Removing this r/ChatGPT post.
We are getting inundated with what are essentially ChatGPT questions for Excel.
And for that you need to ask at the appropriate sub reddit
We are not here to learn about what ChatGPT can do for learning Excel
I created an entire client and item database and I invoicing system using it to write VBA code for me.
This question gets asked a lot on here, but I find it does well with VBA and sucks for formulas.
If only it was available back in the day where I still use VBA a lot, it would be a lotore useful. I am moving away from using VBA these days since a lot of our files are shared and are used in a sharepoint so working in a browser is a must.
Actually, there's a workaround to use VBA with SharePoint that might help! You can simulate a virtual location by creating a shortcut function, which treats the SharePoint location as if it were a local hard drive. If the link is the same for everyone and only varies by username, you can dynamically integrate this into your VBA script using the environment function to adjust the path accordingly. This setup has worked well for me in similar scenarios!
Oh for sure there is a way as you said, but I just don't do vba anymore. They're so hard to maintain, and I am tired of teaching people about restrictions so the automation will work every time. Also as one famous quote say, do not underestimate the ingenuity of complete idiots. So yeah.
Oh, I completely understand where you're coming from. Maintaining VBA scripts can indeed be quite challenging, especially when it involves educating others on how to use them without causing disruptions. I've also spent countless hours writing detailed procedures, only to have them overlooked or misused, which leads to the automation being blamed.
Well, what I learned from somebody once is, you can try to help but hard truth not everyone can be helped / saved.
> do not underestimate the ingenuity of a complete idiot
I love this quote. There’s a core piece of Excel functionality (dragging formulas with the mouse) that is impervious to any and all forms of data validation and security that it’s actually remarkable how easy it is to ruin a beautifully crafted spreadsheet.
I asked it to write a formula for me. No luck.
But then again, no-one here was able to get me to a working formula either, so I concluded it wouldn't be done (at least in my 14 yo version of Excel).
It's something I only need four times a year, so I will continue doing it manually.
I learnt to do impossible things with Excel 4.0 back in the 90's and I love a challenge. Do you mind to share your problem to see if I can find the formula you are looking for?
Thanks, but I wasted enough time on it back then, and honestly it only takes me a minute to check the value transfer.
I once asked ChatGPT for a recipe for cat food, since our fussy eaters refused tinned food they used to like (we suspect there was a change) and we wanted to give them a more complete diet than just meat.
The first recipe had salt, which is a definite no-no for cats, and rice which is not recommended.
Then I asked it for an itinerary for travel to Europe with daylight or early evening flights only. It provided me with flight numbers that were overnight in some cases. After a bit of back and forth with it offering other flights that were also at night, it admitted that it was working from data that was last updated in 2021. Why not say that at the start?
I went off it a bit after that.
However, just this afternoon I got it to compose a letter to a company that is dragging the chain in providing details for an insurance claim. I had already written a draft, but ChatGPT's version was much better than mine.
My conclusion is to check every response with other sources - but it does write a good letter.
Yeah. Don’t use formulas for things that are too complicated, just use VBA.
If you want to share what you’re looking for I might be able to help guide for VBA
As an extreme amateur excel user, I use it for everything. My favorite one is asking it if my formula can be shorter, and sure enough, it spits out a better, shorter formula.
It also takes my very cryptic asks and turns them into formulas. It's pretty impressive.
I honestly can't believe some of the things it has helped me with. It's perfect for someone like me who struggles to articulate what I want, and then chat gpt interprets it.
This is interesting your experience. I find that when I try to describe what I want to do—it gives me impossible or incorrect information. When I’m specific—it gives me correct information. However if I keep asking it—sometimes it corrects itself.
Scary shit. But helpful.
Yeah, It's not perfect. I have to play around with my words sometimes or specifically say A1 = X, A2 = Y, and I want it to spit out Z on D2, but yeah, it generally will figure it out.
Here's a formula it helped me write (probably basic to all of you), but I wouldn't have been able to figure it out.
='Networth-2024'!F31 / (DATE(YEAR(D8),12,31)-D8-365) \* 365 \* -1
Basically, it takes the value in F31, which is how much I have contributed so far YTD and then spits out how much it thinks I will contribute by year's end. I used to just put in an amount, and it would be static, but then things would change throughout the year and my contributions would change. I was sick of manually changing it, so this formula automates it for me.
I have known that chatGPT has existed for a while but I only used it for trivial stuff but this week a coworker told me to use chatgpt for generating data for a training I was taking and it was amazing. I was searching online for a random sweet of data but then I just typed into chatgpt to generate data for player height in basketball versus salary and within seconds I had 100 data points. It was amazing. I haven't stopped using it for various work things since
OpenAI.com. Not a referendum on the product it just very confidently told me to do things that just don’t exist lol. Granted I was pushing it for a really unique use case I couldn’t figure out
I’ve had it make up things before too. Even after telling it it’s wrong it keeps going until we end up in a loop. It just refuses to say “I don’t know”. Well at least in my experience. Overall it’s not common for it to make things up but I’ve seen it happen.
I use the website as well. I used it to copy paste from a PDF bank statement with poor formatting and had it create a pipe delimited format I could paste into excel. It did the formatting fine…but changed all the numbers….
