Claude AI Assistant Arrives in Google Workspace as Public Beta

Anthropic on October 6, 2026 announced that Claude for Google Workspace is in public beta on all paid Claude plans, adding Claude to Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides so users can work with the assistant directly inside their open files. The company also released new Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides connectors, also in beta, that Claude uses to create and edit Google files from the Claude chat.

With the add-on installed, Claude opens in a sidebar next to the file. Anthropic says it can read the open doc, sheet, or deck, see which text, cells, or slides the user has selected, and make changes directly in the file. One installation covers all three apps.

Per-App Editing Features

In Docs, Anthropic says Claude can fix a sentence or restyle a heading in place without touching the surrounding formatting, while larger rewrites appear as suggestion cards in the sidebar, each highlighting the passage it would change so the user can apply or dismiss it. In Sheets, Claude can write formulas, build pivot tables and native Sheets charts, add new tabs, and pull a range into Python for joins or data cleaning before writing the results back into the sheet. In Slides, Claude can build new slides from the deck’s existing layouts and themes, then flag elements that overlap, run off the slide, or are hard to read.

The Google Workspace Marketplace listing for the add-on describes additional uses: redlining a contract with each proposed change shown for acceptance or rejection, building a spreadsheet model from a plain-language description, cleaning data with duplicates, mismatched formats, and stray spaces, and drafting a full deck from an outline or a few notes.

Users control how much Claude does on its own. In the default “Ask before edits” mode, each change appears as an approval card with a plain-language summary and Claude waits for approval; in “Accept all edits” mode, Claude applies ordinary content edits without stopping. Regardless of mode, Claude pauses with a “Security review” label before inserting an image from a web address, adding a link, or removing anyone’s access, with no option to always allow those actions. Anthropic’s Help Center guide states that Claude cannot share the file, give anyone access, change ownership, create menus or scheduled automations, or load arbitrary web pages into the file, and that those requests are refused even when asked.

Connectors for Creating Files From Chat

The new connectors start from the Claude side: a user pastes a Google file link or asks for a Google doc, sheet, or deck, and on supported setups the file opens in a pane beside the conversation. According to Anthropic’s connectors documentation, the pane works on Claude on the web in Chrome and on Claude Desktop with the built-in browser turned on; the built-in browser is off by default on Enterprise plans, and an “Open in Google” option serves as the fallback. Anthropic says starting from Claude makes most sense when the user needs a new file or the work spans several files.

Claude’s access to Google files matches the user’s existing Google sharing permissions. The Docs, Sheets, and Slides connectors are separate from the pre-existing Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive connectors, and on Team and Enterprise plans an Owner or Primary Owner must enable them at the organization level before individual users can authenticate.

When signed in with a Claude account, the sidebar carries the same models, connectors, and skills as the main Claude app. Anthropic gives the example of asking for a quarterly business review deck, with Claude pulling the account history from Salesforce and recent call notes through a Google Drive connector, then saving the format as a skill so a team can build the next deck the same way.

Installation and Admin Deployment

Claude for Google Workspace installs from the Google Workspace Marketplace; users then open a file and go to Extensions, then Claude, then Open Claude. The Help Center guide states the beta requires a paid Claude plan — Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise — and a Google account permitted to install Marketplace apps. Google Workspace super administrators can admin-install Claude for everyone or for selected groups or organizational units from the Google Admin console, and they can allowlist the app where user Marketplace installs are blocked. The sidebar works in Chrome, Edge, and Safari. Firefox is not supported in this beta, voice dictation is unavailable in the sidebar, and Google stops any single operation after six minutes.

Permissions, Data Handling and Beta Limits

According to the Help Center guide, the add-on requests two Google permissions: displaying third-party web content in prompts and sidebars, and viewing and managing the files it is installed in. The Marketplace listing’s permissions screen also shows that Claude requests access to the user’s primary Google Account email address and personal info, including any personal info the user has made publicly available. Anthropic states the add-on does not request access to Drive, Gmail, Calendar, or contacts; Claude reads only the file it is opened in, and its edits appear in the file’s version history under the user’s name. Anthropic states that content from the open file, messages, and attachments is not used to train its models, that inputs and outputs are deleted from its systems within 30 days, and that use of data from Google Workspace APIs follows Google’s Limited Use requirements.

On Enterprise plans, the Compliance API, customer-managed encryption keys, and OpenTelemetry audit export apply to the add-on. Third-party inference through Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, Azure AI Foundry, or an LLM gateway is not supported in this beta, Zero Data Retention is unavailable, and HIPAA-ready organizations are not covered.

The guide also lists current beta limits. Claude cannot read, reply to, or resolve comments in Docs, and its edits land as direct edits rather than suggestions. Connected Sheets tabs backed by BigQuery cannot be read or edited. Charts Claude creates in Slides are inserted as images that do not update when the underlying numbers change. Chat history is stored locally per file in the browser and does not sync across devices.

On prompt injection, Anthropic says Claude treats document content as data rather than commands, labels hidden text it finds, and is designed not to follow a document’s instruction to share the file, fetch a link, or contact anyone. The guide advises users to review Claude’s proposed actions before approving them, especially in files received from outside their organization.