Most people do not want another AI tool to learn, and Microsoft is feeling it. Reports that it had lowered sales targets for Copilot, its AI assistant, point to the same problem, though the company denied them. When the value is not obvious inside the tools teams already use, adoption stalls. Stalled adoption is then a commercial problem, whatever the technology can do.
Excel is the clearest example of where real work happens. Budgets, forecasts, pricing, headcount plans and board packs run through spreadsheets, because they are flexible and easy to review. They are also the fastest way for an organization to agree on a number, so whoever speeds up spreadsheet work wins back people’s time.
Claude in Excel puts Anthropic’s AI assistant where that work already is. It is a small add-on installed inside Excel, which opens a side panel next to the sheet. The assistant reads the workbook, works across tabs and updates cells while people stay in the same file. It can also point to the exact cells behind an explanation, which makes the work easier to check. That counts in spreadsheets, because they punish silent errors. A small mistake can flow through a workbook, change a decision and then become policy that is hard to unwind.
Speed is the other gain. A couple of typed requests can turn a rough question into a structured workbook. That workbook can compare a set of companies, break out what drives their performance and lay out charts over several tabs. The assistant sets up the tables, runs the calculations and formats the output for a team to review, so hours or days of setup shrink to minutes. Most of the cost of spreadsheet work is in that setup, the hours people spend reworking a model until it makes sense to someone else. When the assistant handles it, people move on to checking, judgment and the decision itself.
That shifts where the value sits. Excel stays the trusted grid, the file format and the place where teams sign off work. The assistant turns a request into the first version of the analysis. Once it can sit inside Excel, AI becomes a part teams can choose, instead of a feature they have to buy from Microsoft.