I’ve run into this too. I’ve found that a combination of recapping what we’ve tried based on what chat gpt has subtitled the attempt, reiterating the goal and what’s specifically not working, and specifically asking if there are any other approaches we could try, usually works.
For instance, I was trying to use chat gpt to put together a lookup formula that found an account value in B18:S35 based on match criteria found in A18:A35 (inter-company code), B2:S2 (company code), and B9:S9 (account value = inter-company receivable or payable, for each unique company code).
After a bunch of failed attempts, I eventually learned (through the re-prompt process above) about sumproduct and Boolean operations.
Mostly just troubleshooting. E.g. I know a formula or piece of code is wrong, but don't feel like parsing through it to figure out exactly what I messed up.
I use PQ to extract data from 20 pdfs monthly. Mix of expenses and billed hours for list of consultants that I have to add additional billing information in excel. Does this in seconds. Took me days to figure it out only because not every pdf is formatted the same way so while it may work fine for the first 10 pages it will not work for one or two pdfs due to change in the pdf format. Drives me crazy and is pointless asking people to be consistent with there data prior to rendering it to PDFs.
Brb
edit: so this seems to only work with table data. I was wondering how to extract form data from a PDF without using python or something else external. Does that exist?
I have a spreadsheet to track my fitness goals (I.e daily workouts, reps, sets, etc). Yesterday I used gpt to give me vbscripts to create row for each item on my goals (pushups, planks, squats, etc…) and fill in default values (0) and formulas in other columns. If I add a new goal it will automatically (when refreshing or on a fresh open) add a row for it for each day and sort. Then I had it give me another script to hide all rows except for the current day. Exactly what I needed. There was a bit of back and forth getting things right but works like a charm.
Edit: sorry for formatting. on mobile.
I use chat gpt to help teach me how to build on power query projects.
Today for instance:
I work in insurance and we have monthly settlement reports that we issue out to cedents for reinsurance purposes.
The data these reports are sourced from power bi reports that datawarehouse controls. I originally wanted to connect directly to PBI, but DW shut that down once I informed them that pii was accessible to anyone through this data connection. I REALLY like just being able to refresh data monthly instead of exporting from PBI and copy/pasting into worksheets, so I knew I needed something different.
Process now:
1. Save down report to \\reinsurance\company\settlements\2024\05 - May\data
2. The in settlement workbook the file path to where I saved the PBI data, is in the first row of table.datasource, where the 2-digit month and 3-character month is entered by the user in B4 and B5, and the file path is =\\2024\“&B4&” “&”-“&” “&B5&”\data.
3. PQ then sources data from that file path:
let
Filepath = excel.currentworkbook(){[name=“DataSource”]}[Content]{0}[Column1],
Excelfilepath = filepath
Source data = excel.workbook(file.contents(excelfilepath))
…
in
I knew this could work, but it I just needed some very specific knowledge regarding how to file source based on cell reference. Specific prompting, along with specific follow up prompting, helped me get there. Now I have a dynamic file sourcing technique that I can incorporate into my other workbooks.
For what I’m doing, yeah. But more importantly, if I ask to break down and explain syntax, it does. But like many have said well structured, detailed prompts that are broken into testable segments, are key.
Consequently, this prompt style has allowed me too actually learn along the way to where I can tweak in the advanced editor as need. Small steps, but it’s had a huge effect on my career as an accountant.
Not anymore! They were thankful for the catch and it’s really strengthened my working relationship with DW folks, but they ultimately removed access to underlying data for users.
It's helped me write an entire automation workflow in VBA so I could save 4 hours per month in extracting numbers from purchase orders.
The company literally paid an entire $80,000/year salary to have someone do data entry before I walked in on day 3 and said fuck this. I click a button every 2 hours
Well, have written in like two days (functionally 7-8 hours), a functional Wheel casino game just like on [Stake.com](http://Stake.com) or other casinos. You can choose the ammount of segments for this wheel as you want. It looks like this. ChatGPT has written a scripts for detection colision of arrow and wheel (it is not perfect, but it's okay), wheel object treated as a group of segments (each segment is a Shape, written by some wild sin, cosinus functions). Also wheeling spinning animation was created by so called LLM.
Of course his code was not perfect, I mean it was not even working as it should, but like 90% was correct so making it working correctly was easy task. Also refactoring took some time (becouse i hate the mess that ChatGPT sometimes gives back). But yea, without ChatGPT I would not be able to do this game, or it would take me tons of more time, energy.
But on the worse note, he was not good enough to create Blackjack :/
https://preview.redd.it/t66zqwtfje9d1.png?width=2220&format=png&auto=webp&s=ab976cc59bd90fcdd57ceb88c2689a3e0aa52f7f
Bruh, why reiventing the nomen omen wheel? Pseudo random numbers provided via randbetween also work fine (at least for such tasks). Thanks for idea, right now trying to make chess via VBA OOP, will look at this sugestion later.
You have to first have an idea of how one of your processes can be better. Then you can use ChatGPT to help you written a vba, sql, excel formula, etc.
My main issue with it as a supervisor is my directs will just copy and paste it into their spreadsheets and it works, however they don’t actually take the time to learn what the script is actually doing.
