Anthropic announced a series of Claude-connected updates on Wednesday aimed at improving the workflows of Microsoft 365 users. The deep integration between the tools is designed to save time and effort for people who often work with both.  

The latest updates to Claude for Excel and Claude for PowerPoint will eliminate the need to constantly copy and paste between the AI chatbot and the Microsoft tools. Claude now keeps a single continuous conversation across both tools, so you won't have to repeat yourself or provide the same data twice. Claude can read data from an Excel spreadsheet, allowing you to add the data directly to a PowerPoint presentation. 

Anthropic gives the example of a financial analyst performing a series of actions without having to readd the data to the other tool or switch tabs at all during the process. 

Claude Skills -- reusable and automated actions within Claude itself -- are now available directly in the Excel and PowerPoint add-ins. Once a particular workflow is identified, it can be saved as a Skill that anyone in your organization can access with a single click, without having to perform the action manually. This allows anyone to take advantage of best practices without being an expert -- the saved Skills do the work for you. 

Anthropic is also offering a preloaded set of starter Skills for common tasks within Excel and PowerPoint.

The new shared context experience and Skills integration are available starting Wednesday for all Mac and Windows users on paid plans.