[nsiemsen]

Claude for excel is already amazing. Fully capable of doing junior work. Formatting is great. Can refactor large multi-tab spreadsheets. It just burns tokens. If OpenAI is going to subsidize this on the monthly enterprise plans for a while then it's a game changer.

Claude for Excel (I work in finance) was one of the absolutely critical reasons we added Anthropic enterprise licenses. But they've turned out to be quite expensive ($100/day for heavy users). We'll see what OpenAI's quotas are.

[intended]

How’s that been in practice ? From what I’ve been following - Claude in finance results in models with errors that an analyst won’t make.

You get models that are formatted and structured and which balance - but there are errors introduced which an analyst / human wouldn’t make.

Stuff like hard coded values, or incorrect cell logic which guarantees the model balances.

[mukmuk]

From my experience, LLM performance in these areas is being massively oversold. I have repeatedly tried using Claude to modify a range of models typical of investment banking / private equity / sellside research contexts, and the results have been generally disastrous. On multiple occasions, the xlsx would no longer open.

[balderdash]

Just my experience, it’s not a solution but rather a productivity tool. I mostly use it for tasks I can do myself but it would probably take 20-30min to dial in - now Claude can do it in 2-3min. (E.g. in a data table - add a new column that checks column a if the data is a, do x, if the data is b, do y, if the data is c, do z - then combine that with the word after the hyphen in column b —- or another example —- create a new sheet that is the same format as sheet one but show calculates the difference between column a and b bot for sheets 1-12 in a summary)

I don’t get good results when I just have Claude build things on its own - but for these types of specific productivity tasks I can save a couple of hours here and there.

[wouldbecouldbe]

I work with large files a lot, running claude code on it is not token intense at all. Probably because it does a lot with scripts. But its a bit more raw, but i think in the end more powerful. Have to pick a good excel library and language. I do node, maybe python can work as well

[infecto]

Work in a firm similar to yours and we have been going to though the motions of figuring ways for the bullpen to make use of these tools and would love to hear your thoughts if you would be willing to share!

[p_ing]

Cheaper to get M365 Copilot licenses for the Claude models in Excel.

[jxmesth]

I tried looking this up but wasn't able to find info on this on Microsoft's website. Do you have a link for this?

[p_ing]

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/choose-your-model-...

[jxmesth]

Thanks!

[WillAdams]

What are the costs on that?

Does this remove (or at least increase) the upload limit?

[p_ing]

$200-something per user per year. Will vary based on license type and seat count.

No limits.

[mastermage]

Well other than the limits of Copilots usefullness.

[croes]

> No limits.

Yet.

[codeugo]

lol