Altavize
Altavize is an AI add-in for Microsoft Excel that categorises, extracts, anonymises and cleans text data, attaching a confidence score to every output. Self-serve signups are currently paused; existing customers and consulting engagements continue.
What is Altavize?
Altavize is a suite of AI tools that runs inside Microsoft Excel as an add-in, published by Altivize Inc. Its premise is narrow and deliberate: take the manual text work analysts do in spreadsheets, and hand it to a language model while attaching a proprietary confidence score to every output, so the analyst can see which rows to trust and which to re-read.
Eight modules make up the suite. Data Categorization assigns labels from a list you supply and handles binary, sentiment, time-based and hierarchical schemes. Category Generator proposes a category set when you do not yet know how to segment a dataset, though it does not assign rows to it. PDF Extraction pulls document-level fields such as an invoice number and line-item fields such as product and quantity from a folder of PDFs into a worksheet. Anonymization replaces personal data while keeping the population representative, with configurable geographic granularity and the option to exclude columns. Uniqueness Quantification highlights distinctive or minority ideas in free text. Free-format Request runs a natural-language prompt row by row. Data Cleaning standardises up to five columns and returns either a two-column reference table or a direct replacement. An ML Insight Generator covering forecasting, churn and lead scoring is announced but still in development.
The models come from OpenAI only, and access is restricted to users who already hold an OpenAI subscription with an active API key, so the token bill lands on the customer's own account. There is no row limit on the product side; the ceiling is whatever that key allows. The publisher declares support for Excel 2016 and later on Mac, Excel 2013 and later on Windows, and Excel on the web, with a companion web application for sign-in.
The company was founded by a former Bain & Company consultant, and the homepage claims the tools sit in analyst workflows at leading companies, showing an AXA logo. Its commercial position is unusual: self-serve signups are paused, existing customers keep working uninterrupted, and the publisher now openly offers consulting instead.
What it does
- Categorise text columns and get a confidence score on every row
- Extract document-level and line-item fields from batches of PDFs straight into Excel
- Clean and standardise messy columns before lookups, pivots and merges
- Anonymise personal data while preserving the analytical structure of the dataset
- Generate a candidate category set for a dataset you have not segmented yet
- Run a free-form natural-language prompt row by row to generate, research, translate or reshape data
- Surface unusual or minority opinions buried in a body of free text
When to use Altavize / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Altavize is the right fit.
When to use Altavize
- Analysts who process large columns of unstructured text without leaving Excel
- Finance and accounting teams pulling line items out of batches of invoices, contracts and reports
- Insight, market research and CX teams coding open-ended comments and survey responses
- Legal, procurement and real-estate teams extracting structured fields from PDF agreements
- Organisations that already hold an OpenAI subscription with an active API key and want model usage billed to their own account
When not to use Altavize
- New customers hoping to sign up today, since self-serve registration is paused
- Teams without an OpenAI account with billing enabled and an active API key
- Anyone who needs a public API, a mobile app or a standalone desktop application
- Buyers who need published pricing before a procurement process can start
- Users expecting extraction from handwriting, degraded scans, PDFs over fifteen pages or non-PDF formats
How to use Altavize
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an OpenAI account, enable billing and generate an API key; a dedicated PDF guide walks through it
- Sign in to the Altavize web application and install the Excel add-in
- Download the demo pack and open the sample workbook and sample invoices it contains
- Pick the module that matches your task from the add-in pane
- Select the cells, the columns or the PDF folder you want processed
- For categorisation, supply your list of categories, fifteen to twenty at most
- Fill the context box as if you were briefing an intern: short, precise, unambiguous
- Run the job on a small subset of five to thirty rows before anything else
- Sort the output by confidence score and review everything below the publisher's thresholds
- Scale to the full dataset once the prompt and the category list hold up
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Every output carries a confidence score, with thresholds the publisher explains rather than hides
- Everything happens inside Excel, so there is no new interface to learn
- No row limit on the product side; the only ceiling is the customer's own OpenAI token allowance
- Token costs are billed straight to the customer's OpenAI account rather than resold
- Unusually honest documentation of the limits, including the risk of a high score on a badly framed task
- The analysed data is declared not to be stored: no saving, no logs, no copies on Altavize's side
- Detailed security self-assessment filed with Microsoft: annual penetration testing, quarterly scans, MFA and 72-hour breach notification
Cons
- Self-serve signups are paused, so a new customer simply cannot buy the product
- No published pricing: the pricing route redirects to a page announcing that signups are closed
- Complete dependence on OpenAI, which is also the only model provider on offer
- No terms and conditions page and no postal address anywhere on the site
- No SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, FedRAMP or CSA STAR certification, by the publisher's own declaration
- No public API and no mobile application; PDF extraction caps at fifteen pages per document and PDF only
- Several statements conflict between the privacy policy and the publisher's filing with Microsoft
Pricing & Plans
Altavize publishes no pricing. The pricing route on the site redirects to a page announcing that self-serve signups are closed, and no free plan and no free trial are mentioned anywhere. The homepage structured data still carries a ten US dollar offer, but it expired on 31 December 2025 and is contradicted by the absence of any pricing page, so it should not be read as a current rate. The documented cost model places the language-model spend on the customer, who either purchases tokens or connects their own OpenAI API key so that usage is billed directly to their organisation. Consulting engagements are quoted case by case.