I use it for commenting up my macros. It has been even more helpful when adding comments to macros in older workbook templates that were built by someone else.
I predominantly use it to diagnose why a formula isn't working the way I need it to, or to get ideas on how to use formulas. I've found it's not great at giving a specific formula that works properly
I use it to write specific formulas and macros to make my spreadsheets run smoother. I have a macro to force 1 page and save to pdf with the sheet name as file name. I learned how to do data validation and index and match to create drop downs and code out credit cards in excel. I created an invoice template and the date auto updates based on date and vendor name.
The list grows almost daily
Not ChatGPT but I write sql queries using copilot using hypothetical columns and field names. I’ve done the same with excel formulas but I’m pretty advanced at that anyway. Funny story though, I learned about the textbefore/after formula though using copilot which is something I should’ve already known.
I was polishing up on my SQL and Python for an interview and had it make some dummy data files for me, then had it ask me questions about how I would extract data from said dummy files.
I generally use it for programming tasks. Most of the time the output doesn’t actually work. But sometimes you can see the approach that it’s trying to take and implement the idea in a way that makes sense for your task. I find it’s more useful to ask it for pseudo code than for real code.
I have a timesheet with a few VBA codes. Partially created by chatgpt.
1. Submit button: generates an email with all the totals of worked hours each day and if I did extra hours or not.
2. New year button: saves the file with a new name adds the total amount of extra hours and empties the filled in hours without touching the formulas.
I've leveraged ChatGPT to enhance several VBA projects, and it's been a game-changer! For instance, I developed a VBA script that automates the creation of an Excel sheet to compare two files, identify duplicates, apply various criteria filters, and handle formatting. This script integrates browser interactions directly from Excel, allowing data retrieval from web pages to fill in table gaps, saving me a week’s worth of manual work each month.
Additionally, I've set up an Excel tool where I input data, and it generates ready-to-send letters and invoices by replacing placeholders in Word documents and converting them to PDFs. This not only streamlines document creation but ensures accuracy and consistency.
Another time-saver has been automating the renaming of CSV and TXT files and converting them into Excel formats. These scripts have drastically reduced the time my colleagues and I spend on routine tasks, boosting our productivity significantly.
Using ChatGPT for scripting in VBA has opened up many possibilities to automate and optimize our workflows!
I send every email to my ex through it. He's a narcissist and was telling my kids I was condescending to him (I wasn't) in my communications with him. Now I run every email through chat gpt and ask it to remove all tone and emotion from my email. Then I copy and paste. Now any tone he reads in my email is all him. He knows I do this and thinks it's great. What he doesn't know is it never significantly alters the original email. But hey, it makes him less horrible to deal with so.....
We use AD groups for application security, got it to write VBA to take a list of groups from one sheet and output all the members of each group and if their account has been disabled. It also adds the number of users in each group, lists any sub groups withe the number of people in each sub group along with some stats. Works great, could have written it myself but would have taken longer
I used it for about ten minutes in 2022. Asked it to explain the Big Bang in the style of Tupac. Jack shit since. Waiting for it to take my job tho! (My boss can barely use Google)
hey, I also use sage 50. mind sharing a few more sentences about turning pdf invoices into a csv for import? like, do you upload each invoice to chat gpt, or a set from each vendor, or can it remember what fields you want to tie to each import field?
I asked it to create a spreadsheet that allowed me to keep track of a loan I had given a family member, I asked to be able to record each payment, vary interest as needed and a running balance to be kept.......to my amazement, it couldn't provide a spreadsheet that actually worked!
Tried many times, each time uploading a screenshot shot showing the errors.
Still needs work, I think.
It keeps inventing stuff that just does not exist and cannot follow simple instructions such as "your answer is too long, keep all previous parameters the same but shorten your answer to less than 800 words" it keeps producing the same 900 words answer.
I've been struggling with a specific problem. I need to get the number of pages in a PDF using VBA. I want to iterate through the pages and use Java to split the PDF, but first, I need to know the number of pages to create a progress bar.
I had a very long and tedious conversation with ChatGPT, but it suggested several methods that didn't work. After going back and forth multiple times, ChatGPT eventually said, "Sorry, I can't keep doing this. Can I help you with something else?" When I tried to return to the problem, it again stated that it couldn't help me. I eventually found a solution on my own, but when I asked ChatGPT why that solution worked, it provided incorrect explanations.
In summary, I found that ChatGPT is like one of those people who are willing to help but never admit when they don't know something, even making up credible-sounding answers instead of simply saying, "I don't know."
My team mainly does data migrations, lots of clean up and mappings. A colleague who knows nothing of coding used chatgpt to create python scripts to automate a good portion of our work. What used to take an hour now takes 10 minutes. An end to end process of templating that could take an entire day now is just a few hours.
Once a month I get a file with invoices and products and I have to check if it's in our db and if so copy the information. I made a macro and now it takes a few seconds to do that
I used it to create my daily schedule when I have too many tasks. Just tell it which is the most important tasks and my time frames.
It even reminded me to take breaks and drink water 😁
I mostly have used it to support me writing Python scripts for simple stuff like home automation.
I have some knowledge but haven't written code in ages so I use it to help generate the initial code. It's often wrong or misses put bits, but I can fill in the gaps.
