47 Comments
User's avatar
Samantha Mann Hays's avatar

Well, this was life changing and already worth upgrading to paid Pro - thank you!

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Makes me happy to hear :)

I take it you use Excel every day?

Sheetal's avatar
6dEdited

Ruben, we all get told off by you each week - on things we are not doing right with AI 🤣 thanks for keeping us all in check!! Much appreciated!

Ruben Hassid's avatar

You're welcome :)

Keep reading. Keep doing. That's all that matters.

Tom Pipersson's avatar

Really useful article, thanks!

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Really glad to hear, Tom.

Will you be testing it out today? :)

Tom Pipersson's avatar

Not until I finish work and xan get to play on my personal laptop. But yes, today. 😁

Anisha Jain's avatar

Claude is quietly becoming the Apple of AI.

Apple never said "here's a phone with a 12MP camera and A17 chip." They said, "Here's how you take better photos of your kids."

Claude does the same thing:

They didn't hype "expanded context management." They shipped Projects - now I upload 10 docs, and Claude actually duplicates my entire brain.

They didn't demo "spreadsheet integration coming Q3." They shipped Claude Excel - now I don’t have to learn Excel, and I never did.

Every release answers one question: "What can you do with this today?"

No research papers. No benchmark flexing.

Just tools that work, released when they're ready.

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Claude just built good stuff.

They're meeting where people are. Excel is just the start.

And yes, most people still don't know Claude has projects. Such a cool feature to miss out on.

abalawadhi's avatar

While ChatGPT is doing a Blackberry.

Axelle Malek's avatar

I wish this existed a few years ago. I was drowning in Excel files back then.

I don't use Excel every day anymore. But I know this is huge for anyone who does.

That "explain this formula in plain English" feature alone. I would have killed for that instead of googling something I still didn't understand.

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Google gives you the generic definition. Not what the formula actually does in your spreadsheet.

Well, people won’t have to use Google anymore.

Mireille van Driel's avatar

Does it do formatting? Like I have a few columns but no colors, formatting and such. Does it doe something like: make these look pretty for presentation?

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Advanced things like full table styles, themes, or heavy visual polish are not fully supported yet.

Mireille van Driel's avatar

Too bad, It would be nice to have AI do that part

Noam Nisand's avatar

This is probably one of the biggest wow moments of ai adoption, especially in the corporate world

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Everyone getting productive in Excel is going to change the corporate world for sure.

AI is finally touching the tools people actually use at work.

Zane's avatar

Saw this going viral and was waiting for your piece about it.

It's a genuine step forward now. People have a working option for using AI for Excel.

Just heaven for debugging formulas and cleaning messy data.

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Debugging formulas and cleaning messy data are things that eat hours.

Now you just ask. It’ll show you. Then you can fix it.

Chrissy Marquardt's avatar

Not an Excel person - but here for Google Sheets. I've already used Claude to build a Google Sheet that would have taken me about 1-2 hours to build. Claude did it in 20 minutes or less. 100% betting on Claude. CoPilot 👎🏽 🚮

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Claude doesn't care if it's Excel or Sheets.

They just did it.

Laura Engen's avatar

What if you have a Microsoft computer? Would you still be able to download Claude for Excel, or would you not be allowed?

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Yes, you can :)

Megha G's avatar

Hi Ruben, can we create automated excel workflows with this - for example if I have to create an efforts pricing table - can I provide it the price and resources and it automates the calculation and table creation.

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Yes, what it does is you tell it what you want, and it builds the thing.

It's particularly strong for financial/consulting-style tasks.

Megha G's avatar

Lols thank you! I am a lawyer and now a legal ai consultant - so you are master yoda for me atm! I don’t understand excels at all! So this I got to try!

Delia Green's avatar

Oh boy, I’m in financial services and this is amazing. I just pulled data from a PDF in seconds. it took me months to code something similar a few years ago. 😂

Ruben Hassid's avatar

You spent months coding something that now takes seconds.

Claude finally built the right AI for Excel, inside Excel.

Caroline Trowbridge's avatar

Thanks a lot Ruben for all the value you provide!!!

What do you think about the privacy of our spreadsheets?

Using a desktop version, it's not supposed to be used for training the models?

Using it offline isn't helpful as it could be uploaded once connected.

Ruben Hassid's avatar

The rule is simple: don't upload what you can't afford to leak.

Log in to Claude, settings, privacy & data controls (or similar) and make sure "Help improve Claude" is off if privacy is your priority.

That should block training use for add-in interactions too.

Vi Conn's avatar

Dammit, now I need to add Claude Pro...$17 more a month...but as you say, worth it. Ruben, you previously provided a list on efficiently allocating your subscription spend. Where does that fall nowadays? Looking at me, a Creative Director in Finance Marketing.

Ruben Hassid's avatar

You just need the right ones.

It still holds true until now. Except for Perplexity for search because I use Grok now.

Monica Marcela Tamas's avatar

Claude reads Excel as a grid, not as pasted text.

Formulas stay intact, that’s the point, and it matters. I’ve been waiting for this as a spreadsheet user.

Thanks, Ruben, for explaining it so clearly.🙏🏼

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Treating them like text was always the wrong approach.

Now go break something with it :)

Tan's avatar

Ruben, I love you. Thank you for simplifying this. You rock😊

Ruben Hassid's avatar

Thanks for supporting, really :)