Claude Teams: Getting Started Guide

Settings Worth Configuring

Before you dive into regular use, spend five minutes in Settings (click your profile icon → Settings). A few things here make a meaningful difference.

Memory

Claude can now remember things about you across conversations: your role, preferences, writing style, ongoing projects, so you don't have to re-explain yourself every time you start a new chat.

To enable it: Settings → Capabilities → Memory → toggle on

Once on, Claude will automatically start building a profile over time. You can view, edit, or delete individual memories at any point from the same settings page. It's worth checking in on this after a few weeks to make sure what it's learned is accurate.

Privacy note: By default on consumer plans, conversation data can be used to improve Claude's models. If you're working with sensitive information, you can disable this in Settings → Privacy → Help improve Claude. When disabled, your data is purged within 30 days.

Projects

Projects are focused workspaces that keep related conversations, instructions, and reference files together. If you regularly return to the same type of work, a Project keeps Claude consistently briefed without you having to re-explain things each time.

To create one: Click New Project in the left sidebar, give it a name, and add:

• Custom instructions: tell Claude what this project is about, what tone to use, what to avoid, relevant background
• Knowledge files: upload reference documents, style guides, templates, or any context Claude should always have on hand

Every conversation you have inside a Project inherits those instructions automatically. Claude also builds memory within the Project itself, so the more you work in one place, the more it understands the context.

User Preferences & Writing Style

You can tell Claude how you want it to communicate with you, without having to repeat yourself in every conversation.

User Preferences (Settings → Your Profile → Preferences): Set things like preferred response length, whether you want bullet points or prose, your role/industry, and any "always do / never do" instructions that apply globally across all your chats.

Style (Settings → Your Profile → Style): Upload examples of your own writing and Claude will learn to match your voice when helping you draft emails, documents, or posts.

Features You Can Toggle On/Off

A few features are off by default or worth knowing about:

A Note on Incognito Mode

If you're working through something sensitive and don't want anything saved to memory or history, you can use Incognito mode. Conversations in Incognito mode are not stored or used to update your memory.

More Advanced Settings

1. Usage Limits

Claude's usage is session-based, not unlimited. Your allocation resets in a rolling window. A few things worth knowing upfront:

Usage is per person, not shared. Each team member has their own individual limit. If a team member hits their cap, it doesn't affect yours.

Model choice has a big impact on how fast you burn through usage. This is one of the most practical things to be aware of:

• Haiku: Fastest and lightest on usage. Great for quick lookups, simple rewrites, or short Q&A.
• Sonnet: The sweet spot for most work: drafting, summarizing, brainstorming, formatting, email writing. This is the right default for day-to-day tasks.
• Opus: The most powerful model, but it consumes your usage significantly faster. Reserve it for genuinely complex reasoning tasks: synthesizing large amounts of information, working through nuanced problems, or tasks where quality really matters.

A good rule of thumb: start with Sonnet and only move to Opus if Sonnet isn't cutting it. Most tasks — including drafts, summaries, and research — are handled perfectly well by Sonnet.

If you hit your limit, you'll be prompted to wait for the next reset window, or you can contact an admin to discuss a seat upgrade. Heavy users (especially those doing coding work) may want to flag this early.

2. Claude Cowork (Desktop App)

Cowork is one of Claude's most powerful features for knowledge work, and it's included in our Teams plan.

What it is: Cowork lives inside the Claude Desktop app (available for both Mac and Windows). Instead of chatting back and forth, you point Claude at a folder on your computer and give it a task. Claude then works through that task autonomously — reading, organizing, creating, or editing files — and checks in with you along the way.

How to get started:

1. Download the Claude Desktop app from claude.com/download
2. Open the app and click the Cowork tab (you'll see Chat, Cowork, and Code across the top)
3. Click "Work in a folder" and select a directory on your computer
4. Grant Claude the permissions it needs (read, edit, etc.) — you can always start with read-only
5. Describe your task in plain language and let it run

What it's good for:

• Ingesting large numbers of PDFs: point it at a folder of research docs, reports, or contracts and ask it to summarize, extract key data, or produce a structured overview
• Organizing messy project folders: it can sort, rename, and restructure files based on your instructions
• Drafting documents from scattered notes: give it access to a folder of rough notes and ask it to produce a first draft

Important to know:

• Claude will always show you its planned actions before making significant changes (especially file edits or deletions). You approve before it proceeds.
• Your files stay local on your machine — they are not uploaded or used for training
• Cowork tasks consume more usage than regular chat, since they're multi-step. Batch related work together in a single session rather than running lots of small tasks

3. Claude in Excel & PowerPoint

Claude has add-ins for both Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint that let you work with Claude directly inside the applications — no switching tabs, no copy-pasting.

Claude in Excel

This is particularly useful for:

• Data cleaning and formatting: ask Claude to standardize messy columns, fix inconsistent date formats, remove duplicates, or reformat tables
• Formula help: describe what you want to calculate in plain English and Claude will write the formula for you
• Summarizing or analyzing data: ask questions about your spreadsheet data directly

Claude in PowerPoint

• Helps you create and format slides from scratch or from an outline
• Good for polishing and reformatting existing decks
• Can help with slide copy, structure suggestions, and visual layout

How to set it up: Search for "Claude" in the Office Add-ins store within Excel or PowerPoint (Insert → Get Add-ins).

Note: The Excel and PowerPoint add-ins now share conversation context with each other, so if you've been working in Excel and switch to PowerPoint, Claude carries that context forward automatically.

Quick Model Reference