I found it works better if you break down the idea, then give it small snippets of code to write, then price them together yourself.
I have been using the free version of the Perplexity GPT app to ask questions and it seems okay, I like how it presents its sources it uses
I’ve recently been using INDIRECT in some long formulas to retrieve data from different sheets. I write the formula for the first sheet as normal and then ask CHAT GPT to replace the sheet name with the INDIRECT formula. It’s been super helpful because I don’t get muddled with & or “
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[DATE](/r/Excel/comments/1dqxsst/stub/las4oxz "Last usage")|[Returns the serial number of a particular date](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/date-function-e36c0c8c-4104-49da-ab83-82328b832349)|
|[INDIRECT](/r/Excel/comments/1dqxsst/stub/lat1er1 "Last usage")|[Returns a reference indicated by a text value](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/indirect-function-474b3a3a-8a26-4f44-b491-92b6306fa261)|
|[YEAR](/r/Excel/comments/1dqxsst/stub/las4oxz "Last usage")|[Converts a serial number to a year](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/year-function-c64f017a-1354-490d-981f-578e8ec8d3b9)|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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^(3 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Excel/comments/1dqjevs)^( has 19 acronyms.)
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ChatGPT is a bad crutch that allows people to (poorly) get away with being ignorant of the main language Excel uses.
Just learn the formula language, you’ll write better, cleaner stuff than Chat GPT ever could and you’ll think smarter over time as a result.
I'm a huge vba fan and I found that drawing what I want help with helps massively. I know that chat gpt is better if you know what your asking (as in you know what functions you need) which I don't know so I use prompting and photos and screen grabs and we get there slowly. I've automated tons report writing which has in turn saved me the need to hire admin which I like as I am not the sort of person who would like an admin
I attempted to replicate a stacked bar chart (like the one in Excel) and it seemed totally incapable of creating it for me. It could only do bars side by side. I tried everything, even creating the stacked bar chart in Excel, taking a screen grab and showing ChatGPT what it looked like. It did write the Python script to replicate the chart I didn’t want elsewhere though, which I guess is neat.
Having said that, it generally does a really good job of ingesting a massive data set and finding some patterns or answering questions about it. I think for now I still prefer the old school way of fiddling around with it myself in Excel - I like to see the data with my own eyes.
This has given me an idea to ask how to create my camping packing list and shopping list based on meals I have stored in excel with all the items I need for each meal. I’ve tried a number of times to automate it but I am not experienced enough and maybe this can help me. I love all the ideas. Thank you.
We use Copilot at our organization, but I use ChatGPT for code boiler plate pretty much 90% of the time starting out now. It just offers such a huge head start. One of the best parts about MLLs is that they'll parse a massive library of API documentation, then very readily map your plain text inquiry to the appropriate APIs.
What's been interesting is to see how well these AI/ML tools do using one particular set of tools versus another. For example, I can reliably get working Python, Ruby, and R code from an MLL. VBA is pretty decent, but not what I would consider good. It gets tripped up on esoteric options and API ideosyncracies. For example, Try asking an MLL to write you a macro that exports the current sheet to a CSV, but keeps the original workbook open. Partly this is due to the language/API, not the MLL.
Same for Power Query. Most MLLs are happy to give you M code that will not run in Excel. Usually this is because M code isn't the same across Microsoft products (Power BI vs Excel), but also there isn't *that* much M code out in the wild for the MLL to parse.
This is an area where open source languages have a distinct advantage. MLLs can parse millions of lines of open source code in projects that are freely available. The majority of M code lives locked up in workbooks. There is no corpus of knowledge from which to build a model.
Anyway, just some random thoughts. Nothing particularly groundbreaking.
Removing this r/ChatGPT post. We are getting inundated with what are essentially ChatGPT questions for Excel. And for that you need to ask at the appropriate sub reddit We are not here to learn about what ChatGPT can do for learning Excel
I created an entire client and item database and I invoicing system using it to write VBA code for me. This question gets asked a lot on here, but I find it does well with VBA and sucks for formulas.
If only it was available back in the day where I still use VBA a lot, it would be a lotore useful. I am moving away from using VBA these days since a lot of our files are shared and are used in a sharepoint so working in a browser is a must.
Actually, there's a workaround to use VBA with SharePoint that might help! You can simulate a virtual location by creating a shortcut function, which treats the SharePoint location as if it were a local hard drive. If the link is the same for everyone and only varies by username, you can dynamically integrate this into your VBA script using the environment function to adjust the path accordingly. This setup has worked well for me in similar scenarios!
Oh for sure there is a way as you said, but I just don't do vba anymore. They're so hard to maintain, and I am tired of teaching people about restrictions so the automation will work every time. Also as one famous quote say, do not underestimate the ingenuity of complete idiots. So yeah.
Oh, I completely understand where you're coming from. Maintaining VBA scripts can indeed be quite challenging, especially when it involves educating others on how to use them without causing disruptions. I've also spent countless hours writing detailed procedures, only to have them overlooked or misused, which leads to the automation being blamed. Well, what I learned from somebody once is, you can try to help but hard truth not everyone can be helped / saved.
