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Ever ask Claude for a tracker, then paste the whole thing into a spreadsheet by hand?
You can skip that now.
On November 10, Anthropic launched Claude Sheets and Claude Whiteboards in beta. They're on every paid plan: Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and Enterprise. The free plan doesn't get them.
Sheets is a spreadsheet that lives inside Claude. Tabs, formulas, formatting, drop-downs. You and Claude edit the same cells, and each change Claude makes is outlined so you can see what moved.
Whiteboards is for the stage before the tracker exists. You talk a messy plan through, and Claude lays it out on a board with owners and dates.
(The same day, Claude Dashboards became generally available under a new name, Claude Data. That one needs a data connector, like a warehouse or a CRM, so I'll leave it there.)
Right after this: how to start a sheet, a prompt you can paste, when a whiteboard is the better starting point, and the catch before you move a real tracker over.
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Right. Back to it.
How to start a sheet
Open Claude on the web or in the desktop app.
Go to the Artifacts tab in the sidebar.
Select the Sheets tile, then describe the sheet you want, or start with a blank one.
You can also ask in any chat, or tap Output in the message box and pick the Sheets template.
If you don't see it, two things to check. You need a paid plan. And under Settings → Capabilities, "Create and edit files" needs to be on. Some accounts still show this as "Cloud code execution and file creation."
On Enterprise plans, Sheets and Whiteboards are off until an admin turns them on in Organization settings → Artifacts. On Team plans, they're already on.
Sheets on your phone is read-only for now. Build it on the web or desktop.
The prompt
Paste this, then swap the brackets for your actual work:
Build a sheet I can run this week.
It's a [content calendar / campaign tracker / hiring pipeline] for [what you're tracking].
Include:
- One tab for the work, with columns for [title, owner, date, status, channel, notes]
- A status drop-down with: Not started, In progress, Done, Blocked
- A second tab that counts how many items sit in each status
- Conditional formatting that flags anything past its date
If I paste real items below, use those. If I don't, set up the structure and leave a few example rows I can replace.
[paste your list, or write "start empty"]Then ask Claude to add a column or highlight what's overdue. You can also type in a cell yourself. The formulas stay in the cells, all 144 functions of them, so you can check the numbers.
If the data already lives in Excel or Google Sheets, import the file or paste it in.
When a whiteboard is the better start
If you don't know the columns yet, don't start in a sheet.
Go to the Artifacts tab, select the tile labeled Whiteboard, and talk the project through. You can type, or hit the microphone next to the send button and just say it.
Ask Claude to regroup the board by theme, or turn it into a timeline. Drag a box around one area if you only want to talk about that part.
When the structure is settled, ask it to turn the board into a project plan, a doc or a deck. You can export a picture of the board too: open Share, go to Export, and choose PNG.
(You can add pictures and videos to a board. You can't import a board from a file.)
The one catch
Sheets is in beta, and it's basic on purpose.
There's no pivot table and no PDF export. A sheet tops out at 100,000 cells, and it can't pull live data from your connected apps. Docs, decks and dashboards also can't use a sheet as their data source.
When you need the full Excel version of a file, export it as .xlsx or CSV, or keep working in Claude for Excel.
It also counts toward your usual Claude usage limits.
I wouldn't move a serious financial model into this yet. For the tracker you currently rebuild in a chat every Monday, this is the better place. If your tracker only lives in yesterday's chat, you don't have a tracker. You have a memory of one.
Make it stick
Pick one list you already keep: a content calendar, a pipeline, a budget.
Open the Artifacts tab, start a sheet, paste the prompt, and drop in this week's real items.
Save it. Next week you open the same sheet, instead of starting the chat again. That's the whole habit.
A sheet is useful. A sheet that already knows your offer, your pipeline and how you invoice is the difference between a one-off tracker and a business that can run. That's the whole idea behind The One-Person Company Playbook.
It's the complete setup for running a business where AI does the work of a full team. Inside:
A company folder with your brief, pipeline tracker and invoice log already laid out, so any AI picks up where you left off
Thirty AI roles across six departments, from sales to finance, ready to use
Six jobs that run on a clock: the morning briefing, follow-ups, invoice checks and more
The step-by-step path from picking a business model to your first paying customer
Works on Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Grok, whichever you already pay for.
The catch: it takes about eight hours over a weekend to set up. After that, it's yours. $97, one-time (down from $297).
Talk tomorrow,
Zephyr
P.S. What's the first sheet you'll try? Hit reply and tell me what it's for.