Anthropic launches Claude for Google Workspace, putting the assistant in Docs, Sheets and Slides

Anthropic has released Claude for Google Workspace in public beta, an add-on that places its AI assistant in a sidebar inside Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. According to Anthropic, the beta is open to all paid Claude plans and arrives alongside new beta connectors that let Claude create and edit Google files straight from its chat interface.

The sidebar sits beside whatever file is open, so there is no hopping between apps or browser tabs. Anthropic says Claude can read the document, spreadsheet or presentation you are working in, see the text, cells or slides you have selected, and write changes into the file itself.

What Claude can do in each app

In Docs, Claude handles small fixes such as rewording a sentence or changing a heading style while leaving surrounding formatting untouched. Larger rewrites arrive as suggestion cards in the sidebar: each card marks the passage Claude intends to change, and the user applies or dismisses it. Anthropic's example is condensing the executive summary of a product requirements document while turning the next-steps section into a table, both directly in the file.

Sheets support runs deeper. Claude can write formulas, build pivot tables and native charts, and add new tabs. For joins and data cleaning it can pull a cell range into Python and write the results back into the sheet. Anthropic suggests starting from an empty spreadsheet with source files attached and asking for a third-quarter budget-versus-actuals report, with a tab per team, a summary chart and automatic flags for anything over budget.

In Slides, Claude generates new slides using the deck's own layouts and themes so they stay visually consistent with the rest of the presentation. It then checks its own output, flagging elements that overlap, run off the slide, or text that is hard to read.

Approval-first by default

Users decide how autonomous the assistant is. In the default mode, called "Ask before edits," every change appears as an approval card with a summary, and Claude waits for a go-ahead before touching the file. In "Accept all edits" mode it works through the entire task without pausing.

Connectors and enterprise controls

Signing in with a Claude account brings the same models, connectors and skills into the sidebar. Anthropic's example: asking for a quarterly business review deck for a customer lets Claude pull account history from Salesforce and recent call notes through the Google Drive connector. A saved QBR format can become a reusable skill so a whole team builds the next deck the same way.

For organizations on Enterprise plans, Anthropic says controls including the Compliance API, customer-managed encryption keys and OpenTelemetry audit export extend to the add-on as well.

Editing Google files from the Claude side

The companion connectors, also in beta, flip the starting point: you begin in Claude and it builds or edits Google files from the conversation. Paste a Google file link or ask for a new document, spreadsheet or deck, and on supported setups it opens in a pane beside the chat. Anthropic recommends this direction when the job needs a new file or spans several files, and notes that Claude's access matches the user's existing Google sharing permissions.

Availability

The add-on installs from the Google Workspace Marketplace; after that, open a file and go to Extensions > Claude > Open Claude. Admins can deploy it domain-wide or to selected groups through the Google Admin console. On Team and Enterprise plans, an owner or primary owner must enable the connectors before others can turn them on.

Why it matters

Anthropic is moving Claude into the surfaces where documents actually get made rather than waiting for users to visit its own app — a direct challenge to Google's Gemini, which already lives inside Workspace, and to Microsoft's Copilot in Office. It is notable that Anthropic is embedding inside a rival's product suite to do it. The default approval-card posture also matters: letting an agent edit shared business files is where trust is easiest to lose, so requiring sign-off by default with full autonomy as an opt-in reads as a deliberate pitch to cautious enterprise buyers. Finally, the connectors point at a larger ambition, with Claude acting as an orchestration layer that reads Salesforce, Drive and your own documents, then produces the finished file.