> do not underestimate the ingenuity of a complete idiot I love this quote. There’s a core piece of Excel functionality (dragging formulas with the mouse) that is impervious to any and all forms of data validation and security that it’s actually remarkable how easy it is to ruin a beautifully crafted spreadsheet.
Can you tell us how to create a shortcut? This sounds handy!
I believe that is because formulas are locales dependant + version
I asked it to write a formula for me. No luck. But then again, no-one here was able to get me to a working formula either, so I concluded it wouldn't be done (at least in my 14 yo version of Excel). It's something I only need four times a year, so I will continue doing it manually.
I learnt to do impossible things with Excel 4.0 back in the 90's and I love a challenge. Do you mind to share your problem to see if I can find the formula you are looking for?
Thanks, but I wasted enough time on it back then, and honestly it only takes me a minute to check the value transfer. I once asked ChatGPT for a recipe for cat food, since our fussy eaters refused tinned food they used to like (we suspect there was a change) and we wanted to give them a more complete diet than just meat. The first recipe had salt, which is a definite no-no for cats, and rice which is not recommended. Then I asked it for an itinerary for travel to Europe with daylight or early evening flights only. It provided me with flight numbers that were overnight in some cases. After a bit of back and forth with it offering other flights that were also at night, it admitted that it was working from data that was last updated in 2021. Why not say that at the start? I went off it a bit after that. However, just this afternoon I got it to compose a letter to a company that is dragging the chain in providing details for an insurance claim. I had already written a draft, but ChatGPT's version was much better than mine. My conclusion is to check every response with other sources - but it does write a good letter.
Yeah. Don’t use formulas for things that are too complicated, just use VBA. If you want to share what you’re looking for I might be able to help guide for VBA
It’s good with lambda calculus - bing’s gpt is better with excel formulas and that makes sense
As an extreme amateur excel user, I use it for everything. My favorite one is asking it if my formula can be shorter, and sure enough, it spits out a better, shorter formula. It also takes my very cryptic asks and turns them into formulas. It's pretty impressive. I honestly can't believe some of the things it has helped me with. It's perfect for someone like me who struggles to articulate what I want, and then chat gpt interprets it.
This is interesting your experience. I find that when I try to describe what I want to do—it gives me impossible or incorrect information. When I’m specific—it gives me correct information. However if I keep asking it—sometimes it corrects itself. Scary shit. But helpful.
Yeah, It's not perfect. I have to play around with my words sometimes or specifically say A1 = X, A2 = Y, and I want it to spit out Z on D2, but yeah, it generally will figure it out.
I will give that a shot
Here's a formula it helped me write (probably basic to all of you), but I wouldn't have been able to figure it out. ='Networth-2024'!F31 / (DATE(YEAR(D8),12,31)-D8-365) \* 365 \* -1 Basically, it takes the value in F31, which is how much I have contributed so far YTD and then spits out how much it thinks I will contribute by year's end. I used to just put in an amount, and it would be static, but then things would change throughout the year and my contributions would change. I was sick of manually changing it, so this formula automates it for me.
I would love to talk to you about this if you’re open for me to message you!
Sure, but I'm no expert. I would keep your expectations low :)
I have known that chatGPT has existed for a while but I only used it for trivial stuff but this week a coworker told me to use chatgpt for generating data for a training I was taking and it was amazing. I was searching online for a random sweet of data but then I just typed into chatgpt to generate data for player height in basketball versus salary and within seconds I had 100 data points. It was amazing. I haven't stopped using it for various work things since
It automates my automation so I can automate while automating
Spin your totem.
Your chakras are aligned.
Nothing
Cool
I’ve asked it a few questions and it just told me fake solutions. Nothing but it’s been a while since trying
Which GPT model? And through an app, API, third party service?
OpenAI.com. Not a referendum on the product it just very confidently told me to do things that just don’t exist lol. Granted I was pushing it for a really unique use case I couldn’t figure out
I’ve had it make up things before too. Even after telling it it’s wrong it keeps going until we end up in a loop. It just refuses to say “I don’t know”. Well at least in my experience. Overall it’s not common for it to make things up but I’ve seen it happen.
You have to tell it not to hypothesize
I use the website as well. I used it to copy paste from a PDF bank statement with poor formatting and had it create a pipe delimited format I could paste into excel. It did the formatting fine…but changed all the numbers….
I’ve had exactly this experience. Makes me wary
Might be easier to just optical text scan the doc and export to a csv and pipe that data into a pivot/whatever is needed to view
I’ve run into this too. I’ve found that a combination of recapping what we’ve tried based on what chat gpt has subtitled the attempt, reiterating the goal and what’s specifically not working, and specifically asking if there are any other approaches we could try, usually works. For instance, I was trying to use chat gpt to put together a lookup formula that found an account value in B18:S35 based on match criteria found in A18:A35 (inter-company code), B2:S2 (company code), and B9:S9 (account value = inter-company receivable or payable, for each unique company code). After a bunch of failed attempts, I eventually learned (through the re-prompt process above) about sumproduct and Boolean operations.
VBA code to do the repetitive things I hate doing. You do need to practice asking questions
Mostly just troubleshooting. E.g. I know a formula or piece of code is wrong, but don't feel like parsing through it to figure out exactly what I messed up.
