Anthropic has updated its Claude add-ins for Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, introducing shared context, reusable workflows, and new deployment options for enterprise users.
The most significant change is shared context across applications. Claude can now carry information from an open Excel workbook directly into a PowerPoint presentation within a single session, without the user needing to copy, paste, or re-explain anything. Anthropic describes a scenario where a financial analyst asks Claude to pull company financials, build a data table in Excel, and transfer a summary into a pitch deck — all in one continuous workflow.
A feature called Skills allows teams to save repeatable processes as one-click actions inside the Excel and PowerPoint sidebars. Organizations can standardize workflows such as financial analyses or slide templates and make them available to all users. Anthropic ships a starter set of Skills covering common tasks:
- Excel: auditing formulas, populating financial templates, cleaning data
- PowerPoint: building competitive landscape decks, reviewing presentation narratives
Claude also distinguishes Skills from Instructions, which set persistent preferences such as number formatting or writing style.
Enterprise users can now route traffic from the add-ins through an existing LLM gateway to Claude models running on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, or Microsoft Foundry. The updated add-ins are available in beta for paid Claude users on Mac and Windows.
Sources: The Deep View, VentureBeat
