Use Claude for Outlook (original) (raw)
Claude for Outlook is an add-in that integrates Claude into your Outlook inbox and calendar. It’s designed for professionals who live in email, including private equity and investment banking associates managing deal flow, in-house legal teams running counterparty negotiations, and consultants juggling client threads.
With Claude for Outlook, you can:
Get started with Claude for Outlook
Supported versions
For individuals
For admins
Deploy Claude for Outlook to your organization:
After installation, team members can open Outlook, open any email, click the Claude button in the message ribbon, sign in with their Claude credentials, and start working with their inbox. Pin the task pane so it stays open as you move between messages.
Connect through an LLM gateway
If your organization routes API traffic through an internal LLM gateway connected to 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
Triage your inbox
Ask Claude what needs your attention. Claude reads your unread mail and attachments and sorts them into three buckets: actions items for you (each with a one-line reason), items Claude can handle (scheduling asks, acknowledgments, standard-form documents, pre-drafted for your review), and noise you can archive in one click.
Example prompts:
Draft replies in your voice
Tell Claude what you want to say and it drafts the reply into Outlook’s native compose pane, unsent. Tone is learned from your sent folder, so the draft matches your sentence length, sign-off, and formality register. Reply versus reply-all is chosen deliberately, and Claude warns before adding anyone who wasn’t on the thread.
Example prompts:
Summarize long threads
Claude reads the entire conversation, including every reply and forward, and tells you what’s been decided, what’s still open, and who owes what. Every claim cites the specific email it came from, and clicking a citation opens that message in Outlook.
Example prompts:
Read attachments inline
Claude reads .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, and .pdf attachments on the open email without you opening them, including tracked changes inside Word files. Ask what changed in an attached LOI, what the attached deck argues, or what numbers are in the attached model.
Example prompts:
Search your mailbox
Ask Claude to find a past conversation by topic, not just keywords. Results come back as clickable citations that open the source message in Outlook, so you can verify every answer against the original email.
Example prompts:
Find time and create events
Claude checks free/busy for everyone whose calendar you can see and proposes slots that respect working hours and existing holds. The invite is drafted into Outlook’s native appointment form with attendees, subject, and agenda for you to review and send.
Example prompts:
Prep for meetings
For your next event, Claude pulls the last thread with each attendee and any attached documents into a one-page brief, so you walk in knowing the open items and what each person last said.
Example prompts:
Work across Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
Claude for Outlook shares context with Claude for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, so Claude can work across your open Office apps in a single conversation. For example, you can open an attached LOI in Word with the email thread already loaded as context, or pull numbers from an email into an open Excel model, without copying and pasting between apps.
Context and session management
Auto-compaction
Chat history
Chat history is 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 Outlook histories are separate, for example, but conversations carry across different workbooks within Excel (or different emails within Outlook). 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.
Current limitations
For Claude for Outlook 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 Outlook 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 Outlook. Claude for Outlook doesn’t 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.
As a beta feature, Claude for Outlook is not recommended for:
Unsupported versions
Best practices
To use Claude for Outlook safely and effectively:
Prompt injection attack risks
Be cautious with emails from external or untrusted senders. Email bodies and attachments are untrusted input and may contain instructions intended to manipulate Claude rather than you.
An important risk for those using Claude for Outlook and other AI tools that can read and act on email is prompt injection: malicious instructions hidden in an email body, signature, or attachment that try to trick the AI into taking unintended actions. For example, a seemingly routine inbound email might contain hidden text instructing Claude to forward a thread or draft a reply you didn’t ask for. Claude may interpret these instructions as legitimate requests from you.
Our testing has identified edge scenarios where Claude for Outlook can be manipulated to:
While we continue to develop our offerings and improve safety measures to reduce these risks, you should exercise caution when using Claude for Outlook and should review every draft and inbox action when working with email from external, untrusted senders.
Example use cases
Morning inbox triage
Deal and matter correspondence
Scheduling
Meeting prep
Frequently asked questions
Does Claude send email or calendar invites on my behalf?
No. Claude drafts replies and invites into Outlook’s native compose and appointment forms, and you click send. The add-in does not request the Mail.Send permission at Beta, so there is no programmatic outbound sending.
What Microsoft Graph permissions does Claude for Outlook need?
Claude for Outlook requests Mail.ReadWrite, Calendars.Read, People.Read, User.Read, and offline_access as delegated scopes. Your IT admin grants these once via an admin consent URL; the Graph access token stays in the browser’s MSAL cache and is never sent to Anthropic.
What happens to my chat history?
Currently, chat history isn’t saved between sessions. Each time you open the add-in, you start a fresh conversation with Claude.
How does Claude access my mailbox?
Claude reads the email or event you have open via Office.js, and uses Microsoft Graph for anything spanning your mailbox or calendar (thread retrieval, search, free/busy, move and flag operations). Anthropic does not store a copy of your mailbox; content is fetched on demand and not persisted server-side.
What if Claude drafts something wrong?
Every draft lands unsent in Outlook’s compose pane. Edit it, discard it, or ask Claude to try again. Nothing goes out until you click send. For inbox actions like archive or move, you can undo using Outlook’s standard undo.
Does Claude work with shared or delegate mailboxes?
Claude can read mail in shared mailboxes you have delegate access to. Acting on a shared mailbox follows the same review-before-send flow.
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