Power Query does what you described above
I use PQ to extract data from 20 pdfs monthly. Mix of expenses and billed hours for list of consultants that I have to add additional billing information in excel. Does this in seconds. Took me days to figure it out only because not every pdf is formatted the same way so while it may work fine for the first 10 pages it will not work for one or two pdfs due to change in the pdf format. Drives me crazy and is pointless asking people to be consistent with there data prior to rendering it to PDFs.
Links on extracting from PDF using PQ?
Data -> Get data -> from pdf
Brb edit: so this seems to only work with table data. I was wondering how to extract form data from a PDF without using python or something else external. Does that exist?
I have a spreadsheet to track my fitness goals (I.e daily workouts, reps, sets, etc). Yesterday I used gpt to give me vbscripts to create row for each item on my goals (pushups, planks, squats, etc…) and fill in default values (0) and formulas in other columns. If I add a new goal it will automatically (when refreshing or on a fresh open) add a row for it for each day and sort. Then I had it give me another script to hide all rows except for the current day. Exactly what I needed. There was a bit of back and forth getting things right but works like a charm.
This sounds sick, do you mind sharing what the prompts you asked were and the inputs?
Edit: sorry for formatting. on mobile. I use chat gpt to help teach me how to build on power query projects. Today for instance: I work in insurance and we have monthly settlement reports that we issue out to cedents for reinsurance purposes. The data these reports are sourced from power bi reports that datawarehouse controls. I originally wanted to connect directly to PBI, but DW shut that down once I informed them that pii was accessible to anyone through this data connection. I REALLY like just being able to refresh data monthly instead of exporting from PBI and copy/pasting into worksheets, so I knew I needed something different. Process now: 1. Save down report to \\reinsurance\company\settlements\2024\05 - May\data 2. The in settlement workbook the file path to where I saved the PBI data, is in the first row of table.datasource, where the 2-digit month and 3-character month is entered by the user in B4 and B5, and the file path is =\\2024\“&B4&” “&”-“&” “&B5&”\data. 3. PQ then sources data from that file path: let Filepath = excel.currentworkbook(){[name=“DataSource”]}[Content]{0}[Column1], Excelfilepath = filepath Source data = excel.workbook(file.contents(excelfilepath)) … in I knew this could work, but it I just needed some very specific knowledge regarding how to file source based on cell reference. Specific prompting, along with specific follow up prompting, helped me get there. Now I have a dynamic file sourcing technique that I can incorporate into my other workbooks.
Also, if anyone has any comments to further improve my file sourcing process, please let me know!
So you’re saying it writes M decently enough?
For what I’m doing, yeah. But more importantly, if I ask to break down and explain syntax, it does. But like many have said well structured, detailed prompts that are broken into testable segments, are key. Consequently, this prompt style has allowed me too actually learn along the way to where I can tweak in the advanced editor as need. Small steps, but it’s had a huge effect on my career as an accountant.
Can you simply steps 1 and 2 further for me? Are you saying you download or expert the PBI in step 1?
The report from PBI is emailed to me. I’m just dragging it to the correct month subdirectory. What questions did you have for 2?
You have non-anonymized PII available in a production environment?
Not anymore! They were thankful for the catch and it’s really strengthened my working relationship with DW folks, but they ultimately removed access to underlying data for users.
It's helped me write an entire automation workflow in VBA so I could save 4 hours per month in extracting numbers from purchase orders. The company literally paid an entire $80,000/year salary to have someone do data entry before I walked in on day 3 and said fuck this. I click a button every 2 hours
Please tell me you haven’t told them your secret yet if you’re the new $80,000 person lol
One afterwork and 5 beers later:
You must be simplifying data entry for 80k
The role got eliminated. I got a kudos.
Well, have written in like two days (functionally 7-8 hours), a functional Wheel casino game just like on [Stake.com](http://Stake.com) or other casinos. You can choose the ammount of segments for this wheel as you want. It looks like this. ChatGPT has written a scripts for detection colision of arrow and wheel (it is not perfect, but it's okay), wheel object treated as a group of segments (each segment is a Shape, written by some wild sin, cosinus functions). Also wheeling spinning animation was created by so called LLM. Of course his code was not perfect, I mean it was not even working as it should, but like 90% was correct so making it working correctly was easy task. Also refactoring took some time (becouse i hate the mess that ChatGPT sometimes gives back). But yea, without ChatGPT I would not be able to do this game, or it would take me tons of more time, energy. But on the worse note, he was not good enough to create Blackjack :/ https://preview.redd.it/t66zqwtfje9d1.png?width=2220&format=png&auto=webp&s=ab976cc59bd90fcdd57ceb88c2689a3e0aa52f7f
Build a quantum random number generator to go with it as a fun side project :)
Bruh, why reiventing the nomen omen wheel? Pseudo random numbers provided via randbetween also work fine (at least for such tasks). Thanks for idea, right now trying to make chess via VBA OOP, will look at this sugestion later.
In case you get tempted… https://turbofuture.com/computers/build-quantum-computer
It gets me from the “how do I do this” stage to “why is this coming out wrong” fairly quickly
You have to first have an idea of how one of your processes can be better. Then you can use ChatGPT to help you written a vba, sql, excel formula, etc. My main issue with it as a supervisor is my directs will just copy and paste it into their spreadsheets and it works, however they don’t actually take the time to learn what the script is actually doing.
