Get Claude for Excel to show its formulas, not just narrate a number

Work directly in the spreadsheet, not just in the chat panel — write the actual formulas into cells so the analysis lives in the workbook and can be re-run if the underlying data changes, not just narrated as a one-time answer.

QUESTION
Which three sales regions had the highest quarter-over-quarter growth in Q2 2026, and by how much?

WHERE THE DATA LIVES
Sheet 'Sales_2026' has columns: Date, Region, Rep, Amount, Product. Roughly 4,800 rows covering Jan-Jun 2026.

WHERE TO PUT THE WORK
A new sheet called 'Q2_Growth_Analysis' — don't add anything to Sales_2026 itself. Do not overwrite any existing data or formulas outside this range — if the analysis needs a helper column or a summary area, add it in the specified location, not wherever happens to be empty.

EXISTING FORMULAS TO PRESERVE
Columns F and G on Sales_2026 already contain commission formulas referencing this data — don't restructure the source sheet in a way that would break those references.

WHAT TO PRODUCE
1. The direct answer to the question, as a number or short statement, stated in the chat first, before touching the sheet.
2. The actual formulas written into the cells — real Excel formulas (SUMIFS, INDEX/MATCH, a pivot, whatever fits), not a value pasted in as static text where a formula should be, so the result updates if the source data changes later.
3. Back in the chat, name every formula you wrote and which cell it lives in, so I can find and audit it without hunting through the sheet myself.
4. A DATA QUALITY note: any blank cells treated as zero, duplicate rows, inconsistent date or number formats, or mismatched units you noticed while building the formulas — flag these even if you handled them a reasonable way, since I need to know the handling happened, not just trust that it did.
5. One sentence on how sensitive the answer is to the issues in part 4 — would resolving them plausibly change the conclusion, or is the answer robust either way?

CONSTRAINTS
- If a column or field the question depends on is ambiguous — two columns that could both plausibly be "revenue," for instance — stop and ask which one before writing any formula, rather than picking one and proceeding.
- State any filtering applied (date range, category, excluded rows) explicitly in the chat, even if it seemed like the obviously correct filter to apply — do not silently narrow the dataset without saying so.
- If a formula would be materially clearer as several simpler steps across a few helper cells rather than one dense nested formula, prefer the simpler version — a formula I have to reverse-engineer defeats the point of an auditable analysis.
- Currency figures formatted with the existing workbook's currency style, growth percentages to one decimal place.

BEFORE FINISHING
Re-check that every written formula actually references the correct range — a formula that looks right but points one row off produces a plausible-looking wrong answer that is the hardest kind of spreadsheet error to catch by eye.