Anthropic just released “Claude in Excel” to all Max, Team, and Enterprise users moving from waitlist to general availability. Surprisingly, Claude beats Microsoft to the market. Powered by Opus 4.5 with 20% accuracy gains on financial modeling, it’s the first generative AI sidebar native to Excel.
Note that the tool is in beta, and there are some limitations. It doesn’t persist chat history between sessions, and explicitly isn’t recommended for audit-critical work or client deliverables without human review. That said, the opportunity is there. Here’s what matters.
The headline
Claude in Excel moved from pilot to general availability, today January 29, 2026. Microsoft doesn’t have a competing AI sidebar in Excel yet. Anthropic jumped first.
What it does
Ask Claude questions about your workbook. Update assumptions without breaking formulas. Debug errors. Build models from scratch. Extract data from PDFs like 10-Ks. Get clickable cell citations that trace calculations back to their sources.
Quick wins: “Why is this NPV returning #VALUE?” “Increase growth by 2% and show impact on terminal value.” “Build a three-statement SaaS model.” “Extract financials from this 10-K.”
Critical gaps
Chat history is not saved between sessions. You close the file, open it again, Claude starts fresh. No thread memory.
For Team and Enterprise plans, Claude in Excel doesn’t inherit custom data retention settings and isn’t included in audit logs yet.
Claude can’t touch conditional formatting, data validation, macros, or VBA. Also locked to Opus 4.5, you can’t switch models.
The workarounds
Auto-compaction: Automatically compresses long conversations into new ones to avoid running out of context.
Session logging: Creates a “Claude Log” tab in your sheet to track Claude’s actions. Turn it on for an audit trail.
Overwrite protection: Warns before Claude overwrites data.
What to do now
Finance leaders: Run a pilot on one template. Pick a SaaS three-statement model or LBO analysis. One analyst, one month. Watch: no chat history means your analyst can’t revisit Tuesday’s work Wednesday. Workaround: make session logging part of the workflow.
Analysts: Start with formula debugging and error tracing – low risk, immediate wins. Graduate to scenario testing and assumption updates where Claude’s strength shines.
IT/Admins: Deploy via Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Users activate from Tools > Add-ins (Mac) or Home > Add-ins (Windows). Warning: don’t use Claude in Excel with untrusted spreadsheets. Prompt injection attacks could hide malicious instructions in cells or formulas.
What not to do
Don’t use for final client deliverables without human review, audit-critical calculations without verification, or highly sensitive regulated data without proper controls. Beta means beta.
Why this matters
Anthropic is embedding Claude into Excel, not asking users to switch tools. This is where finance teams actually work. According to Anthropic, context windows improve by 15% efficiency and 20% accuracy on financial tasks.
Microsoft hasn’t shipped a generative AI sidebar for Excel yet. Anthropic got there first.
The bottom line
If your team spends 5+ hours per week on template population, scenario testing, or variance analysis, run a pilot. If you need chat history and audit logs today, wait. If your spreadsheets touch sensitive data, get security approval first.
Claude in Excel is live, ahead of the competition, and is a sharp tool – take it for a test run and have fun!
