Anthropic brought Claude into Microsoft Excel with an emphasis on making spreadsheet work inspectable. Its October 27, 2025 announcement described a sidebar that could explain a workbook, change formulas and populate templates while tracking its changes and linking explanations to particular cells. That connection between an explanation and the underlying spreadsheet gives an analyst a concrete place to check what the assistant did. The announcement introduced the add-in as a beta research preview for Max, Enterprise and Teams users, so its central contribution was an integrated editing and review workflow rather than a finished product.
Terms in this piece · Glossary
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