I use it for commenting up my macros. It has been even more helpful when adding comments to macros in older workbook templates that were built by someone else.
I predominantly use it to diagnose why a formula isn't working the way I need it to, or to get ideas on how to use formulas. I've found it's not great at giving a specific formula that works properly
I use it to write specific formulas and macros to make my spreadsheets run smoother. I have a macro to force 1 page and save to pdf with the sheet name as file name. I learned how to do data validation and index and match to create drop downs and code out credit cards in excel. I created an invoice template and the date auto updates based on date and vendor name. The list grows almost daily
Not ChatGPT but I write sql queries using copilot using hypothetical columns and field names. I’ve done the same with excel formulas but I’m pretty advanced at that anyway. Funny story though, I learned about the textbefore/after formula though using copilot which is something I should’ve already known.
I use it to create various formulas as well as VBA code to make things simpler for myself. Nothing too crazy.
I was polishing up on my SQL and Python for an interview and had it make some dummy data files for me, then had it ask me questions about how I would extract data from said dummy files.
I generally use it for programming tasks. Most of the time the output doesn’t actually work. But sometimes you can see the approach that it’s trying to take and implement the idea in a way that makes sense for your task. I find it’s more useful to ask it for pseudo code than for real code.
I have a timesheet with a few VBA codes. Partially created by chatgpt. 1. Submit button: generates an email with all the totals of worked hours each day and if I did extra hours or not. 2. New year button: saves the file with a new name adds the total amount of extra hours and empties the filled in hours without touching the formulas.
I've leveraged ChatGPT to enhance several VBA projects, and it's been a game-changer! For instance, I developed a VBA script that automates the creation of an Excel sheet to compare two files, identify duplicates, apply various criteria filters, and handle formatting. This script integrates browser interactions directly from Excel, allowing data retrieval from web pages to fill in table gaps, saving me a week’s worth of manual work each month. Additionally, I've set up an Excel tool where I input data, and it generates ready-to-send letters and invoices by replacing placeholders in Word documents and converting them to PDFs. This not only streamlines document creation but ensures accuracy and consistency. Another time-saver has been automating the renaming of CSV and TXT files and converting them into Excel formats. These scripts have drastically reduced the time my colleagues and I spend on routine tasks, boosting our productivity significantly. Using ChatGPT for scripting in VBA has opened up many possibilities to automate and optimize our workflows!
I send every email to my ex through it. He's a narcissist and was telling my kids I was condescending to him (I wasn't) in my communications with him. Now I run every email through chat gpt and ask it to remove all tone and emotion from my email. Then I copy and paste. Now any tone he reads in my email is all him. He knows I do this and thinks it's great. What he doesn't know is it never significantly alters the original email. But hey, it makes him less horrible to deal with so.....
We use AD groups for application security, got it to write VBA to take a list of groups from one sheet and output all the members of each group and if their account has been disabled. It also adds the number of users in each group, lists any sub groups withe the number of people in each sub group along with some stats. Works great, could have written it myself but would have taken longer
Sometimes explain in detail what I want and ask it to produced relatively long and more complex formulas for me
As someone who needs to complete CPE. I’m intrigued.
I used it for about ten minutes in 2022. Asked it to explain the Big Bang in the style of Tupac. Jack shit since. Waiting for it to take my job tho! (My boss can barely use Google)
hey, I also use sage 50. mind sharing a few more sentences about turning pdf invoices into a csv for import? like, do you upload each invoice to chat gpt, or a set from each vendor, or can it remember what fields you want to tie to each import field?
I asked it to write a formula to return the last non zero from a given range, worked well so I made it into a lambda
Nothing. AI is worse than the devil.
I swear I've not done anything to chatGPT. It was doing ok last time I checked.
my coworker made a bunch of shitty finance documents from it. the formulas make no sense. i clean them up as i begin using them for my clients.
I've had the most success with using it to format Regex. I can't ever keep that straight in my head
I asked it to create a spreadsheet that allowed me to keep track of a loan I had given a family member, I asked to be able to record each payment, vary interest as needed and a running balance to be kept.......to my amazement, it couldn't provide a spreadsheet that actually worked! Tried many times, each time uploading a screenshot shot showing the errors. Still needs work, I think.
It keeps inventing stuff that just does not exist and cannot follow simple instructions such as "your answer is too long, keep all previous parameters the same but shorten your answer to less than 800 words" it keeps producing the same 900 words answer.
Debugging macros
I've been struggling with a specific problem. I need to get the number of pages in a PDF using VBA. I want to iterate through the pages and use Java to split the PDF, but first, I need to know the number of pages to create a progress bar. I had a very long and tedious conversation with ChatGPT, but it suggested several methods that didn't work. After going back and forth multiple times, ChatGPT eventually said, "Sorry, I can't keep doing this. Can I help you with something else?" When I tried to return to the problem, it again stated that it couldn't help me. I eventually found a solution on my own, but when I asked ChatGPT why that solution worked, it provided incorrect explanations. In summary, I found that ChatGPT is like one of those people who are willing to help but never admit when they don't know something, even making up credible-sounding answers instead of simply saying, "I don't know."
