Excel is one of the most powerful tools in the world — and one of the most intimidating. The formula syntax is cryptic, the function library is enormous, and one wrong parenthesis crashes everything. Most people use maybe 5% of what Excel can do because the rest feels like learning a programming language.
ChatGPT changes that. You describe what you want in plain English, and it writes the formula. No syntax memorization required.
Here’s how to actually do it.
The Basic Approach: Describe Your Problem, Not the Formula
The key is to describe your goal, not the formula structure. Don’t say “write me a VLOOKUP.” Say “I have a product ID in column A and I want to find the price from a lookup table on Sheet2.”
ChatGPT will figure out whether you need VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, or something else entirely — and often it’ll pick the better option you didn’t know existed.
Example prompt:
“I have sales data in columns A through E. Column A is the date, Column B is the salesperson’s name, Column C is the product, Column D is quantity, Column E is unit price. I want a formula in column F that calculates total revenue (quantity × price) only if the date is in January 2026.”
ChatGPT’s response will give you the exact formula, explain each component, and tell you where to put it. You can paste it directly.
Practical Examples
1. Conditional Calculations
You want: Sum all sales in the “West” region only.
Prompt: “I have a table where column A is region and column B is sales amount. I want to sum only the rows where region is ‘West’.”
ChatGPT gives you: =SUMIF(A:A,"West",B:B)
It’ll also explain: SUMIF takes a range to check, a condition, and a range to sum. Clean and readable.
2. Looking Up Values Across Sheets
You want: Pull an employee’s department from a separate HR sheet.
Prompt: “I have employee IDs in column A of Sheet1. Sheet2 has employee IDs in column A and departments in column B. I want to pull the department into Sheet1 column B using the ID as the key.”
ChatGPT gives you: =XLOOKUP(A2,Sheet2!A:A,Sheet2!B:B,"Not found")
It might note that XLOOKUP is more robust than VLOOKUP and available in Excel 365 — the kind of context that saves you from using an outdated approach.
3. Dates and Time Calculations
You want: Calculate how many business days until a deadline.
Prompt: “I have a start date in A2 and an end date in B2. I want to count the number of working days between them, excluding weekends but not holidays.”
ChatGPT gives you: =NETWORKDAYS(A2,B2)-1
And explains the -1 — because NETWORKDAYS counts both the start and end date, so you subtract one if you don’t want to include the start day.
4. Text Manipulation
You want: Extract the first name from a full name in one cell.
Prompt: “Column A has full names like ‘John Smith’. I want to extract just the first name into column B.”
ChatGPT gives you: =LEFT(A2,FIND(" ",A2)-1)
With an explanation of how LEFT and FIND work together, and a note about what happens if there’s no space in the name.
Debugging Broken Formulas
This is where ChatGPT really shines. Paste a broken formula, describe what it’s supposed to do, and ask what’s wrong.
Prompt:
“This formula is giving me a #VALUE! error: =SUMPRODUCT((A2:A100=D2)*(B2:B100)). It’s supposed to sum column B where column A matches the value in D2. What’s wrong?”
ChatGPT will diagnose it — maybe there’s text in column B that’s being treated as a number, or column A has trailing spaces causing the match to fail. It’ll suggest fixes and preventive patterns.
Building More Complex Logic
For multi-condition formulas, nested IFs, or array operations — just explain the logic in plain English.
Prompt:
“I want to categorize sales amounts: if the amount is over 10,000, label it ‘High’. If it’s between 5,000 and 10,000, label it ‘Medium’. Below 5,000, label it ‘Low’. The amount is in column C.”
ChatGPT gives you:
And it’ll mention that if you have many categories, IFS() is cleaner to read — then show you that version too.
Tips for Better Results
Be specific about your layout. Tell ChatGPT which column is which. “Column A is dates, B is names, C is amounts” takes five seconds to type and prevents a lot of back-and-forth.
Mention your Excel version. Some functions (XLOOKUP, FILTER, UNIQUE) are Excel 365/2021 only. If you’re on an older version, say so — ChatGPT will use compatible alternatives.
Ask for explanations. Add “and explain each part of the formula” to your prompt. You’ll learn faster and be able to adapt the formula when your data changes.
Iterate. If the formula is close but not quite right, describe what’s off. “This works, but it’s showing 0 for empty cells instead of blank — how do I fix that?” ChatGPT will adjust.
Paste error messages. When you get a #REF!, #NAME?, or #VALUE! error, copy the exact message and your formula into ChatGPT. It’s remarkably good at diagnosing Excel errors.
What This Changes
The mental barrier to Excel has always been the formula syntax — the specific functions, the argument order, the nesting rules. ChatGPT removes that barrier entirely. You still need to understand your data and what you’re trying to accomplish. The tool fluency? That’s now optional.
If you’ve been avoiding Excel because it felt too technical, now’s a good time to reconsider. Describe what you need in plain English, paste the result, and move on. The spreadsheet does the hard part.