I Stopped Googling Excel Formulas & Here's What I Use Instead

twelvecharacters — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:01:14 GMT

Every office worker knows the pain: you need a formula, you Google it, you get 15 different Stack Overflow answers, and half of them don't work with your Excel version.

I switched to asking ChatGPT about 6 months ago. Haven't Googled an Excel formula since.

The Setup (Takes 30 Seconds)

No plugins. No extensions. Just open ChatGPT and describe what you need in plain English.

Me: "I have sales data. Column A is product names, column B is revenue. Give me a formula to sum revenue only for products containing 'Premium'."

ChatGPT: =SUMIF(A:A,"Premium",B:B)

That's it. Works on free tier.

Where It Actually Saves Time

1. Nested Formulas Nobody Memorizes

"If sales > $50K, commission is 10%. Between $10K-$50K it's 7%. Below $10K it's 5%."

=IF(B2>50000,B20.1,IF(B2>=10000,B20.07,B2*0.05))

Could I figure this out myself? Sure. In 15 minutes. ChatGPT gives it in 3 seconds.

2. The Formula You'd Never Find on Google

"Extract only the numbers from text like 'Order #12345'"

=TEXTJOIN("",TRUE,IF(ISNUMBER(MID(A2,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(A2))),1)*1),MID(A2,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(A2) )),1),""))

Nobody is writing that from memory. Nobody.

3. VBA Macros Without Learning VBA

"Write a macro that bold headers, auto-fits columns, and adds borders to any data I paste."

ChatGPT outputs a complete, working VBA script. You paste it into Alt+F11 → Insert Module, done. What used to take a developer now takes 30 seconds.

4. Upload Your Actual Spreadsheet

Both free and Plus users can upload .xlsx files directly. Then ask:

"What trends do you see?"
"Find outliers in this data"
"Create a chart of monthly revenue"

ChatGPT sees your actual column names and data. Way better than describing your spreadsheet in text.

The Prompting Trick That Makes Everything Better

Bad prompt: "Write a formula for commission"

Good prompt: "Write a formula for commission. Sales amount is in column C, starting row 2. Commission is 5% under $1000, 8% for $1000-$5000, 12% above. I'm using Excel 2019."

Three things to always include:

Your column layout (which data is where)
Your Excel version (some functions are 365-only)
Edge cases ("what if the cell is empty?")

What About Copilot?

Microsoft Copilot works inside Excel — it can edit cells directly. ChatGPT can't.

But ChatGPT is better for:

Complex formulas with detailed explanations
VBA macros (Copilot's macro support is limited)
Learning — ask "explain this step by step"
Free tier — Copilot's premium features need M365

I use both: ChatGPT to figure out the formula, Copilot to apply it inside Excel.

I wrote a full comparison with practical examples if you want to go deeper — including copy-paste prompt templates for common tasks like lookups, conditional sums, and data validation.

Quick Reference: Prompts You Can Steal

Task	Prompt
Lookup	"Write an INDEX-MATCH to find [value] in [column] and return [result column]"
Conditional sum	"SUMIFS formula to sum [column] where [condition1] AND [condition2]"
Date math	"Calculate business days between [cell1] and [cell2]"
Text cleanup	"Extract [first name / domain / numbers] from [cell]"
Deduplication	"Count unique values in [column], I'm using Excel [version]"

One Warning

Always test formulas on a small sample first. ChatGPT gets it right ~90% of the time, but that other 10% can mess up your data if you apply it to 10,000 rows blindly.

What Excel formula have you been struggling with? Drop it in the comments — I'll show you the ChatGPT prompt for it.

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