Sheets

In everyday life. A shopping list on paper is fine for one person. But when five people share a budget, they need one table that everyone can see. And the totals should add up by themselves. That table is a spreadsheet.

What it is

Claude Sheets is a spreadsheet inside Claude. You, your team and Claude can all change the same cells. It is new and in beta, so it has only the basic features for now. You need a paid plan.¹

Build one

In the Claude desktop app, ask for a sheet in any chat, or pick the Sheets tile in the Artifacts tab. If you already have numbers, give them to Claude. You can paste them in, or bring in a file from Excel or Google Sheets.¹ This sample uses only pay and ask, like the exercise at the end of this section. For Brightline:

Make a sheet of the invoices I pasted below, one row each: supplier, invoice, amount, and a dropdown for the decision (pay or ask). Add a total. Add a second tab with the total of the invoices marked pay.

You can copy a sample invoice list from One job, three deliverables.

Change it safely

Claude can add tabs, formulas (including formulas that work across tabs), dropdowns, checkboxes and charts. You can also type in any cell yourself, or select some cells and ask Claude about them.¹

Two features keep your work safe:¹

• You can see each change. When Claude changes a cell, the cell gets an outline, so you can see what changed.
• You can go back. Version history lists earlier versions, and you can restore one. But be careful: restoring an old version also removes every change made after it.

Share it and save a copy

Only you can see a new sheet. Click Share to work on it with others. To save a copy, export it as an Excel file (.xlsx) or a CSV file (a simple table file that most apps can open). On a phone, you can only read it.¹

What it cannot do yet

Claude Sheets is for simple sheets. It cannot yet make pivot tables (summary tables that group your rows), and it has no macros (small programs that do steps for you) or PDF export. It cannot read live data from your other apps.¹ For a big spreadsheet you already keep in Excel or Google Sheets, Anthropic suggests Claude for Excel or Claude for Google Workspace instead, which put Claude inside those apps.

Check it before you share it

• Click a total and read its formula. Does it add up every row?
• Add a new row. Does the total change to include it? A formula that stops at the old last row is a common mistake.
• Type a wrong amount on purpose, such as 10 times too big. The total should go up by exactly as much as that cell went up. If the total does not change, the formula leaves that row out. Then put the right amount back.
• Work out one row by hand, with a calculator.
• Compare with a number you trust. At Brightline, the sheet's total must match the total from the team's checking program, a program that adds up the invoices to the cent. In the exercise, use your own calculator total.

In ChatGPT: inside Excel and Google Sheets

ChatGPT does this differently. It does not keep a spreadsheet inside ChatGPT. Instead, ChatGPT for Excel and Google Sheets opens ChatGPT in a side panel inside your own spreadsheet.²

1. Add it. In Excel, go to Home, then Add-ins, and search for ChatGPT. In Google Sheets, install it from Google's add-on store.
2. Use it. Ask it to build, change or explain your spreadsheet.
3. Ask your company first. At work, your company's IT team (the people who look after computers) may need to turn it on.

It is on every ChatGPT plan, including Free.²

OpenAI has said ChatGPT will get its own Sheets too. When this page was checked, it was still "coming soon".³

Combine it: build from a folder on your computer

Through the Claude desktop app, Claude can read the files in a folder on your computer, once you allow it to use that folder. On Claude, this needs a paid plan, as Set up the apps says. You met this in Claude 2.0: conversations and artifacts. So you can build a sheet from a file you already have:

Read invoices.csv in my Invoices folder. Make a sheet from it, one row per invoice, with a total.

Two things to know:

• The sheet holds a copy. A sheet cannot pull live data from connected apps (see What it cannot do yet).¹ Anthropic does not say whether it watches a file on your computer, so treat it as a copy: assume it does not. If the file changes, the sheet stays the same until you ask Claude to update it from the file. Then check the total again.
• The app must be open. Claude reads your folders only while the desktop app is open on that computer. A job on the borrowed desk in the cloud cannot reach them, as Where the work happens explained.

In ChatGPT: ChatGPT for Excel and Google Sheets works inside your own spreadsheet file. So there you change the file itself, not a copy.

Try it (10 minutes)

Paid plan: Ask Claude for a budget sheet: six costs, a category for each, and a total for each category on a second tab. Watch the outlines appear as Claude works. Then change one cost yourself. Does that category's total change?

Free plan: Ask Claude for the same budget as a table in a doc. Then add up each category yourself.