Issue #37: Claude now works inside Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. Here is what to try first.

Launched October 6. Public beta. Works on every paid Claude plan.

If you run your business on Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, you probably know the routine. You open Claude in one tab, paste in a paragraph or a pile of numbers, wait for the answer, copy it, switch tabs, paste it back, and fix the formatting that broke on the way.

Last week Anthropic removed that whole loop. Claude now lives in a sidebar inside your Google files and edits them in place.

It is an add-on you install from the Google Workspace Marketplace. Once it is on, you open any Doc, Sheet, or Slide, go to Extensions, then Claude, then Open Claude, and a sidebar appears next to your file.

Here is what it does in each app:

Docs. Claude can fix a sentence or restyle a heading without messing up the surrounding formatting. For bigger rewrites, it shows suggestion cards that highlight the exact passage, and you apply or dismiss each one.

Sheets. Claude writes formulas, builds pivot tables and charts, and adds new tabs. For messier jobs like cleaning data or joining two lists, it can move a range into Python and write the results back to the sheet.

Slides. Claude adds slides that use your deck's own layouts and theme, and checks its work for overlapping elements and hard-to-read text.

There is also a second piece. Separate Docs, Sheets, and Slides connectors let you paste a Google file link into a normal Claude chat and have Claude create or edit that file from there. Claude can only touch what your existing Google sharing permissions already allow.

The verdict: It is a beta, and Gemini can do much of the same work inside Workspace. So this mainly makes sense if you already pay for Claude and prefer how it writes and reasons. For those people, it is a real time saver.

Picture a small HVAC company in Phoenix with six employees. The owner keeps job costs in a Google Sheet, sends quotes from a Google Doc template, and builds a quarterly review deck in Slides for her business partner.

Before: every month she exports the job data, pastes it into Claude, asks for a summary of which job types made money, copies the answer back, and rebuilds the chart by hand. About 90 minutes.

After: she opens the Sheet, opens the Claude sidebar, and types, "Add a tab that shows profit by job type for this quarter, flag anything under 15% margin, and make a chart."

Claude builds the tab and the chart. She then opens the Slides deck and asks Claude to add a slide using the same numbers. She approves each change as it appears. After about 15 minutes, nothing was pasted anywhere.

If Claude does not show up in your Extensions menu, you are probably on a free plan, your Workspace admin has blocked Marketplace installs, or the rollout has not reached your account yet.

"Can Claude see all my Google Drive files now?"

No. The sidebar works on the file you have open. The separate connectors work on the files you point Claude to, and Claude's access aligns with your existing Google sharing permissions. It cannot open anything you could not open yourself.

The default "Ask before edits" mode also means nothing changes until you approve it. If you are on a Team or Enterprise plan, an owner must enable the connectors first, so check with whoever manages your Claude account.

The honest caveat: Anthropic has not said how this beta counts against your usage limits, or whether it will cost extra later. Treat it as free for now and watch your usage the first two weeks.

Pick the one spreadsheet you dread opening every month. Make a copy, open the Claude sidebar, and ask for a summary tab: totals, the three biggest changes from last month, and one chart. Approve the cards one at a time and check the formulas it wrote.

If the output is right, you just saved yourself an hour every month. Then turn it into a habit: save that prompt in a note and reuse it each month.

Claude's move into Google's own apps is a notable moment. Google has Gemini built into Workspace, and now a rival's assistant sits inside the same documents.

For you, the practical effect is choice without switching costs. You can keep your files where they are and pick the assistant that does the job better.

Expect Google to respond by pushing Gemini harder, and expect more of these "assistant inside your existing app" launches through the rest of the year.

Setting it to "Accept all edits" on day one. It is tempting because it is faster, but this is a beta, and you don’t yet know how it behaves with your files. Stay on "Ask before edits" until you have run the same workflow successfully a few times.

Also, don’t trust any number it writes into a financial sheet without a quick check.

Spot-check two or three formulas every time.

Until next issue, Kris

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