Claude for Microsoft 365: Excel, Word and Outlook

A finance lead opens the quarterly Excel model, asks the side panel why gross margin dropped in March, then switches to PowerPoint and asks for three slides on the answer. The add-in already knows which model she means, because the four Claude for Microsoft 365 add-ins share one conversation.¹

Claude for Excel, Word and PowerPoint are generally available on every paid Claude plan, and Claude for Outlook is in beta on the same plans.² This guide explains what each add-in does, what your IT admin has to approve, what it costs in euros and where the data goes. Companies that want help with the rollout itself can see how that works through satori-claude.

At a glance, checked on 9 November 2026

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What is Claude for Microsoft 365?

Claude for Microsoft 365 is a set of add-ins, small programs that run inside an Office app, which let you chat with Claude about the file or email you have open.³ The add-in reads the content, edits it when you ask and moves work between Excel, PowerPoint, Word and Outlook without you leaving the app. You install it from Microsoft AppSource, Microsoft's store for Office add-ins, and sign in with your Claude account.

A second product with a similar name causes most of the confusion we see. The Microsoft 365 connector works the other way round, letting Claude in the normal Claude app search SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Teams, and it is available on every Claude plan including Free.⁴ In short, the add-ins bring Claude into Office, while the connector brings your Office content into Claude, and many teams end up using both.

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What does Claude do in Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook?

Each add-in knows the native features of its app, so Claude edits a workbook or a contract the way a careful colleague would and not by pasting plain text.

Claude for Excel

Claude answers questions about an open workbook with citations to the exact cells, so you click a reference and land on the number it used.⁵ You can change an assumption such as the discount rate while every formula that depends on it stays intact, or ask Claude to trace a #REF! error back to its source across several tabs. Sorting, filtering, pivot tables, conditional formatting and dropdown lists all work by asking in plain English.

Two things stay out of reach for now. Claude for Excel does not handle data tables or macros written in VBA, the programming language behind older Excel automations, and it warns before it overwrites existing data.⁵

Claude for Word

In Word, Claude drafts and edits text while keeping your styles, numbering and formatting in place.⁶ With tracked changes on, every edit lands as a revision you accept or reject in Word's own review pane, which suits contracts and policies where nobody wants silent changes. Claude can also work through open comment threads one by one, editing the anchored text and replying with what it changed.

Legal and procurement teams get the most out of the redline summary. When a counterparty returns a contract with tracked changes, Claude summarises what they altered and flags the revisions worth pushing back on.⁶ Old .doc files must be saved as .docx first.

Claude for PowerPoint

Claude for PowerPoint builds slides from your existing corporate template, reading the slide master, layouts, fonts and colours before it adds anything.⁷ You can ask for a full ten-slide structure, change one slide without regenerating the rest, or turn a list of bullets into an editable native chart or process diagram.

In our own projects a marketing lead without a designer gets a usable first draft of an eight-slide update in about 15 minutes instead of two hours. Somebody still has to fix the storyline and check every number, because Anthropic itself does not recommend the add-in for final client deliverables without human review.⁷

Claude for Outlook (beta)

Claude for Outlook sorts your unread mail into what needs you, what Claude can draft and what is noise, each with a one-line reason.⁸ It drafts replies in your own tone, learned from your sent folder, summarises long threads into decisions and open items with a citation per email, and finds meeting times across attendees.

Every draft lands unsent in Outlook's compose window, because the add-in never sends mail or invites by itself.⁸ Outlook on the web, new and classic Outlook on Windows and Outlook on Mac are supported, while Outlook 2016 and 2019, the mobile apps and Exchange on-premises mailboxes are not.

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How does Claude carry context between the Office apps?

Cross-app mode lets Claude read from one open file and make changes in another within the same conversation.¹ Typical requests include pulling figures from an Excel model into a Word memo or updating a PowerPoint chart with the latest numbers. Another is opening an attachment from an Outlook thread in Word with the email already loaded as context.

Each user switches the mode on per device in the add-in settings under "Let Claude work across files". Pro and Max accounts have it on by default, while Team and Enterprise start with it off, and organisation owners can allow or block it for everyone under Organization settings, Office agents.¹

Three limits matter in practice. Claude only reads and writes files that are already open, and it cannot open or close files by itself. Cross-app mode also stops working when the add-ins connect through Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud or Microsoft Foundry instead of a Claude account.¹

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How do you roll out Claude for Microsoft 365?

A small team can be running within an hour, although Microsoft's side of the rollout can take up to 24 hours to reach every user.⁶ The steps for an admin look like this:

• Allow the Office Store. In the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, turn on "Let users access the Office Store" under Settings, Org Settings.
• Deploy the add-ins. Under Settings, Integrated apps, search AppSource for Claude for Microsoft 365 and Claude for Outlook, then assign them to the whole organisation or to chosen groups.
• Grant the Outlook consent. A Global Administrator opens Anthropic's admin consent link once, approving read and write access to mail plus read access to calendars, so staff are not asked one by one.⁸
• Let users sign in. Each person activates the add-in in the app and signs in with a Claude account.

