Claude just landed in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides — here are 7 things to try first

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Google's own Gemini has already been integrated into Google Workspace's Docs, Sheets and Slides to help users with their projects.

One key difference between the Google Workspace connectors in Claude and the Claude extension is that the connectors let Claude search and reference what you prompt it to look for in your Google Drive, Gmail, and Calendar during a chat. The Claude extension inside Docs, Sheets and Slides directly accesses and interacts with the file you're already in.

Now that Claude is as easy as clicking on "Extensions" from inside Docs, Sheets and Slides to access it as a sidebar assistant, here are seven ways you can use it to benefit you.

The prompt: Edit and rewrite this document for clarity and concision.

Activating Claude for Docs gives you a bunch of options from the start. Those options include "Check for inconsistencies," "Copy-edit this document," "Summarize this contract," "Flag off market terms," "Draft a memo" and "Write meeting notes." The prompt I used made Claude review my lengthy document, offer several helpful suggestions, and let me apply all recommended changes with a single click. Watching Claude make all those edits right inside my document while preserving my most important information and cutting down the word count is impressive.

The prompt: Restructure this document to have clearly defined sections with proper headings.

Restructuring my document initially resulted in Claude asking me for permission to run a script, which I granted. Afterward, it completed its job by including the appropriate headings I requested, giving me three edits I chose to let it apply and finally adding a title. All of those changes came together to make my document read a whole lot better and refined to the point where I didn't see the need for any more edits.

The prompt: Fix any broken spreadsheet formulas you see in this sheet.

Opening up Claude in Sheets highlights several "Skills" you can use. Also, you're given the option of creating and managing your own Skills on your Claude account. For anyone who works extensively with putting together spreadsheets that include simple and complex formulas, you can ask Claude to point out and fix any formula errors it comes across. I told Claude to create a bunch of broken formulas on my spreadsheet and then made sure it fixed those same errors to see how everything turned out. It fixed all those errors while also laying out the reasoning behind its fixes.

The prompt: Clean up any messy data you see in this spreadsheet.

I'm sure you have a spreadsheet or two filled with the sort of data that makes it confusing to read and is in dire need of some proper edits. With the prompt I used, Claude gave me three options to place the cleaned data: a new "Clean Orders" tab, overwriting them in their assigned tabs or some other free tabs on the spreadsheet. I chose the overwrite option, which led to cleaning up the original version and listing all of the changes it made for each of the tabs it fixed.

The prompt: Turn all this data into a chart.

For this next experiment, I used the "Monthly budget" spreadsheet template to see if Claude could turn all of the data displayed on it into an easy-to-read chart. Claude tackled that task with ease and gave a thorough explanation of how it put it all together. It even detailed what all the data on its chart actually means and gave me additional options to make that chart even more detailed.

The prompt: Add three slides that stay in line with the topic being discussed here.

Opening up Claude in Slides gives you three basic options to start with when you want to edit an existing presentation. Those options are "Summarize this deck," Build a competitive analysis" and "Review for consistency." I ended up prompting Claude to create a title slide and three additional info slides that dove into the hot-button topic of "The Pros and Cons of Using AI." After it completed that task, I asked it to add some additional slides to make my presentation pop even more. After permitting it to work, Claude put together three more slides that used actual data from a legit study to make my slideshow feel more complete.

The prompt: Review this presentation, point out any criticisms you may have, and make any proper edits based on your criticisms.

This final experiment pushed Claude to go through all of my slides to find and fix any story, copy and layout errors it came across. It ended up finding a newer version of the study it mentioned beforehand and checked to see if the numbers it highlighted in slide two were still correct. Besides that fix, Claude went through all seven slides and made six major changes that made my presentation transform into its most revised version.

Overall, Claude's direct integration into Docs, Sheets and Slides works well in its current beta phase.

Claude's official blog about this new feature even talks about more tasks it can handle, such as you being able to ask it questions about the document, spreadsheet or deck you have open, then getting answers with properly cited sources. Some of the limitations that are present, such as Claude not being able to read, reply to, or resolve any comments seen in a document, are unfortunate.

But I'm sure that issue and many more will get ironed out as Claude's direct Google Workspace integration moves closer to its final phase.

I like the fact that Docs, Sheets and Slides now let their users work with both Gemini and Claude to get their work done.

Rather than both AI tools being in competition with each other, they work better together. For instance, I could see a situation where I tell Gemini to draft a wedding speech that includes all the details I explain to it, using Claude to spruce it up with some proper edits and then using those edits to write it in my own voice. And with one final look-through by Claude, that speech may come off even better than it did before.

Claude and Gemini joining forces in Docs, Sheets and Slides works well and might work even better in the future.

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