Data and Spreadsheets with AI

There are three categories of spreadsheet work that AI handles brilliantly:

Writing formulas. Instead of memorizing syntax, you describe what you want: "Calculate the profit margin for each product as a percentage." AI writes the formula, explains what it does, and tells you which cell to put it in.

Cleaning data. Messy data — duplicate entries, inconsistent formatting, missing values, merged cells — is the most time-consuming part of any data project. AI can identify issues and tell you exactly how to fix them, or write the formulas to clean it automatically.

Creating reports and summaries. You have raw data. You need insights. AI can analyze a dataset and produce a summary that would take a data analyst an hour — in about 60 seconds.

Here's the most powerful prompt pattern for working with data. It works every time:

Step 1: Copy your data (or describe it if it's too large to paste).

Step 2: Ask AI to explain what it sees: "Here's my sales data from Q1. What are the key trends, outliers, and insights?"

Step 3: Follow up with specific questions: "Which product category has the highest growth rate? Which region is underperforming? What would you recommend we focus on in Q2?"

This works because AI is extraordinarily good at pattern recognition. It spots trends, anomalies, and correlations that would take you much longer to find manually — especially when you're staring at 500 rows of numbers.

Let's pause and appreciate what just happened. You pasted in 6 months of basic revenue data and AI:

1. Identified the growth trend

2. Calculated your average revenue per project

3. Noticed the shift toward higher-value work

4. Did the math to reach your goal

5. Recommended a specific product mix strategy

6. Built a month-by-month financial projection

A business consultant might charge $2,000–$5,000 for this analysis. You got it in 90 seconds. Is it as nuanced as a consultant who knows your industry inside and out? No. But it's 90% as good at 0% of the cost — and that's more than enough to make smart decisions.

Here's a scenario every spreadsheet user faces: you know what you want to calculate, but you can't remember the formula. AI solves this instantly.

Instead of Googling "how to do VLOOKUP in Google Sheets" and reading a 2,000-word article, just ask:

"I have a spreadsheet with product names in column A and prices in column B. On another sheet, I have order data with product names in column A. Write a formula for column B of the orders sheet that automatically pulls the price from the products sheet."

AI gives you the exact formula, explains each part, and tells you where to put it. No more formula anxiety.

Common requests that AI handles perfectly:

- "Write a formula that calculates the running total in column D"

- "Create a formula that highlights cells red if the value is below the target"

- "Write an IF statement that categorizes sales as Small (under $500), Medium ($500–$2000), or Large (over $2000)"

- "Create a formula that counts how many times each client appears in column A"

Real business data is messy. Clients send you CSVs with inconsistent date formats. Your CRM export has duplicate entries. Your expense tracker has blank cells and typos.

Here's how to handle it. Paste a sample of the messy data into AI (or describe the problems) and ask:

"This data has the following issues: dates are in mixed formats (some MM/DD/YYYY, some DD-MM-YYYY), there are duplicate rows, and some cells in the Revenue column are blank. Give me step-by-step instructions to clean this in Google Sheets, including any formulas I'll need."

AI will give you a cleaning plan — which functions to use, in what order, and why. For more advanced users, it can write a Google Apps Script or Python script that automates the entire cleanup.

The point isn't to become a data expert. The point is to stop being blocked by data problems. When messy data used to mean "I'll deal with this later" (which meant never), now it means "let me paste this into AI and fix it in 5 minutes."