- continued access to the Excel add-in and the web application
- at no published rate
- Excel automation
- AI-assisted analysis workflows
- PDF extraction pipelines
- data cleanup and categorisation
- quoted case by case
- billed to the customer's own OpenAI account
- either by purchasing tokens or by connecting a personal API key
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Altavize handles your data.
GDPR overview
The privacy policy carries an explicit GDPR section. Personal data is said to be processed lawfully, fairly and transparently, consent is collected where the law requires it, and data subjects are granted access, portability, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and withdrawal of consent. International transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses, with transfers outside the EEA described as subject to strict safeguards. Rights are exercised by email, and readers are pointed to their supervisory authority; CCPA rights are covered in parallel. Two gaps stand out: no EU representative under Article 27 is named anywhere, and the policy shows neither an effective date nor a revision date. A self-assessment the publisher filed with Microsoft in July 2025 answers "No" to deletion, restriction and rectification on request, contradicting the policy itself.
Who owns the data?
Altavize's privacy policy states that you keep the intellectual property rights to any content submitted through the add-in, and that the company processes that content only to fulfil your request, without retaining it afterwards. The spreadsheet selection you make is forwarded to OpenAI for processing and the results are returned to your worksheet. Account data is treated separately: name, email, company name, IP address, browser, operating system and Microsoft Office version are collected and used to run the service, improve it and meet legal obligations. Deletion can be requested by email, and the publisher says such requests are handled under GDPR and CCPA.
Reuse rights
Nothing in the published documents claims ownership of the outputs or asks permission before you reuse them. You retain the intellectual property rights to what you submit, and the results land directly in your own workbook, so commercial reuse is unrestricted on Altavize's side. Because the processing runs through your own OpenAI subscription, OpenAI's terms also govern the generated content. Altavize limits its own use to fulfilling the request and says it does not sell personal information. One caveat: the site publishes no terms and conditions page, so this reading rests on the privacy policy alone.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The privacy policy names two hosting and analytics subprocessors: Google Inc. for hosting and analytics, and Microsoft Corporation for hosting, plus unnamed other providers listed in the company's data processing agreement. The homepage adds that the product is built on secure platforms such as Azure and OpenAI. Neither document states a hosting country. That detail comes from a self-assessment the publisher filed with Microsoft on 2 July 2025, describing a PaaS model running on Azure with customer data stored in the United States of America. No European hosting region is offered. Cross-border transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses, and the privacy policy says transfers outside the EEA are subject to strict safeguards. Note that the same filing answers "No" to transferring customer data to third parties or subprocessors, contradicting the privacy policy's own list; that is worth clarifying with the publisher before processing regulated data.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Altavize.
- Your spreadsheet selection is sent to OpenAI, so clear it against your own data policy before processing anything sensitive
- A high confidence score is not proof of correctness; the publisher compares it to an intern confidently solving the wrong problem
- Leaning on the score instead of reading the data erodes exactly the judgement the tool is meant to support
- "Zero data retention" covers the analysed data, while the publisher's filing with Microsoft describes an account database holding usage analytics and detailed logs of all system interactions
- The privacy policy names Google and Microsoft as subprocessors while the Microsoft filing answers "No" to third-party transfers, and answers "No" again to deletion, restriction and rectification on request
- The legal name on the site reads "Altivize Inc.", one letter away from the brand, so verify who you would actually be contracting with
- With no terms and conditions page, no published price and no active signup route, budget and contractual terms have to be negotiated blind
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Technically light, administratively awkward. Installing the add-in requires no code, and the publisher declares support for Excel 2016 and later on Mac, Excel 2013 and later on Windows and Excel on the web, with Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on. The real friction sits upstream: you must create an OpenAI account, enable billing and generate an API key, for which a dedicated PDF guide is supplied. A demo workbook, sample invoices and two video tutorials smooth the first hour. The genuine obstacle today is not technical at all, since new self-serve signups are closed.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind Altavize
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Altavize.
Frequently asked questions
Which AI models does Altavize use?
Can I sign up for Altavize right now?
What do I need before I can use it?
How much does it cost?
Is my spreadsheet data stored?
What does the confidence score actually mean?
Which versions of Excel are supported?
What are the limits of the PDF extraction module?
Is Altavize GDPR compliant?
How do I delete my data?
Should you pick Altavize?
Altavize is a well-built answer to a real and unglamorous problem: the hours analysts lose sorting, labelling and transcribing text inside spreadsheets. Its distinguishing idea is not the language model but the confidence score attached to every output, together with documentation that explains in plain terms when that score should not be trusted. Very few AI tools are that candid about their own failure modes, and the eight modules read like they were designed by someone who had done the work by hand first. The founder's consulting background shows.
The difficulty is commercial rather than technical. Self-serve signups are paused, no price is published, and the pricing route simply redirects to a page saying the door is closed. The product depends entirely on OpenAI, and on the customer bringing an API key and paying the token bill. There is no terms and conditions page, no postal address and no security certification, and several statements in the privacy policy sit awkwardly beside the self-assessment the publisher filed with Microsoft, on subprocessors, on deletion rights and on how much is logged.
The result is a tool worth knowing about rather than one you can adopt today. For existing customers it remains a serious instrument, and the publisher says their access continues uninterrupted. For everyone else the realistic route is a consulting engagement: Excel automation, AI-assisted analysis, extraction pipelines. Anyone evaluating Altavize should confirm its availability and its legal footing directly with the publisher before committing.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.