# Using your Office Assistant: a how-to guide Everyday tasks in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, one line each. ## Before you start On the ribbon it's labelled **Tessellant Assistant**, or a name your organisation chose. It works on the file you have open, only when you ask, and by default asks before changing anything. Your organisation chooses which apps it is turned on in, so you may see it in some apps and not others yet. ## What it can do It works on the open file in Word and Excel, and in PowerPoint and Outlook where your organisation enables them. - **Word:** read and search the document, and change it with the smallest edit. Comments, tables, form fields, headers and footers, formatting, styles and lists. - **Excel:** explain a workbook, trace formulas and find errors. Write values and formulas, format cells, and add charts, PivotTables, tables, conditional formats and data validation. - **PowerPoint,** where enabled: read and check a deck for overflow, fonts and layouts. Add, move and delete slides, change text and fonts, and add a chart on a new slide. - **Outlook,** where enabled: summarise the open email or meeting and its attachments, and draft a reply, reply-all or forward. It never sends. - **Skills in Word:** Proofread, Review for issues, Pre-issue check, Executive summary, Next revision, Fill control sheet, Tidy formatting, Plain English, Consistency check, Respond to comments, Compare to attachment and Table to prose. - **Skills in Excel:** Explain workbook, Audit workbook, Clean data, Tidy table, Chart the data, Variance analysis, Summarise with pivot and Reconcile. Your organisation can add its own skills. - **In every app:** citations that jump to the paragraph, cells or slide; approval before edits; Revert for each turn; tracked changes in Word, which your organisation can require; attached files and knowledge bases; continuing earlier chats about the same file; queued requests; and **Help**, which opens this guide. ## The pane at a glance ![The front page in Word: nine skill cards, from Proofread and Review for issues to Compare to attachment, with More skills underneath.](img/front-page-skill-cards-word.png "Front page and skill cards") ![The pane in Word with the + menu open: Attach a file and Skills, then Track the agent's edits, Help and Sign out. The header shows the New chat pencil and the file name.](img/pane-header-plus-menu.png "The + menu") ![The / skills picker open in Word, listing each skill's name and a short description. A skill your organisation added is tagged organisation.](img/skill-picker-word.png "The / skills picker") ![Two numbered queued requests above the message box while the assistant works, each with edit and remove buttons, and a count of 2 on the Stop button.](img/queued-requests.png "Queued requests") ![A permission panel in Word: the assistant wants to replace text in clause 6.3, changing 30 days to 45 days, with Deny, Always allow and Allow once.](img/permission-panel-word.png "Approving an edit") ![An answer that changed the document, with thumbs up and thumbs down and the Revert this turn's changes button underneath.](img/revert-this-turn.png "Revert this turn's changes") ## Getting started ### Open it **How:** select its button on the **Home** tab, or select text or cells, right-click and choose **Ask Tessellant Assistant** (or your organisation's name for it). In Outlook the button appears when you read or write an email or open a meeting. Pin the pane to keep it open. > **Screenshot to come:** the Home tab button and the right-click Ask item in Word. ### Sign in **How:** select **Sign in with Microsoft** and use your usual work account. ### Find your way around **How:** type in the message box at the bottom. **New chat** is the pencil at the top left, and **+** holds attachments, skills, settings, **Help** and **Sign out**. ### Use a skill **How:** select a skill card on a new chat, or type `/` and pick one. Nothing happens until you press Enter. Skills are ready-made tasks, such as **Proofread** in Word or **Audit workbook** in Excel. Add your own words after the name, for example `/proofread section 3 only`. ## Asking ### Ask good questions **How:** say what you want, where in the file, and what to leave alone. For example: "Proofread this report to Australian English. Leave clause numbers and defined terms alone." Select text or cells first and right-click **Ask** to keep it focused. ### Attach a file **How:** select **+**, then **Attach a file** or one of your knowledge bases, then ask your question. PDF, Word, Excel, text and Markdown files, up to 25 MB each. Your organisation decides whether attaching is available. ### Queue up requests **How:** while it's working, type your next request and press Enter. It waits in a numbered list and runs in turn. You can edit or remove a request until it starts. If you press Stop or start a new chat, the queue pauses and asks whether to **Run** or **Clear** it. ### Stop it **How:** select the round Stop button where Send usually is. The answer so far is kept, and anything waiting for your approval is declined. ## Approving and undoing ### Approve an edit **How:** check the change shown above the message box, then choose **Allow once** (Enter), **Deny** (Esc) or **Always allow** (every change for the rest of the chat). ### Ask before edits **How:** select the hand switch in the message box. On, the default, you approve each change. Off (it shows **Auto**), changes are made without asking and can still be reverted. ### Tracked changes in Word **How:** select **+**, then switch on **Track the agent's edits**. Accept or reject them in **Review**. Your organisation may require this for everyone. The switch then shows **Required by your organisation**. ### Revert a turn **How:** under a turn that changed your file, select **Revert this turn's changes**. ### Check a citation **How:** select a link in the answer to jump to that paragraph, cell range or slide in your file. ### Continue an earlier chat **How:** open the pane on the same file and select **Continue your last chat**, or choose one from **Earlier chats**. In Outlook, chats follow the email conversation. ### Give feedback **How:** under an answer, select thumbs up or thumbs down, and add a comment if you like. ## What it can't do It can't send email (it writes drafts only), open other files or mailboxes, search the web, run macros, accept or reject tracked changes, change page setup in Word, restyle charts in Excel, or add a chart to an existing slide. If you ask, it should say so and offer what it can do instead. ## What's coming next Ideas for the Office Assistant. None of them has a date, and none is promised. **On the roadmap** - Changing Excel charts after they're added: colours, titles, axes and legend. - Pictures, figure and table captions, and cross-references in Word. - Print-ready calculation sheets in Excel: print area, page fit, and title-block headers and footers. - Meeting help in Outlook on the open email or meeting, such as filling in a meeting you're organising, or declining and proposing a new time. **Being explored** - Read-only calendar and people lookup in Outlook: free and busy times, rooms and colleagues. - A governed library of your organisation's standard wording, inserted word for word. - Project details from practice-management systems, such as filling a control sheet from the job. - Broader cross-checks between documents, such as report figures against the calculation workbook. ## Privacy It reads the open file, and anything you attach, only when you ask. It sends that content to your organisation's own platform and saves the chat in your history there. **Open in platform** shows the chat in the web chat, but you can only continue it in Office. Your IT team has [the detail](https://tessellant.com.au/office-assistant/). ## Troubleshooting | If | Do this | |---|---| | It asks you to sign in again | Select **Sign in with Microsoft**. If no window appears, check Office isn't blocking pop-up windows. | | It isn't enabled for this app yet | Ask your IT team. It's turned on app by app. | | Your account isn't set up | Ask your IT team for access, then open the pane again. | | Sign-in is blocked in Office on the web in Safari | Use Edge, Chrome or the Office desktop app. | | The button isn't there | New add-ins can take 24 to 72 hours to appear. Restart Office, then ask your IT team. | | A citation can't find the text | The text has probably changed since. Ask again. | Last updated 14 October 2026, describing add-in release 0.3.0.