Where Else Can You Use Claude? Excel, Chrome, and Slack

Where else can you use Claude?

Claude works inside a growing list of tools you may already open every day: Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook, Google Chrome, and Slack. The first three are available on all paid Claude plans, while Outlook and the Chrome extension are still in beta. There is also Claude Code for people who build software.

This is the last lesson in Anthropic’s free Claude 101 course before the recap, and it is the one that has changed the most since the course was recorded. The course covers five tools.

The live lineup is bigger now: Word and Outlook joined the family, so I checked everything here against the current product pages. I did that digging so you do not have to.

The chat comes to you

Here is the simplest way to hold this lesson. Connectors bring your tools into the chat. This lesson is the reverse: these bring Claude into your tools.

Same Claude, different door. Instead of copying a spreadsheet into a chat window, you open the spreadsheet and Claude is sitting in a sidebar next to it, looking at the same thing you are. For the tools you spend real hours in, that beats visiting Claude somewhere else.

Claude for Microsoft 365: Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook

If your business runs on Microsoft Office, this is the big one. Claude shows up as a sidebar inside four apps, and your context carries between them.

• Excel. Ask what a formula actually does, update numbers without breaking the formulas behind them, trace an error like #REF! back to its source, or build a new sheet. Changed cells get highlighted, so you review everything before it sticks.
• Word. Claude drafts and edits using tracked changes, in your styles and your template. Nothing is saved over your head.
• PowerPoint. Turn notes or a document into a first-draft deck in your own template, tighten slide copy, and restructure without hand-fixing every slide.
• Outlook (beta). Triage your inbox, draft replies, and find meeting times. Drafts wait in the compose window for you to hit send. Claude cannot send anything on its own.

All four are on every paid Claude plan (Outlook still in beta), installed as add-ins from the Microsoft marketplace and switched on inside each app. If you saw my connectors lesson and wondered how far this goes, this is how far: start in your inbox, end in the deck, one conversation the whole way.

Claude for Chrome: a sidebar for your browser

Claude for Chrome is a browser extension, in beta on all paid plans, that puts Claude in a sidebar in your browser. The difference from a regular chat is that it can see the page you are on and act on it: summarize an article, fill a form, click through a multi-step task, or pull the numbers out of a dashboard you check every week.

This one deserves the most care, because a tool that can click and type in your browser is powerful in both directions. Anthropic’s own guidance is worth repeating in plain English: use it on sites you trust, review anything sensitive before you approve it, and know that a bad actor’s page can hide instructions that try to trick an AI. Keep it away from banking and passwords, watch it work while you are learning it, and it earns its spot.

Claude in Slack

If your team or your clients live in Slack, Claude can live there too. It summarizes the thread you just got dropped into, drafts replies, and pulls together context from your workspace before a meeting, depending on what your workspace admin has switched on. If you do not use Slack, skip this one without a second thought.

And Claude Code, the developer tool, rounds out the list. I covered where it fits in the Chat vs Cowork vs Code lesson, and the short version stands: if you do not build software, you need exactly none of it.

How to pick your first one

Do not install all of these this week. The same rule as the use cases lesson: follow the hours.

If you live in spreadsheets, start with Excel. If your day is email and browser tabs, start with Chrome, or Outlook if that is where your email lives.

If your business runs through Slack, start there. One surface, two weeks, real work.

Then decide if you want a second one. Trust me, one sidebar you actually use beats five you installed and forgot.

For me the honest answer is that most of my work happens in Cowork, so my sidebar list is short. Chrome is the one on my own to-try list, for pulling numbers out of my weekly dashboards instead of hopping between tabs.

One quick word of caution

Two things before you install anything. First, several of these are in beta, and beta features change fast, so treat the details here as current as of this writing and check the product page for whatever you install.

Second, the more a tool can act for you, the more your review matters. Highlighted cells, tracked changes, and drafts that wait for your send button exist for a reason. Use them.

Put This Into Practice

Let Claude match the surface to your week. Open a chat and paste this in.

Install the winner, give it two weeks of real work, and judge it on that.

The whole thing in one line

Claude is not a website, it is a coworker that can show up wherever you work: your spreadsheets, your documents, your inbox, your browser. Go ahead and pick the one place your hours pile up, add Claude there this week, and let it prove itself on the work you were doing anyway.

~ Anthony