Anthropic's Claude now available in Microsoft Excel for Pro users
What's the story
Anthropic has expanded access to its advanced AI tool, Claude, by integrating it into Microsoft Excel for Pro plan users. The feature was previously limited to Max, Team, and Enterprise users during its beta phase. Now, you can summon Claude into your spreadsheets and let it handle complex formulas or multi-tab setups.
Feature highlights
Claude's capabilities in Excel
Claude makes Excel more user-friendly by allowing drag-and-drop of files without the risk of overwriting. It also provides instant cell-level explanations and can fix common errors like #REF! or #VALUE!. The tool preserves formulas when updating assumptions, supports longer sessions with auto-compaction, and works with both .xlsx and .xlsm files (size limits depend on your plan).
Impact on finance
A game changer for finance tasks
From January 24, 2026, Pro users can leverage Claude to expedite their financial tasks. This includes editing across multiple sheets simultaneously, testing scenarios, building financial models from templates, creating pivot tables and charts quickly while maintaining a clean change log. The integration is expected to reduce manual work and boost productivity in spreadsheet-heavy workflows.
Tool capabilities
Advanced features and future plans
Launched as a research preview in October 2025, the Claude in Excel tool integrates Anthropic's Claude models directly into Microsoft Excel. It is powered by Sonnet 4.5 and lets users query complex multi-tab workbooks, get cell-level citations for explanations, update assumptions without breaking formulas, debug errors, and build models from templates or uploaded files like 10-K reports. Users can also generate pivot tables/charts, variance analysis data cleaning/ trend identification while keeping a log of changes.