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Claude + Excel: workflows you already need.

AI working inside the spreadsheet you already run your business on — dashboards, deduplication, cleanup, and reports. No new software, no learning curve. Just the prompts.

Download the PDF → Everything below is free to read. The PDF is the same thing, portable.

Getting AI into your spreadsheet

Two ways to run these. Claude for Excel — Anthropic's official add-in — lets you run prompts directly inside a workbook. If you don't have access, export the sheet or range as a CSV, paste it into your AI tool of choice, run the prompt, and paste the result back. Either way works. The prompts are what matter.

Always paste a small sample first — 20 to 30 rows — and check the output before running it on a full sheet.

01

Dashboards

Turn a raw export into a one-page summary in minutes.

Summary dashboard

Use it for weekly or monthly reporting without building a pivot table by hand.

Prompt

Here's my [sales / expense / signup] data from Excel. Build me a one-page summary: total by month, top 5 by [category], and any trend worth flagging. Format it as a table I can paste back into a new sheet.

KPI snapshot

Use it for an exec-ready snapshot in minutes instead of a rebuilt slide deck.

Prompt

From this data, pull the 5 numbers that matter most for a [owner / ops lead] to see at a glance. Label each one with what changed versus last period, and say in one line why it matters.

02

Deduplication

Find and merge duplicate records before they cost you a bad send.

Find duplicates

Use it for cleaning a CRM or contact export before a campaign.

Prompt

Here's a contact list. Find likely duplicates — same person with slightly different spelling, email, or formatting. List each pair and tell me which record looks more complete.

Merge records

Use it after the find-duplicates pass, to produce one clean list.

Prompt

For these duplicate pairs, merge into one clean record — keep the most complete name, phone, and email from each pair. Output as a table ready to paste back into Excel.

03

Cleanup & formatting

Standardize messy data without touching a single formula.

Standardize formatting

Use it for prepping a messy export before it gets used somewhere else.

Prompt

Clean this column: fix inconsistent date formats, capitalize names properly, and standardize phone numbers to (XXX) XXX-XXXX. Return the corrected column in the same row order — don't change anything else.

Flag errors

Use it as a QA pass before sending data to a client or teammate.

Prompt

Scan this data for anything that looks wrong — missing values, obvious typos, numbers out of a realistic range. List the row and what's off. Don't fix anything yet, just flag it.

04

Reports

Turn numbers into a summary a non-technical stakeholder can actually read.

Turn data into a report

Use it to replace the "write the monthly report" task on your to-do list.

Prompt

Here's this month's numbers. Write a 3-paragraph plain-English summary a non-technical stakeholder could read in 30 seconds — what happened, why it matters, and what to watch next month.

Compare periods

Use it for fast variance analysis without a manual side-by-side.

Prompt

Compare this month's data to last month's. Call out anything that changed by more than 10%, and give one likely reason for each change based on the data.

One more thing

These prompts are starting points, not scripts. Swap the bracketed parts for your actual business, and steer the AI the way you'd steer a smart new hire: give it context, check its work, and get specific when the first answer isn't quite right.

Every week

One workflow.
Every Monday.

One AI workflow, one real use case, one thing you can run today. Free.

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