Claude for Google Workspace opens in public beta

Anthropic opened Claude for Google Workspace in public beta on October 6, 2026. It adds a Claude sidebar to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, and it works on all paid Claude plans, according to Anthropic's announcement. Claude can read the open file and edit it in place. By default it asks before each change. The beta puts Claude inside the tools many teams already use for documents and reports.

What it is

The beta has two parts, as TestingCatalog explains:

• The add-on. A sidebar that opens beside a file and sees the whole file and your current selection.
• The connectors. Links that let you create and edit Google files from a Claude conversation. You can also open Google files inside Claude.

You install the add-on from the Google Workspace Marketplace and open it from Extensions, then Claude, then Open Claude. Anthropic says the sidebar gives signed-in users the same models, connectors and skills as Claude itself. On Team and Enterprise plans, an owner must switch the connectors on first. Google admins can deploy the add-on to a whole domain or selected groups.

What Claude can do in each app

App	What Claude does
Docs	Fixes or restyles text in place without changing the formatting around it. Larger rewrites appear as suggestion cards to apply or dismiss.
Sheets	Writes formulas, builds pivot tables and native charts, adds tabs, and can run Python on a range to join or clean data and write results back.
Slides	Builds slides from the deck's layouts and theme, and checks for overlapping or off-slide elements and hard-to-read text.

TestingCatalog gives one example from Anthropic: a quarterly business review deck built from Salesforce history and call notes stored in Drive.

Who stays in control

You choose how much Claude does on its own, Anthropic says. The default mode is "Ask before edits," which shows an approval card for each change. A second mode, "Accept all edits," lets Claude finish a task without stopping, TestingCatalog and XenoSpectrum report.

Claude's access follows your existing Google sharing permissions. Reworked says it can read, write and delete by default, and it asks permission before acting. Anthropic's own advice, as Reworked reports it, is that "in a busy file, check the result."

Enterprise controls carry over to the add-on, according to Anthropic and XenoSpectrum:

• the Compliance API, which logs activity
• customer-managed encryption keys
• audit log export through OpenTelemetry, a common standard for telemetry data

The limits of the beta

XenoSpectrum lists several gaps that Anthropic's page does not:

• the sidebar cannot read, reply to or resolve comments in Docs, though the connectors can read them
• it cannot accept or reject existing suggestions
• charts go into Slides as images, not linked to Sheets data
• Zero Data Retention is not supported, nor is running Claude through Amazon Bedrock or Google Cloud Vertex AI
• inputs and outputs are deleted within 30 days, with some exceptions, and custom retention settings do not apply

Sources disagree on a few details. Android Headlines says Pro users can use the chat connectors now, while other reports say only "all paid plans." Pricing is not given in any of them.

What this means for developers

For teams that build on Claude or run it for a company, the beta shows where the work is moving.

• Check retention before you roll it out. If your company needs Zero Data Retention or the Bedrock and Vertex routes, the beta does not support them yet.
• Start with "Ask before edits." Approving each change keeps a person in the loop on shared files. Switch to "Accept all edits" only on files you can restore.
• Use sharing permissions as the safety layer. Claude sees what you can see. Tighten who can edit sensitive documents before you let an assistant loose on them.
• Expect comment-heavy workflows to need the connectors. The sidebar cannot work with comments, so review-and-resolve flows need a different path.
• Compare with Google's own agent. Google announced a competing work agent the same week. Test both on a real task and compare quality, cost and controls.

The beta label matters. Anthropic has not given a general release date or pricing, so plan trials, not rollouts, until it does.