One of my most popular YouTube videos is "How to Use Claude to Build INSANE Financial Models." I explained how no human can build an Excel file with working formulas that fast and that pretty.
But the model is only half the job. The other half is turning it into slides your team can read. And that part requires a whole separate process.
Until now.
So today I want to show you what happens when you can use Excel and PowerPoint together in real time.
The Two-Job Problem
Every finance pro reading this has done the same thing at least once this month.
You finish the model, open PowerPoint, and spend the next hour or two rebuilding charts that were already perfect in Excel.
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And every time someone changes an assumption in the model, you do the whole thing again in the deck.
This came up constantly during our February masterclass with Anna Tiomina, one of our AI Finance experts. Anna shared a real example from a NetSuite implementation where she received trial balances for three years in a backwards format (December to January), with hidden cells between columns.
The implementation team needed differences between debits and credits, not balances. She asked Claude in Excel to create a summary of differences in each respective month, and it built a new tab with VLOOKUP formulas, matched account numbers across years, handled the column structure correctly, and ran a check confirming debits equalled credits in every single month. It took 15 to 20 minutes. She found zero errors.
That's the kind of thing Claude can do inside Excel.
But until recently, that's where the workflow stopped. You still had to take those outputs and build your slides by hand.
The Platform Shift
Between January 15 and February 26 this year, Anthropic released two new models, plus Claude in PowerPoint, an upgraded Claude in Excel, Claude in Chrome, Cowork for Windows, Plugins, and a growing list of MCP connectors.
As Anna put it in the masterclass, they’re not product updates, they’re a big platform shift!
What matters for you today is the new cross cross-app capability (released Friday 13th March).
Claude in Excel already reads your entire workbook and acts on it conversationally.
Claude in PowerPoint reads your slide master, layouts, fonts, and colours, and generates native editable slides that match your template.
And now, if you enable the cross-app setting, Claude carries the full context of your model straight into PowerPoint.
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You don't re-explain anything. You don't copy data. You just describe what you want the deck to say, and Claude builds it from what it already knows about the model.
How to Set This Up (Step by Step)
So, let me walk you through this. Five steps and you're done.
Step 1: Install both add-ins
Go to the Microsoft Marketplace and install Claude for Excel and Claude for PowerPoint.
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Open each app and activate the add-in by logging in so they're ready when you need them. Process is the same with either one, you will need a code generated by Claude.
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Both Claude in Excel and Claude in PowerPoint are available on Pro ($20/month) and above.
If you're on a corporate account, your Microsoft Workplace Administrator controls add-in permissions, so you may need IT approval before you can install.
Step 2: Enable cross-app mode
In the Settings area of both add-ins, turn on: "Let Claude work across files."
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Step 3: Build (or open) your model in Excel
Launch Claude in Excel using Ctrl+Alt+C on Windows or Ctrl+Option+C on Mac. Use Opus 4.6 for anything involving calculations or complex dependencies (Sonnet is faster but less reliable for numerical tasks).
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If you're building a model from scratch, give Claude a detailed prompt with your assumptions. For example:
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If you already have a model you've been working on, just open it. Claude reads the entire workbook in context, every tab, every formula, every dependency.
And before Claude runs anything, ask it this:
Review the plan first. Then let it execute. This one habit catches most problems before they become issues later on.
Step 4: Ask for the deck
This is the part that used to take hours. In the same session (don't close anything), prompt Claude to build your presentation from the model it just created or read.
For example:
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Claude carries the full model context across, so you don't need to re-explain any of the numbers. The slides it generates are native and editable (not static images), which means you can adjust text, move elements around, and add your own commentary just like any normal PowerPoint file.
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If you want even better results, add a narrative instruction to the prompt:
[NEW – original prompt designed to encourage financial storytelling before slide generation, informed by the Presentations article's point about narrative structure]
This way you're getting a storyline, not a data dump.
Step 5: Test it live
This is where the workflow pays for itself. If someone in a meeting asks "what happens if we increase growth to 10% instead of 8%?", update the assumption in your Excel model and ask Claude to refresh the relevant slides. For example:
The old version of this question meant going away for a day and coming back with an updated deck. Now you can answer it in the room.
The One Thing to Remember
Using Excel and PowerPoint together with Claude turns two painful activities into one fluid process.
You're removing the manual translation layer between your analysis and your communication.
And once that layer is gone, you get your time back for the work that requires your judgment.
So take 30 minutes this week. Open a model you're already working on. Install the add-ins. Ask Claude to build you a summary deck from that model.
If it saves you even one hour on your next reporting cycle, you'll understand why this matters.
Best,
Your AI Finance Expert,
Nicolas
P.S. – Will you use Claude in both Excel and in PowerPoint. Reply and let me know (I read all replies)
P.P.S. – If you missed it, here's my YouTube video on building financial models with Claude that started this whole conversation in this video How to Use Claude to Build INSANE Financial Models.