Claude Office Agents: One Conversation Across Office
Office agents is a setting, not a product. Turn it on and one Claude conversation spans Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook, so Claude can read from one app and make changes in another without you copying anything between windows. Turn it off and each add-in is a separate conversation that starts from nothing.
Anthropic shipped it on March 11, 2026. The name causes real confusion, so it’s worth being blunt: this has nothing to do with Anthropic’s managed agents API for running autonomous agents on cloud infrastructure. Office agents is a toggle a person flips so Claude stops forgetting what it just did in the other window.
What it changes
Before, opening the PowerPoint add-in after working in Excel meant re-explaining the analysis and pasting the numbers. Now the conversation history, data references, and results from one app are available in the next.
The canonical use is the one people actually have: analyze a workbook, then build the deck from that analysis in the same conversation. It also covers pulling figures into a Word document, or drafting an Outlook message that references what you just found in a spreadsheet.
Turning it on
The default depends on your plan, which is where most of the “why doesn’t this work for me” comes from.
| Plan | Default | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Pro | On | Nothing, though each add-in still has its own toggle |
| Max | On | Same |
| Team | Off | An owner enables it first at Organization settings > Office agents |
| Enterprise | Off | Same |
| Free | Not available | The Office add-ins require a paid plan |
Two levels have to line up. On Team and Enterprise, an owner enables it for the organization, and then each member turns on “Let Claude work across files” in each add-in’s own settings. Doing only the org half changes nothing for anyone.
Anthropic’s cross-app guide has the current steps.
The three limits that decide whether it helps
Files must already be open. Claude reaches the files open in your Office applications and nothing else. A workbook sitting in OneDrive that you haven’t opened is invisible to this feature. That’s a different job, handled by the Microsoft 365 connector.
Claude can’t manage files itself. It cannot create, open, close, or switch files. You do the file management; Claude does the work inside what you’ve opened. “Pull last quarter’s model and build a deck from it” fails at step one unless you opened last quarter’s model.
Cross-app history isn’t saved. Chat history for cross-app sessions doesn’t persist between sessions. Close everything and the thread is gone, so a multi-day project restarts its context each time.
Where it fits with the rest of the Claude Office surface
Three separate things reach Microsoft 365, and Office agents is a property of only the first.
- The add-ins, which put Claude inside the app window: Claude for Excel, Claude for PowerPoint, Claude for Word, and Claude for Outlook. Office agents connects these to each other.
- The Microsoft 365 connector, which lets claude.ai search and read files at rest in OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, and Outlook from a normal chat, with admin-gated write tools.
- Claude as a model inside Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is Microsoft’s product running Anthropic’s models.
Claude's Microsoft 365 connector gained write tools in July 2026 — it can draft and send mail, manage calendar events, and create or update files in OneDrive and SharePoint. They are off by default, reject anything with an attachment, and need you in the conversation: a scheduled task can read your mail, but it will not send on your behalf while you are away.
It still waits for you to open Office
Office agents removes friction between apps. It does not change who starts the work. Every cross-app session begins because you opened two files and typed a request, and it ends when you close them.
Both ChatGPT and Claude will now do work on a schedule, unattended. Neither reacts to events. A task that runs hourly still finds out an hour late, and one that runs each morning finds out tomorrow — the trigger is the clock, never the thing you actually care about.
So the recurring Office work stays manual. The Monday reporting pack. The deck that needs refreshing when the numbers move. The row that lands in a tracker and should create a task before anyone notices it.
Carly is the layer for that. Its workflows start from events and schedules, across roughly 260 native integrations including Microsoft Excel, Outlook, and OneDrive, plus anything with a public API through your own key on the integrations dashboard:
- Every Monday at 8am, pull the week’s figures into the workbook and send the summary to the team
- When a row lands in a tracking sheet, validate it, create the task, and notify the owner
- When a client email arrives about a live deal, update the CRM and draft the reply with the deal context attached
Carly is free for Zapier-style workflows, with AI agents from $35/month.
FAQ
What are Claude Office agents? A setting that lets a single Claude conversation work across Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook, so Claude can read from one app and act in another without you moving data between them. It shipped on March 11, 2026.
How do I enable Office agents? On Pro and Max it’s already on. On Team and Enterprise an owner enables it at Organization settings > Office agents, and then each member turns on “Let Claude work across files” in each add-in’s settings.
Why can’t Claude see my other file? Almost always because the file isn’t open. Office agents only reaches files currently open in your Office applications, and Claude cannot open, close, or switch files itself.
Is Office agents the same as Anthropic’s managed agents? No. Managed agents is a developer product for running autonomous agents on cloud infrastructure via the API. Office agents is a consumer setting for cross-app context inside Microsoft Office.
Does the cross-app conversation get saved? No. Chat history for cross-app sessions is not saved between sessions.
Do I need the Microsoft 365 connector as well? Only if you want Claude to reach files you haven’t opened. The connector searches and reads what’s stored in OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, and Outlook from claude.ai; Office agents works on what’s open in front of you.
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