Day 13: Five prompts for spreadsheets.

Spreadsheets are where good intentions go to get weird.

So here are five prompts that can save you time when a sheet stops being obvious:

1. Explain this formula in plain English.
2. Help me write a formula for [goal].
3. Find patterns or outliers in this table.
4. Clean this data and tell me what looks inconsistent.
5. Turn this spreadsheet into a short summary I can send to someone else.

That is the whole move.

You are not asking the AI to become the spreadsheet owner.

You are asking it to remove friction:

• one formula that will not behave
• one messy export that needs cleanup
• one report that needs a fast human-readable summary

These are small jobs, but they eat time.

AI is genuinely useful when you use it like a spreadsheet assistant:

explain,

draft,

spot,

clean,

summarize.

Keep your judgment.

Let the model handle the annoying first pass.

— Ivy