Aug 14, 2026

8 Best AI Assistants for Excel (2026)

There are two completely different products being sold as “AI for Excel” and the difference decides whether any of this is useful to you.

One kind runs inside the Excel window and changes the workbook you have open. The other reads a copy of the file at rest in OneDrive or SharePoint, reasons about it, and hands you a separate spreadsheet back. Both are called an Excel integration. Only one of them updates the model you actually maintain.

We checked eight assistants against Excel in August 2026, on which surface they touch, what they can write, and whether anything happens without you.

The three questions that decide it

Does it edit the open workbook, or produce a new file? This is the whole thing. An assistant that saves a fresh .xlsx next to your tracker has not maintained your tracker.

What happens to the macros? If your model’s real logic lives in VBA rather than in cells, most of these read the outputs and have no view of the mechanism producing them.

Does anything run when the data changes? A form response arrives, a bank feed updates, a row lands. Every native option waits to be asked.

Assistants that act on the workbook without being asked

1. Carly AI

Carly AI is the entry where the spreadsheet is a destination rather than a document. An invoice arrives by email, the line items get parsed, a row is appended to the workbook in OneDrive, the client record is updated, and a confirmation goes back to the sender. Nobody opened Excel.

That is a different job from the add-ins below and it is worth being precise about the split. Carly is not the tool for restructuring a 40-tab financial model interactively; the add-ins are better at that. It is the tool for the workbook that has to stay current, where the cost of falling behind is that everyone stops trusting it.

It reads and appends to Excel workbooks in OneDrive directly, and connects the sheet to the rest of the job: the mailbox the data arrives in, the calendar the deadline goes on, the CRM the record lives in. Multiple Microsoft identities are authorized separately, so a client tenant’s workbook and your own are both reachable.

Best for: A workbook that has to stay current on its own, especially one fed by email

Key features:

Fires on the event rather than on a prompt or a scheduled sweep
Reads and appends rows to Excel workbooks in OneDrive
Holds several Microsoft identities at once, including client tenants
Connects the spreadsheet to mail, calendar, CRM, and tasks in one workflow
Runs Python over your data when the shaping gets complicated
Built from a plain-English description of the outcome

Pricing: Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month

Limitations: It works on workbooks in cloud storage, not on a local .xlsx sitting on your desktop, and it is not an in-cell copilot for interactive model building. Pair it with an add-in if you do both jobs.

Why it stands out: Everything else here needs you present.

Assistants that edit the open workbook

2. Claude for Excel

An add-in that runs inside the Excel window, and the strongest of the interactive options if you live in financial models.

What separates it is how it changes things. It answers with cell-level citations you can click, so you verify rather than trust, and when you adjust an assumption it works through the dependency chain instead of overwriting formulas with pasted values. It debugs to root cause rather than just flagging the #REF!, follows references across multi-tab workbooks, and applies real Excel operations for sorting, filtering, and conditional formatting.

The exclusions are hard stops, not rough edges: no what-if data tables, no macros or VBA, no Excel 2016 or 2019, no Android, and only .xlsx and .xlsm. The macro gap is the one that catches teams out.

Best for: Interactive work on financial models where you need to check the reasoning

Pricing: Pro $20, Max $100 to $200

Limitations: Macros and VBA are invisible to it. One Microsoft identity. Nothing fires on its own. See Claude for Excel.

3. Microsoft 365 Copilot

The native option, and the one with the deepest reach into the file because Microsoft owns the format.

Copilot in Excel runs in three modes worth knowing apart: chat, where it answers without touching the sheet; edit, where it makes changes you accept or reject; and plan, where it breaks a larger request into steps first. It builds SUMIFS, XLOOKUP, and nested IF formulas against your real range references, generates dynamic arrays like FILTER and UNIQUE, and will now write and run Python in a cell through the PY() function using pandas, matplotlib, and scikit-learn.

The cost structure is the catch. Copilot Business runs $25.20 per user monthly, or from $18 with an annual commitment through September 30 2026 against a $21 standard rate, and it sits on top of a qualifying Microsoft 365 base plan rather than replacing one.

Best for: Teams already licensed for Microsoft 365 who want AI in the native surface

Limitations: Scoped to your own tenant, so a client’s workbook is out of reach. Requires a licence on top of a base plan. No event triggers.

Assistants that read the file at rest

These reach Excel files stored in OneDrive and SharePoint. They are reading a copy, not sitting in your window.

