Lesson 156 · 2 min
AI that lives inside your spreadsheet
Spreadsheet apps now have AI built in that can write formulas, tidy columns and explain a sheet, and every number it touches still needs a quick check.
Excel, Google Sheets and similar apps have added AI helpers, and some chat assistants can work inside a spreadsheet file directly. Instead of searching for the right formula, you can ask in plain words: "add a column that shows how many days each invoice is late".
The helper is good at the tedious parts. It writes formulas, splits full names into first and last, cleans up messy dates, builds a pivot table or chart, and explains what a colleague's complicated formula does.
Its weak spot is quiet errors. A formula can point at the wrong range, skip the last row, or treat blank cells as zero. The sheet will look tidy and still be wrong, which is worse than an obvious mistake.
Work on a copy, ask it to explain each formula in one sentence, and test it on a few rows you can check by hand. For money, tax or payroll, have a person who knows the numbers look over the final sheet.
Do it now
Check one AI formula by hand
- 1. Make a copy of a small sheet you use, with ten or so rows.
- 2. Ask the built-in AI, or a chatbot, for a formula using the prompt below.
- 3. Work out three rows yourself and compare them with the formula's results.
My sheet has these columns: [LIST THE COLUMN NAMES AND WHAT THEY HOLD]. Write a formula for [WHAT YOU WANT]. Explain it in one sentence and tell me which cases could break it, like blanks or text in a number column.
Quick check
Keep going
Next →Making slides with AIWords from this lesson
- Copilot
- An AI assistant built into a tool you already use, such as an email app or code editor, that suggests as you work.
- Automation bias
- Our habit of trusting a machine's answer too readily, even when our own judgement or other evidence says otherwise.
- Hallucination
- When an AI states something false with confidence, such as a made-up fact, quote or source.