Claude 101 for Investing (4/4) - Documents
Most people copy the answer out of the chat and reformat it by hand in Word. You do not have to, and it costs nothing extra.
Turn Claude's Answers Into Documents You Keep
Written notes, working spreadsheets and HTML pages, not walls of text. Most people copy the answer out of the chat and reformat it by hand in Word. You do not have to, and it costs nothing extra.
This is the last of 4 setup guides. Parts 1 to 3 covered where you work, what Claude knows about you, and how you keep your analysis consistent. This part is about what comes out at the end, and it works whether or not you have done any of them. Start here or start anywhere, each part works on its own.
- 01 Set Up Claude for Investing
- 02 Teach Claude Your Investment Context
- 03 Create Your Own Stock Analysis with Claude
- 04 Turn Claude's Answers Into Documents You Keep
The 4 core sections, in order. Nothing here needs any prior knowledge of Claude.
- 02The setting you have to turn onOne switch in Settings. Without it, no phrasing produces a file.
- 033 formats, 3 kinds of analysisWord, Excel and an HTML page, and which thinking each one suits.
- 04Asking for a format, and actually getting it4 phrasings, and the 3 reasons it still comes back as text.
- 05Where AI stops and you startWhat to check every time, and what the speed actually costs you.
The chat box is the simplest thing Claude can do
You asked for a comparison and got 900 words in a scrolling window. You read it once, meant to come back to it, and 2 weeks later you cannot find the chat.
Then you did what everybody does. You copied the useful bits into a document, retyped the numbers into your own spreadsheet, and did the formatting by hand. The work was already done. You just did it twice.
Here is the same request, once as a chat answer and once as a file.
- Numbers buried inside sentences
- Nothing you can sort or reorder
- Add a 4th company and it starts again from scratch
- Lives in a chat you will not find next month
- You retype it into your own sheet anyway
- 1 row per company, 1 column per measure
- Sortable, and the totals are real formulas
- Add a 4th company and the sheet recalculates
- Sits in your folder next to your own work
- Open it again next quarter and update it
The setting you have to turn on
There is nothing to pay for here. Claude can build Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files on the free plan.
- Turn it on Profile picture, bottom left, then Settings, then Capabilities. Scroll down to Code execution and file creation and switch it on. The description underneath tells you exactly what it unlocks: docs, spreadsheets, presentations, PDFs and data reports.
- Ask for a file, then look at the bottom of the answer The file appears in the chat with a download button. You can save it to your computer or straight to Google Drive. Up to 30MB, which is far more than any note or sheet you will build here.
Settings, then Capabilities. This is the only setting this report needs.
Claude is not typing out a file that looks like a spreadsheet. It writes and runs a short piece of code in the background, and that code builds a real .xlsx or .docx. You never see the code and you do not need to.