Claude Moves Into Google's Office: Official Sidebar Arrives in Docs, Sheets, Slides

What Was Released

On October 6, Anthropic released Claude for Google Workspace in public beta. All paid Claude subscribers can use it: Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise.

Installation goes through the Google Workspace Marketplace, with support for Chrome, Edge, and Safari. Open a Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation and a Claude sidebar appears on the right. Claude can see the open file and your selections, and edit the file directly. No more copying and pasting back and forth between two tabs.

Also released: the reverse channel — three beta connectors for Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Without opening the file first, paste a Google file link into a Claude conversation, or have Claude create a new document, and Claude opens and edits the file inside the chat. Access permissions follow Google’s existing sharing settings.

What It Can Do in Each App

In Docs, Claude can rewrite sentences and change heading styles without touching the surrounding formatting. Bigger changes become a suggestion card, marking the original paragraphs for you to accept or reject one by one.

In Sheets, Claude writes formulas, builds pivot tables, draws native charts, and adds worksheets. Heavy data-cleaning work can run in Python, with results written back to the sheet.

In Slides, Claude generates new pages following the deck’s existing layout and theme. After generating, it checks its own work: are any elements overlapping, has any text run off the page.

On by default is “ask before changing”: every edit pops up an approval card first, taking effect only after you confirm. In a hurry, switch to “accept all” and Claude does the job itself.

The First Time Anthropic Did It Itself

Previously, Claude could only access files in Google Drive through connectors — it couldn’t see or edit the file you had open. Third parties built Claude plugins for Workspace, but this is the first time Anthropic has done it first-party.

By the timeline, Claude is the third to pull this off. Gemini has been natively embedded in Workspace since June 2024. ChatGPT got Drive file access on August 13, 2026. Claude has now caught up.

How Permissions and Privacy Work

In the plugin, Claude can only see the sidebar, the open file, and connectors you manually enable. When starting from Claude’s own app, what Claude can see depends on what your Google Drive permissions allow it to see. Team and Enterprise account data is covered by Anthropic’s commercial terms and data processing agreement. Enterprise admins can manage it with the existing toolkit: the Compliance API, customer-managed encryption keys, and OpenTelemetry audit export.

On pricing: it’s included in the subscription, no extra fee.

Two Notes

Team and Enterprise accounts need an admin to enable the connectors first; personal plans work right after installing.

This is a public beta, and Anthropic itself says some features may be unstable. Early hands-on reports from media are mixed: complex spreadsheet modeling gets praise, large files get complaints about lag.