Claude is weirdly better at Excel than Copilot
I keep running into a reality that feels both funny and kind of sad:
Claude is currently better at creating and editing Excel workbooks than Microsoft Copilot is.
And yeah… you’d think the company that owns Office would have this locked down.
What Claude does (that feels like cheating)
Claude can straight-up generate an actual .xlsx—with real sheets, formulas, formatting, tables, the whole thing—and hand it back to you as a file you can open in Excel. It can also take an existing workbook and apply edits and return the updated file.
That changes the game because “making a spreadsheet” isn’t just about answering questions. It’s about producing the artifact:
New workbook from scratch
New tabs + consistent structure
Formulas that actually work
Clean formatting
Repeatable templates
Claude’s file-creation workflow is designed for exactly that.
What Copilot in Excel does (and why it feels constrained)
Copilot in Excel absolutely has useful capabilities—helping create/understand formulas, summarize data, and analyze what’s in front of you.
But the experience often hits “product rails” fast:
Your data needs to be structured as an Excel table or a very specific “supported range” format (unique headers, no merged cells, no blank headers, etc.).
It generally expects your file to be in OneDrive/SharePoint with AutoSave on.
Microsoft is actively shifting how this works: they note “App Skills” in Excel are being removed by late February 2026, pointing people toward “Agent Mode,” “Copilot Chat,” or “Analyst.” That kind of transition usually means uneven experiences while the plane is being rebuilt mid-flight.
And then there’s the new =COPILOT() function concept (cool idea): AI inside the grid as a formula. But Microsoft’s own docs emphasize constraints that matter in real spreadsheet work:
It only sees the prompt + the ranges you pass in (not the whole workbook, not other files, not enterprise info, not the internet).
It’s non-deterministic (can change results on recalculation), and they explicitly warn against using AI outputs for financial reporting / legal / other high-stakes scenarios.
There are usage limits (100 calls / 10 minutes, 300 / hour in the current rollout).
None of that is “bad.” It’s enterprise reality: governance, compliance, repeatability, safe defaults.
But it explains why Copilot can feel like it’s helping you inside a narrow lane, while Claude feels like it’s willing to rebuild the whole workbook with you.
The funniest part: Claude is literally in Excel
This is the part that makes me laugh every time:
There’s a “Claude by Anthropic in Excel” integration on Microsoft’s own marketplace—positioned as a tool that can analyze, edit, and create workbooks, including multi-tab workbooks, with change tracking and explanations.
So the story isn’t “Microsoft can’t do AI.”
It’s more like: the best spreadsheet experience right now is coming from the outside, while Microsoft is still tightening the bolts on the inside.
Why this keeps happening
Spreadsheets are messy. Real ones are:
multi-tab models
weird headers
legacy formatting
half-table / half-dashboard Frankenbooks
brittle formulas with tribal-knowledge assumptions
Copilot’s sweet spot is clean, structured data you can safely summarize, filter, chart, or extend.
Claude’s sweet spot (right now) is: “Give me the goal, I’ll produce the whole deliverable.”
The workflow I recommend (right now)
If you live in Excel, the best setup I’ve found is a split-brain approach:
Use Claude for:
Building a workbook from scratch (tabs, structure, formatting, formulas)
Refactoring a messy file into a clean model (standardized tables, consistent naming)
Producing reusable templates (forecast model, KPI dashboard shell, variance tracker)
Big “edit this entire spreadsheet” asks (rename columns across tabs, re-map assumptions)
Use Copilot for:
Quick in-Excel analysis once your data is already in a compliant shape (tables/supported ranges)
Low-stakes summarization/categorization on a defined range, especially with =COPILOT() (with the constraints in mind)
Prompt pack (steal these)
Claude prompts
“Create an Excel workbook for monthly P&L variance: Actual vs Budget vs Prior Year, with a Summary tab and 12 monthly tabs. Use tables, named ranges, and variance % formulas.”
“Here’s my workbook. Normalize it: convert ranges to tables where possible, remove merged cells, standardize headers, and return an updated .xlsx.”
“Build a KPI dashboard tab with slicers-ready tables and charts for Revenue, Gross Margin, CAC, Churn, and NRR.”
“Add a Scenario tab with Base/Best/Worst assumptions and propagate them through the model.”
“Explain the calculation chain for these cells and then rewrite the model so the assumptions are centralized.”
Copilot in Excel prompts
“Highlight anomalies: values 2+ std dev from the mean.”
“Create a new column formula that buckets these rows into 5 categories based on these keywords.”
“Summarize the main drivers of change month-over-month.”
“Create a PivotTable that groups by Region and Product and shows Revenue and Margin.”
=COPILOT(”Classify customer feedback into themes”, A2:A200)
My take
This isn’t really a “model” story. It’s a “product” story.
Microsoft is optimizing for:
tenant controls
predictable behavior
data boundaries
compliance posture
Claude is optimizing for:
generating the artifact
doing multi-step edits end-to-end
moving fast
And the punchline is: the “best Excel AI” experience right now might be the one that’s least afraid to just… touch the spreadsheet.
I’m not sure this gap lasts—Microsoft moves fast when it decides something matters. But today, if you care about spreadsheets, the surprising move is simple:
Don’t pick one assistant. Pick the right assistant for the shape of the job.