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Most Claude features ask you to come to Claude: open the app, open the site, start a chat. Add-ins make the opposite move. The window you already have open, a workbook, a memo, a deck, an inbox, a browser tab, grows a Claude panel inside it. One extension covers Chrome. Four add-ins cover Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. All five sign in with the Claude account you already have. What they kill is the shuttle: copy cells into a chat, paste a formula back, watch a reference break, repeat. An add-in reads the real file and edits the real file, in that file’s own language. Formulas stay formulas. Edits arrive as tracked changes. Email drafts land in the compose pane and sit there until you hit send.

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Five house calls

Click through the apps. For each one, watch where Claude sits, what it can see, and what it is allowed to touch.
The same shape repeats five times: Claude reads what is open, works inside it, and shows you what changed before anything is final. Learn the shape once and every add-in feels familiar on first open.

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Chrome: the one with hands

The Microsoft add-ins read and write documents. The Chrome extension operates a browser. It clicks, types, fills forms, moves through multi-step flows, and works across several tabs at once. Ask it to do something you do every week and it can save the routine as a shortcut and rerun it on a schedule. Here it is with a real task. Notice the right side: before touching anything, Claude writes out its plan, names the site it wants to act on, and waits for approval.
Chrome browser on Zillow with the Claude side panel showing a step-by-step plan and an approve button

Claude in Chrome plans a Zillow search, lists every step, and asks before acting. Screenshot from Anthropic's product pages.

To see the page, Claude takes screenshots of the tab it is working in. That one fact sets both the power and the rules: whatever is visible on that screen becomes part of the conversation, so the tab you give Claude is the trust decision.

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The approval dial

You choose how often Claude stops for permission. Three settings, one dial, and a floor the dial cannot go below. Switch between them and watch the same booking task run.
The floor is not decorative. Purchases, payments, and similarly irreversible moves stop the run on every setting, and Claude cannot enter certain high-risk categories like banking at all. On Team and Enterprise plans, admins add their own walls: an org-wide switch and allowlists that pin Claude to approved sites. Two habits keep the extension safe while it is in beta. Treat unfamiliar websites like unfamiliar code, because a page can carry hidden text that tries to redirect an AI reading it, an attack called prompt injection. And keep Claude out of tabs showing things you would not paste into a chat, or use a separate browser profile for its work. Recorded shortcuts are where the extension quietly becomes infrastructure. This one checks sent mail for unanswered threads and drafts the follow-ups, on a schedule.
Gmail with the Claude side panel creating a scheduled shortcut named find-follow-ups

A recorded shortcut in Gmail: find sent emails that never got replies and draft follow-ups, every morning at 9. Screenshot from Anthropic's product pages.

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Microsoft 365: four rooms, one memory

The Office add-ins install from Microsoft AppSource and appear as a panel inside each app. Excel, Word, and PowerPoint are generally available on every paid Claude plan. Outlook is in public beta. Here is the Outlook one at work, reading a travel thread with the reply options ready.
Outlook with the Claude add-in open beside an email thread about a confirmed itinerary

Claude for Outlook reading an itinerary thread, offering to summarize, draft a reply, or extract action items. Frame from Anthropic's Microsoft 365 product film.

What makes the suite more than four separate tools is cross-app context. With the add-ins installed and the setting switched on, one conversation follows you between apps, reading from the files you have open and writing into them.
Outlook

A client brief lands. Claude reads the thread and the attachment.

Excel

It updates the model with the new figures, formulas intact.

Word

It drafts the memo from the model, in your firm’s template.

PowerPoint

It builds three slides in your deck master, charts native and editable.

One conversation carries the context the whole way. Nothing is re-explained, re-pasted, or re-attached.
Cross-app mode is a per-device toggle called “Let Claude work across files” in each add-in’s settings. Pro and Max plans ship with it on. Team and Enterprise default to off, and it is not available when the add-ins connect through a corporate LLM gateway instead of a Claude account.

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Nothing lands without a receipt

The add-ins are allowed to change real files, so every one of them is built around the same bargain: Claude works, you review. Each app leaves its receipt in the interface where you already inspect the work.
Excel

Answers cite the exact cells they came from. Click a citation to jump there, and confirm risky operations before they run.

Word

Every edit is a tracked change. You accept or reject with the same buttons you already use on human coauthors.

PowerPoint

Revisions stay native and editable inside your slide master. Review the changed slide before you finalize the deck.

Outlook

Replies and invites open as drafts in the compose pane and wait. Nothing sends itself, on any setting.

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The fine print

  1. Everything on this page needs a paid Claude plan. Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise. None of it exists on the free tier.
  2. The Office add-ins need a supported Microsoft 365 desktop or web app. Perpetual-license Office 2016 and 2019 are out, and Excel works on .xlsx and .xlsm files, not macros or VBA.
  3. The Chrome extension runs in desktop Chrome only. Not other Chromium browsers, not mobile, and not available to organizations covered by HIPAA.
  4. On Team and Enterprise plans your admin decides whether any of this is installed at all, via the Microsoft 365 admin center for Office and an org toggle plus site allowlists for Chrome.

Sharing, permissions, and what leaves the chat

Map the audience, snapshot, and retention rules behind shared chats, artifacts, projects, and feedback.