Best AI Tools for Google Sheets
There are quite a few tools that make modern spreadsheets much better, and we’re not necessarily talking about business intelligence (BI) — though that part is included as well.
It used to take an Excel master, pivot tables, and a ton of hours in order to create actionable insights from one or more spreadsheets. Now, AI can help you do that in a fraction of time — and it makes this capability available to a wider audience.
From auto-creating spreadsheets from text prompts to text-based spreadsheet conversion capabilities, modern AI tools can add a ton of useful features to your Google Sheets.
Here are some of the best tools for the job:
GPT for Work by Talarian Sàrl
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Works with GPT and Claude
- Especially useful for heavy spreadsheet users
- It is also cool for folks writing blogs and articles
- Will this tool survive the built-in AI features of Excel and Google Sheets?
GPT for Work is a set of AI plugins for Google Sheets, Docs and Excel that works with GPT-3.5, GPT-4, Claude, and more.
It provides users with extra intelligence to more easily prepare their data. For instance, it could be used to clean lists, extract entities, and normalize formats.
Moreover, the tool could be used for analyzing data, summarizing, classifying, and categorizing different data sets, writing, re-writing, editing, and translating.
According to GPT for Work’s creators, their software is perfect for bulk operations in Sheets and Excel, while the Docs integration is great for long-form content generation.
All in all, this is one of those plugins every Google Docs, Sheets and Excel user would want on their side as it will help them be that much more productive.
Coefficient AI
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Makes Google Sheets much more powerful
- Lets you create sheets and charts with text prompts
- Integrates live data into your sheets
- It could take some time to master the advanced features
Coefficient AI lets you supercharge your Google Sheets with GPT-powered tools for connecting data, building reports, and automatically analyzing and visualizing trends in your data.
The tool lets you use text instructions to pull in any business data you need. You can also sync live data from other systems you use, such as Salesforce, Shopify, Tableau, and Snowflake.
Then, Coefficient will use all that data to build the reports and dashboards you want in the fastest and most flexible way.
It also adds new formulas for cleaning, formatting, querying, enriching, and analyzing your data, and more — all in an effort to increase your “spreadsheet productivity,” as Coefficient calls it.
Finally, we should mention that the tool lets you auto-generate formulas, pivot tables, and charts using text prompts. That’s pretty cool when you think about it.
GPTExcel by excelbrew
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Not trying to compete with Excel and Google Sheets
- Turns spreadsheet newbies into experts
- Helps you automate tasks in your spreadsheets
- The free plan is somewhat limited
GPTExcel lets you generate spreadsheet formulas with AI. As such, it is an ideal solution for individuals and businesses looking to streamline their spreadsheet processes.
Then, when you get the formula, you can ask the tool for explanations. This will help you really master your spreadsheet software — whether it’s Excel, Google Spreadsheet or Airtable.
You can do the same with SQL queries, with GPTExcel supporting a variety of database systems. It simplifies the process, making it easier than ever to generate, debug, and modify complex SQL queries.
Finally, GPTExcel will also help you create advanced formulas to automate many tasks in your spreadsheets.
As of October 2023, GPTExcel was used to generate 845K+ formulas by over 130K+ users.
Ajelix
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Solid free plan
- Turn text into formulas with a few clicks
- Write spreadsheet formulas 10X faster
- SQL integration is not there, could be important for some people
Ajelix packs a variety of AI-powered tools for Google Sheets and Excel that help you write formulas, translate spreadsheets, generate templates, create reports, analyze data with AI, and write VBA scripts 10X faster.
For instance, you can use it for data visualization to create nice-looking reports in one minute or less. Or you can generate formulas with simple text prompts.
For Excel users, there are specific tools such as Formula Explainer, VBA Script Generator, VBA Script Explainer, VBA Code Debugger, VBA Code Optimizer, File Translator, and Template Generator.
As for those using Google Sheets, the tool offers Google Apps Script Generator, Explainer, Optimizer, and Debugger — as well as Google Sheets Formula Generator and Explainer.
Finally, we should mention Ajelix’s virtual AI assistant for spreadsheets, which will always be there for you to help you work with your data. Simply put – it’s much easier to work with Google Sheets and Excel that way.
Rows
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- It's a spreadsheet software on steroids
- Especially handy for marketing campaign management
- And the same goes for other data sets, where you need to uncover trends
- Will Excel and Google Sheets users switch over? Not likely
Rows is the only spreadsheet with the capabilities of an AI Analyst and a native OpenAI integration. Both are available to everyone and free to use.
With Rows, you can leverage AI to drag automation across ranges of cells, combine the AI actions with any other spreadsheet formula, and use cell references to create “dynamic AI experiences.”
You get to use AI to summarize and make sense of your data by asking questions about it. The AI tech will kick in from there, providing you with easy-to-understand answers.
That being said, Rows could be used as a helpful tool in your marketing campaigns, providing you with first drafts, keyword ideas and themes, blog post titles and outlines.
Or you can use it for just about anything with the “ASK_OPENAI” command to send custom prompts and use specific AI models from OpenAI.
How can AI improve your Google Sheets experience?
Google Sheets already has some brains, and from what we’re hearing, it will only get smarter. AI can turn it into a whole new tools, enabling new features and capabilities, such as:
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Add context to your numbers
Imagine instantly comparing your numbers (no matter what they are) with the numbers of your competitor or with some other relevant figure. If such data is available online, AI could be used to scrape that data (more on that later) and let you compare multiple related figures. This doesn’t have to apply to a company’s figures and could also include data points such as countries’ GDP numbers, population data, and more.
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Unify data
This can come in particularly handy when you’re dealing with data that is a collection of user inputs. In this case, one person may have entered his/her state as “CA” and the other as “California.” You could create a new column that would use ChatGPT (or Bard) to show the state and country from the other column in a unified manner. AI will know that “CA” and “California” mean the same thing and that it is a U.S. state. So the result would be “California, United States.”
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Scrape related information from the web
You could use a ChatGPT plugin to scrape data from the web and, for instance, show a number (or text) in one cell that is related to the data in another cell (from the same row). This can potentially save you hours and hours of manual work.
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Connect with other services
You could use a data point from one cell and, send it to a third-party service and then show the result in another cell. Again, this could be a huge time saver for anyone working with multiple different services on a regular basis.
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Auto-create spreadsheets
Finally, we should mention the AI’s ability to create entire spreadsheets from a text prompt. AI will create the first draft for you by getting the data from the Internet and let you take it from there. This feature can be handy for folks working with publicly available information.
The way modern spreadsheets such as Google Sheets work has started to change, and we’re just getting started. Soon enough, you/we won’t be able to imagine that we have ever worked without AI on our side. And that’s something to cheer for. Or so we think.