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Claude for Excel

Claude for Excel is Anthropic's add-in that puts Claude inside Excel: it reads your workbook, answers with citations to the cells, writes formulas and makes changes in the same file.

Select any words here to ask your Maestro about them.

You ask Claude for Excel for September sales by store. Round Rock comes out $5,991.94 below the closeout report, and its rows look normal. What's most likely?

A garden supply company with three stores, September. Claude added up the workbook's Sales table. Example data.

What it does: from a sidebar, it reads your whole workbook, answers questions about it with citations to the cells, writes formulas like XLOOKUP, and builds pivot tables and charts in the same file.

What it's good for: understanding a workbook you didn't build, tracing where a number comes from, or putting together a summary without typing every formula. Its changes show up in the cells, so you can read them.

Where it breaks: it adds up what's in the cells, and it can hallucinate like any model. Before you send a number, run a reconciliation against a source that already ties out.

Learn it in depth in the course Claude for Excel, with a sales workbook that comes with its traps.

How it's used

In the Claude sidebar

"What did each store sell in September?"

  1. Claude reads the Sales table: three stores, September 1 to 30It works in the open workbook, not a copy.
  2. Writes =SUMIFS(Sales[Amount], Sales[Store], A2) next to each storeThe formula stays in the cell: you can read it and change it.
  3. marked: Answers with the totals and cites the cells it usedThe citation tells you where each number came from.
It works in your real workbook: formulas you can see, cells you can check. That's also its limit: it adds up what's in the cells.

When to look closer

It cites its cells

Cedar Park's total

  1. marked: Cedar Park: $28,727.98 [Sales[Amount], Store = Cedar Park]

Claude shows you the cells behind Cedar Park's total. Does that mean the total is right?

Ask your Maestro about Claude for Excel

It answers from the free course page closest to this word, the way it answers while you study.

Example

You: What does "Claude for Excel" mean, in plain words?

Your Maestro: I'll explain it with a case of yours: it sticks better than a definition. Which workbook at work would you ask it to explain?

Asking about: Answers from the page "Can Claude Code work with my Excel files?"

Only this browser keeps what you ask here. How it works

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Related terms

  • XLOOKUP

    XLOOKUP looks for a value in one column and returns the data from the same row in another column, to the right or the left: =XLOOKUP(E2,B2:B9,C2:C9).

  • Pivot table

    A pivot table summarizes a long table in seconds: it groups by the columns you pick and sums, counts or averages another, with no formulas.

  • Reconciliation

    Comparing a total you computed with the same total from an independent source, such as a bank statement or a register report, and explaining any difference.

  • Spot check

    Taking a few rows spread across the data (from the start, the middle and the end) and comparing them by hand with what you expect.

The whole glossary