Organisations that block the Office Store can upload Anthropic's manifest files directly instead. One known Microsoft issue trips up larger tenants. Admin roles activated for a limited time through Microsoft Entra PIM are not recognised on the Integrated apps page, so deploy from an account with the role assigned permanently.⁵

Tip from satori.: Pilot with five to ten people from finance, sales and project work for two weeks before you roll out widely. Collect the three prompts each group actually used, and turn those into a one-page guide for everyone else.

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What does Claude for Microsoft 365 cost in Europe?

The add-ins cost nothing on top of a paid Claude plan, so the price is the Claude seat itself.² Anthropic shows European visitors these prices in euros before VAT, checked on 9 November 2026.⁹

A 25-person company that already pays for Microsoft 365 adds €450 a month on Team Standard with annual billing. Microsoft 365 Copilot Business lists at €18.20 per user a month on annual billing in Ireland, on top of a Microsoft 365 business plan, so the seat prices sit 20 cents apart.¹⁰ Licences, training and support on one invoice in euros come through satori-claude at €490 once plus €14 per user a month, with the Claude licence at €22 for Standard or €110 for Premium.

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Where does your data go under the GDPR?

Signed in with a Claude account, the add-ins send your conversation to Anthropic, including the content Claude reads from your workbook, document, deck or mailbox.⁵ Anthropic deletes those inputs and outputs within 30 days, and it does not process them in an EU region. The add-ins also skip any custom retention settings your organisation has set, and their activity does not appear in Enterprise audit logs, although Enterprise customers with the Compliance API get the sessions there.¹

Companies that must keep processing in Europe can deploy the add-ins through their own cloud account instead of Claude accounts. Through Amazon Bedrock or Google Cloud, no mailbox content reaches Anthropic, according to Anthropic's Outlook documentation.⁸ The European routes are Amazon Bedrock EU cross-region inference, which keeps each request inside six EU regions when called from an EU region, and the EU multi-region endpoint on Google Cloud. One trade-off is that cross-app mode stops working on those routes, and Claude and EU data residency explains every route in detail.

Treat files from outside the company with care. Anthropic warns that a downloaded template or a counterparty's contract can hide instructions meant to trick Claude, so review every confirmation Claude asks for before it changes anything.⁶

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When is Microsoft 365 Copilot the simpler choice?

Copilot is the simpler choice when your work happens mostly in Teams meetings, SharePoint pages and Loop, because the Claude add-ins cover Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook only. A company that already pays for Microsoft 365 E5 with Copilot also has its audit logs and data loss rules in one Microsoft place, which saves a security review. Claude fits better when the work spans files and systems outside Microsoft, or when you want a fixed seat price with Claude Code and Cowork included.

Many of the companies we work with run both tools side by side for a while. The full comparison, including the fact that Copilot now runs some agents on Claude models, sits in Claude vs Copilot.

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Summary and next steps

Claude for Microsoft 365 puts Claude inside Excel, Word and PowerPoint on every paid plan, with Outlook in beta, and one conversation follows you across all four apps. An admin deploys it from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center in under an hour, and the price is the Claude seat you already pay for. The weak spots are the Outlook beta, the missing Teams support and a data path that leaves the EU unless you route it through Bedrock or Google Cloud.

Open the Excel file you update most often, install Claude from AppSource and ask it to explain how the main total is calculated, with cell references. Fifteen minutes later you will know whether the add-in reads your models correctly. Your team can then join a Claude workshop at €280 per user to turn that first test into shared habits.

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Sources

Footnotes

1. Anthropic (2026). Work across M365 apps. Claude documentation, checked on 9 November 2026. https://claude.com/docs/office-agents/work-across-apps ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. Anthropic (2026). Claude for Microsoft 365. Product page, checked on 9 November 2026. https://claude.com/claude-for-microsoft-365 ↩ ↩²

3. Anthropic (2026). Claude for M365 overview. Claude documentation. https://claude.com/docs/office-agents ↩

4. Anthropic (2026). Set up the Microsoft 365 connector. Claude Help Center, checked on 9 November 2026. https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12542951 ↩

5. Anthropic (2026). Use Claude for Excel. Claude documentation, checked on 9 November 2026. https://claude.com/docs/office-agents/excel ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. Anthropic (2026). Use Claude for Word. Claude documentation, checked on 9 November 2026. https://claude.com/docs/office-agents/word ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

7. Anthropic (2026). Use Claude for PowerPoint. Claude documentation, checked on 9 November 2026. https://claude.com/docs/office-agents/powerpoint ↩ ↩²

8. Anthropic (2026). Use Claude for Outlook. Claude documentation, checked on 9 November 2026. https://claude.com/docs/office-agents/outlook ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

9. Anthropic (2026). Plans and Pricing, checked from an EU connection on 9 November 2026. https://claude.com/pricing ↩

10. Microsoft (2026). Microsoft Copilot for small business, pricing for Ireland in EUR excluding VAT, checked on 6 November 2026. https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/copilot/solutions/business ↩