place | Often sees only the open file; capabilities vary a lot between apps and plans |
| Coding agent working on a folder | Claude Code, Codex, or similar reads your files and writes new ones, often by writing a small script | Batches (20 reports from one template), large files, data you don't want to upload | You need to be comfortable in a terminal, or willing to learn |
Several chat assistants can now generate actual .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx files rather than only text. Under the hood they usually write and run a small program that builds the file, the same way they analyze data. That's good news for accuracy, because a file built by code is consistent. It also means you should open the file and inspect it, not just read the agent's description of what it made.