4. Claude, via the Microsoft 365 connector

A different product from the add-in above, and the two get conflated constantly. The connector lets claude.ai search and read Excel files stored across your tenant from a normal chat, which is genuinely useful for “what does the Q3 model assume about churn” without opening anything.

Anthropic added write tools in July 2026 covering email, calendar, and OneDrive or SharePoint files, so the connector can now change files too. Two caveats: those tools are off by default and an administrator turns them on, and they operate on files rather than inside the grid.

Best for: Answering questions across many workbooks at once

Limitations: Writes need an admin. One tenant. No triggers.

5. ChatGPT

Reads Excel files two ways: upload one into the chat, or connect the OneDrive and SharePoint apps so answers are grounded in files already stored there. Its analysis is strong, and Advanced Data Analysis will produce a new workbook for you to download.

New is the operative word. There is no save-back into the file it read.

Best for: Ad-hoc analysis that ends in a fresh file

Pricing: Plus from $20/month

Limitations: Reads at rest, writes nothing back. No triggers. See Can ChatGPT connect to Outlook?.

6. Claude Cowork

Same Anthropic connectors, plus the ability to build working Excel files with real formulas as the output of a longer run, and scheduled tasks that fire with nothing of yours switched on.

The distinction that decides whether this is enough: a scheduled task fires on a clock. Data arriving on Tuesday afternoon waits for the next run.

Best for: Recurring spreadsheet builds on a predictable cadence

Limitations: Clock rather than event. Usage-metered, and multi-step runs consume it quickly. See Claude Cowork limitations.

Two worth knowing about

7. Gemini

Google’s assistant does excellent spreadsheet work, but it does it in Google Sheets, not in Excel. Sheets will open an .xlsx, so there is a conversion path, and for anyone genuinely deciding between the two ecosystems it is a real option rather than a footnote. See Best AI assistants for Google Sheets.

Best for: People whose spreadsheets could live in Sheets instead

Limitations: No native Excel surface. Converting a macro-heavy workbook is not a small job.

8. Grok

Reads spreadsheet data you paste or upload and reasons over it well. There is no Excel add-in, no OneDrive or SharePoint connector, and no way to write anything back.

Best for: A second opinion on numbers you have already extracted

Limitations: No file connection at all. See Grok and Excel.

Quick comparison

Tool	Edits the open workbook	Reads files at rest	Handles macros	Two tenants	Acts on triggers
Carly AI	Appends to cloud workbooks	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Claude for Excel	Yes	No	No	No	No
Microsoft 365 Copilot	Yes	Yes	Partially	No	No
Claude, M365 connector	No	Yes	No	No	No
ChatGPT	No	Yes	No	No	No
Claude Cowork	No	Yes	No	No	Scheduled only
Gemini	Sheets only	No	No	No	No
Grok	No	No	No	No	No

How to pick

If the workbook has to stay current without you, Carly, because it is the only one where an arriving invoice or form response results in a row.

If you build financial models and need to check the work, Claude for Excel. Clickable cell-level citations are the feature nothing else matches.

If you are already paying for Microsoft 365, Copilot, especially now that Python runs in a cell. Just price the licence on top of the base plan before assuming it is free.

If you want answers across dozens of workbooks rather than edits inside one, the Claude M365 connector or ChatGPT.

If your logic is in VBA, none of the interactive options really see it. Treat their output as a suggestion and check it.

FAQ

What is the best AI assistant for Excel?

Claude for Excel for interactive model work, Microsoft 365 Copilot if you are already licensed, and Carly AI if the point is a workbook that updates itself when data arrives.

Can AI edit an Excel file directly?

Two can edit the workbook you have open: Claude for Excel and Copilot in Excel. Assistants working through a OneDrive or SharePoint connection are reading a stored copy, and mostly hand you a new file rather than changing the original.

Does AI work with Excel macros?

Poorly. Claude for Excel explicitly does not support macros or VBA, and the others read the values a macro produced without seeing the code that produced them. If your logic lives in a module, verify everything.

Can AI update a spreadsheet when new data arrives?

Not the native ones, which have no event triggers. Claude Cowork’s scheduled tasks run on a fixed clock, so they are close but still not reacting to the data. Carly fires on the arriving email or form response itself.

Is Copilot for Excel free with Microsoft 365?

No. Copilot Business is a separate per-user licence that sits on top of a qualifying Microsoft 365 base plan, at $25.20 monthly or from $18 on an annual commitment through September 30 2026.

Ready to automate your busywork?

Carly schedules, researches, and briefs you—so you can focus on what matters.

See what people say

"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.

Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.

On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."

Gus Ibrahim, Founder & Director, IHR