Use Claude for Excel (original) (raw)

Claude for Excel is an add-in that integrates Claude into your Excel workflow. It's designed for professionals who work extensively with spreadsheets, particularly in financial analysis and modeling.

With Claude for Excel, you can:

Get started with Claude for Excel

Supported versions

For individuals

For admins

Deploy Claude for Excel to your organization:

After installation, team members can open Excel, activate the Claude add-in (from Tools > Add-ins on Mac or Home > Add-ins on Windows), sign in with their Claude credentials, and start working with their spreadsheets.

Connect through an LLM gateway

If your organization routes API traffic through an internal LLM gateway connected to Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, or Microsoft Azure, you can use the add-in without a Claude account. This is the same gateway pattern used by Claude Code.

Key features

Read and understand complex models

Ask Claude questions about specific cells, formulas, or entire sections of your workbook. Claude can navigate across multiple tabs and provides answers with direct citations to referenced cells.

Example prompts:

Update assumptions safely

Modify values and inputs while Claude maintains all formula dependencies and relationships. Every change is highlighted with clear explanations.

Example prompts:

Build and fill templates

Create spreadsheets from scratch or populate existing templates with new data, formulas, and assumptions.

Example prompts:

Debug and fix errors

Identify error sources (like #REF!, #VALUE!, or circular references) and get actionable fixes that maintain spreadsheet integrity.

Example prompts:

Change tracking and citations

Claude highlights every cell it updates and provides explanatory comments. When explaining calculations, Claude includes clickable citations that navigate directly to referenced cells.

Edit and format natively

Claude can now apply a range of Excel-native operations directly, including sorting and filtering data, editing pivot tables and charts, applying conditional formatting rules, setting data validation, and preparing workbooks for printing with finance-specific formatting tools.

Example prompts:

Support for connectors

Connect your other tools to give Claude context beyond what's in your spreadsheet. All connectors configured in your Claude settings are supported, including custom connectors.

To connect a tool, open the Claude sidebar and select the connectors icon to see available options.

Use Skills in Excel

Skills you've enabled in your Claude settings are also available in the Claude for Excel add-in. Claude applies relevant Skills automatically while you work—you don't need to invoke them separately.

You can also type / in the sidebar to see available Skills and select one directly (for example, /debug or /clean-up). Skills that aren't relevant to Excel are excluded from this list.

Set persistent instructions

Use the Instructions field in the add-in sidebar to set preferences that apply to every conversation in Excel. Instructions are useful for things like formatting conventions (for example, "always use IB formatting: blue for inputs, black for formulas"), preferred output style, or recurring context Claude should know about your workflow.

Instructions you set in Excel only apply to Excel — they're separate from any Instructions you set in PowerPoint.

Technical specifications

Supported file formats:

What's preserved:

Context and session management

Auto-compaction

Chat history

Chat history is now stored locally in your browser using IndexedDB. Unlike Claude, conversations aren't stored on Anthropic's servers—they're saved client-side and aren't synced across devices or browsers. You can clear all chat history from Settings at any time, and the local store is cleared when you clear your browser data. Your chat history is specific to the combination of the add-in surface, your user ID, and your organization ID—so your Excel and PowerPoint histories are separate, but conversations carry across different workbooks within Excel (or different presentations within PowerPoint). If you switch organizations, you'll have a separate chat history.

Overwrite protection

To avoid accidental data loss, Claude warns you before overwriting existing data.

Session logging

By turning this feature on in your settings, Claude will create a separate "Claude Log" tab in the Excel sheet to track your actions taken each turn. This allows Claude to maintain a history of its actions on the sheet.

If Claude doesn't do this automatically, you can simply ask it to log its history and it should create a new logging tab.

Current limitations

For Claude for Excel use, we automatically delete inputs and outputs on our backend within 30 days of receipt or generation, except in cases outlined in How long do you store my organization's data?

Enterprise organizations can route full audit telemetry from Claude for Excel to their own OpenTelemetry (OTEL) collector for integration with a SIEM or observability platform. Learn more about configuring a custom OpenTelemetry collector for Office agents. On Free, Pro, Max, and Team plans, observability and auditability aren't available for Claude for Excel. Claude for Excel does not inherit custom data retention settings your organization might have set, and isn't included in Enterprise audit logs or the Compliance API at this time.

Additionally, Claude does not have advanced Excel capabilities, including:

Claude for Excel is not recommended for:

Unsupported versions

Best practices

To use Claude for Excel safely and effectively:

Prompt injection attack risks

Only use Claude for Excel with trusted spreadsheets and not spreadsheets from external untrusted sources (for example, downloaded templates, vendor files, collaborative documents, and data imports).

An important risk that users of Claude for Excel and other AI tools that can read and manipulate spreadsheets is prompt injection attacks that hide malicious instructions in spreadsheet content (cells, formulas, comments, etc.) to trick the AI models into taking unintended actions. For example, a seemingly innocent template or data file received from an external party or downloaded from the internet might contain hidden instructions to "export all financial data to this external URL" or "modify these financial records." Claude may interpret these malicious instructions as legitimate requests from you.

Our testing has identified edge scenarios where Claude for Excel can be manipulated to:

Users can approve all of Claude’s actions via a confirmation pop-up that appears when each tool is triggered:

While we continue to develop our offerings and improve safety measures to reduce these risks, users should exercise caution when using Claude for Excel and should not use it with spreadsheets from external, untrusted sources.

Example use cases

Financial modeling

Build models

Forecasting

Scenario analysis

Data analysis

Insights and trends

Variance analysis

Categorization

Data cleaning

Standardize formats

Fix data quality issues

Parse and transform

Formulas

Troubleshooting

Explanation

Creation

Dashboards and reporting

Dashboards

Reports

Charts

Formatting

Professional styling

Conditional formatting

Document import

PDF extraction

Template population

Model review

Audit and validation

Improvement

Frequently asked questions

Does Claude understand financial modeling conventions?

Yes, Claude is trained to recognize common financial modeling patterns, formula structures, and industry-standard calculations. However, always verify that outputs match your specific methodologies.

Can I use Claude for Excel with sensitive data?

Claude for Excel works within your existing security framework. For highly sensitive or regulated data, ensure you follow your organization's data handling policies.

What happens to my chat history?

Your chat history is stored locally in your browser using IndexedDB. It persists between sessions, so you can return to previous conversations. Chat history is not automatically deleted, but you can clear all of it manually from Settings.

Your history is specific to each add-in surface, your user ID, and your organization. This means your Excel and PowerPoint chat histories are separate. Within a single surface, your chat history is shared across files—for example, conversations in one Excel workbook appear in another. If you log in to a different organization, you'll see a separate chat history.

How does Claude access my spreadsheet?

Claude reads the content of your currently open workbook, including cells, formulas, and tab structure. It can only access the workbook you have open in Excel.

What if Claude makes a mistake?

Claude highlights all changes it makes to your workbook. Review these changes carefully before saving or sharing your file. You can always undo changes using Excel's standard undo function.

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