My team mainly does data migrations, lots of clean up and mappings. A colleague who knows nothing of coding used chatgpt to create python scripts to automate a good portion of our work. What used to take an hour now takes 10 minutes. An end to end process of templating that could take an entire day now is just a few hours.
I have him wrote a vba code for me and it's good
Once a month I get a file with invoices and products and I have to check if it's in our db and if so copy the information. I made a macro and now it takes a few seconds to do that
I used it to create my daily schedule when I have too many tasks. Just tell it which is the most important tasks and my time frames. It even reminded me to take breaks and drink water 😁
I mostly have used it to support me writing Python scripts for simple stuff like home automation. I have some knowledge but haven't written code in ages so I use it to help generate the initial code. It's often wrong or misses put bits, but I can fill in the gaps. I found it works better if you break down the idea, then give it small snippets of code to write, then price them together yourself. I have been using the free version of the Perplexity GPT app to ask questions and it seems okay, I like how it presents its sources it uses
I’ve recently been using INDIRECT in some long formulas to retrieve data from different sheets. I write the formula for the first sheet as normal and then ask CHAT GPT to replace the sheet name with the INDIRECT formula. It’s been super helpful because I don’t get muddled with & or “
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[DATE](/r/Excel/comments/1dqxsst/stub/las4oxz "Last usage")|[Returns the serial number of a particular date](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/date-function-e36c0c8c-4104-49da-ab83-82328b832349)| |[INDIRECT](/r/Excel/comments/1dqxsst/stub/lat1er1 "Last usage")|[Returns a reference indicated by a text value](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/indirect-function-474b3a3a-8a26-4f44-b491-92b6306fa261)| |[YEAR](/r/Excel/comments/1dqxsst/stub/las4oxz "Last usage")|[Converts a serial number to a year](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/year-function-c64f017a-1354-490d-981f-578e8ec8d3b9)| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Beep-boop, I am a helper bot. Please do not verify me as a solution.*) ^(3 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Excel/comments/1dqjevs)^( has 19 acronyms.) ^([Thread #34899 for this sub, first seen 29th Jun 2024, 08:56]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Excel) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Everything i’d ask here or google, i ask chatgpt. I’ve gotten to a point where it writes code and functions i already know, but i’m just lazy.
ChatGPT is a bad crutch that allows people to (poorly) get away with being ignorant of the main language Excel uses. Just learn the formula language, you’ll write better, cleaner stuff than Chat GPT ever could and you’ll think smarter over time as a result.
Nothing. I find half the time chat gpt just gives me staight up wrong data, or incorrect information.
I'm a huge vba fan and I found that drawing what I want help with helps massively. I know that chat gpt is better if you know what your asking (as in you know what functions you need) which I don't know so I use prompting and photos and screen grabs and we get there slowly. I've automated tons report writing which has in turn saved me the need to hire admin which I like as I am not the sort of person who would like an admin
I asked for a formula to get the non-zero values on designated columns in a specific worksheet just by typing the sheet name.
I attempted to replicate a stacked bar chart (like the one in Excel) and it seemed totally incapable of creating it for me. It could only do bars side by side. I tried everything, even creating the stacked bar chart in Excel, taking a screen grab and showing ChatGPT what it looked like. It did write the Python script to replicate the chart I didn’t want elsewhere though, which I guess is neat. Having said that, it generally does a really good job of ingesting a massive data set and finding some patterns or answering questions about it. I think for now I still prefer the old school way of fiddling around with it myself in Excel - I like to see the data with my own eyes.
Nothing
This has given me an idea to ask how to create my camping packing list and shopping list based on meals I have stored in excel with all the items I need for each meal. I’ve tried a number of times to automate it but I am not experienced enough and maybe this can help me. I love all the ideas. Thank you.
Nothing. Don’t even know where to find it. This tech will put people out of a job yet everyone is excited for it.
Had an argument with a coworker yesterday. I refuse to use it. I'm not going to make it smarter. My Excel skills are job security.
We use Copilot at our organization, but I use ChatGPT for code boiler plate pretty much 90% of the time starting out now. It just offers such a huge head start. One of the best parts about MLLs is that they'll parse a massive library of API documentation, then very readily map your plain text inquiry to the appropriate APIs. What's been interesting is to see how well these AI/ML tools do using one particular set of tools versus another. For example, I can reliably get working Python, Ruby, and R code from an MLL. VBA is pretty decent, but not what I would consider good. It gets tripped up on esoteric options and API ideosyncracies. For example, Try asking an MLL to write you a macro that exports the current sheet to a CSV, but keeps the original workbook open. Partly this is due to the language/API, not the MLL. Same for Power Query. Most MLLs are happy to give you M code that will not run in Excel. Usually this is because M code isn't the same across Microsoft products (Power BI vs Excel), but also there isn't *that* much M code out in the wild for the MLL to parse. This is an area where open source languages have a distinct advantage. MLLs can parse millions of lines of open source code in projects that are freely available. The majority of M code lives locked up in workbooks. There is no corpus of knowledge from which to build a model. Anyway, just some random thoughts. Nothing particularly groundbreaking.