Connect AI to Excel

The most direct way is to use an AI that works inside Excel: Microsoft builds Copilot into Microsoft 365, and Anthropic offers a Claude add-in for Excel that you install from the Office add-in store and that requires a paid Claude plan (checked in September 2026). If you don't want any of that, it also works to upload the file to an AI chat and ask it to analyse it or write the formula you need.

It's worth telling four things apart. Asking a chat for a formula or a macro, which you then paste in yourself. Uploading a file for it to analyse, which works on a copy and doesn't touch your Excel. Using an add-in inside Excel, which sees the open workbook and can modify it. And building an automation that connects the sheet to the AI every time something happens, which is the most powerful and the most delicate. What tends to catch people off guard is that AI can get numbers wrong with total confidence: always check the totals.

I don't have a dedicated article on this yet, so here's what I'd do to start: first ask it to explain a sheet you already have or to write a formula you're struggling with, always test on a copy of the file and don't let it touch the original until you trust what it does. And before uploading a sheet, check whether it contains client or employee data; if it does, think twice.