Hi there,

By now we all know that ChatGPT can solve (some) complicated Excel problems. And it’s even better at generating dummy data.

But I wanted to take things further, and actually bring ChatGPT inside Excel. I had three main reasons for doing this:

1. Reduce Hassle - I didn’t want to constantly leave Excel and go to ChatGPT to copy/paste data.

2. Reliable Access - ChatGPT is often ‘at capacity’, but I knew I’d get guaranteed access by using OpenAI’s API.

3. Excel-Specific - I wanted GPT to give its answers in multiple rows if needed, not just in one cell.

Sounds challenging to build, right? Well, I also asked GPT if it could build this system for me (or at least, help out 😉).

And it worked!

My setup had 2 ingredients: an Office Script written in Typescript (here’s my code on GitHub), which connected to OpenAI’s API for GPT.

After some troubleshooting, I could ask questions in one cell, Office Scripts would automatically send the query to GPT via the API… and I’d get my answer in the cell below. 🚀

I included some code to check if the answer had more than one line.

If it did, my Office Script would split the answer up, and paste it into several individual lines in a separate ‘Results’ sheet. So no more manual copy/pasting of individual lines.

Having GPT right inside Excel speeds up my workflow a lot.

For example, I can also take a company balance sheet, ask GPT to analyze it for risks, and I’ll get a reasonable second opinion within a few seconds:

But remember – you still need to analyze the data yourself and make your own decisions! AI doesn’t always have the right answers, and we need to use our own common sense.

As Mark Proctor said at the Global Excel Summit:

Want to set up GPT in Excel yourself, or just curious? Check out my latest video, where I give a step-by-step guide on how to do it👇

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🤓 Geeky News

🤖 ChatGPT Search - AI-powered Microsoft Bing and Edge.
The new AI-powered Bing search tool looks seriously impressive. It can even create tables based on data it’s extracted from webpages. I’ve signed up for the waiting list – excited to report back.

📝 Word - Transcribe Audio Files in Word?
​Never manually transcribe an audio recording again! Word’s new Transcribe feature lets you convert any speech audio file (eg mp3) to text, with each speaker individually separated. Check out my 60-second demo.

👥 Teams - Video Filters in Teams Meetings
Microsoft has rolled out filter effects for Teams. Admittedly, I won’t use these much… But if you like, you can give your presentations more personality, or choose a filter to reflect your company branding.

🧑‍🏫 PowerPoint - Closed Captions for PowerPoint​
You can now add closed captions to your PowerPoint presentations. Just select Playback >Insert Captions to upload your captions file, and viewers will be able to toggle captions on/off by clicking CC at the bottom-right of their screen.

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💚 My Favorite Things

🧮 A Fun App - The Calculator Drawer
The Internet Archive just released a collection of 15 emulated old-school calculators that you can boot up and use, just as if you had the physical versions in front of you! Or you could use Excel 🤭

🥊 The Big Debate - Is VBA Dying?
This was the topic of one panel discussion at the Excel Global Summit. Microsoft say they’ll continue to support VBA, but mainly invest in Office Scripts going forward. Security is the first concern – many companies have banned VBA in their offices, as enabling macros could put their networks at risk from viruses.

The second reason is that VBA doesn’t fit with the rapid shift towards web-based applications. Martin Weiẞ made this point, which I think is accurate.

🧑‍🎨 Art in Excel - George Lungu’s 3D VBA Animations
George blew everybody's mind at the Excel Summit with his 3D animations. Made with maths, physics and good old VBA. Who said Excel isn’t creative!?

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🚀 Power Stories

Thank you to Tanya Coetzee for this lovely feedback after she look our Fast Track to PowerBI course. Glad you’re on the right track Tanya! 💚

See you next week,

Leila

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