Stop Learning Excel—Meet the AI Spreadsheet

To master spreadsheets in the past, you would need  to know things like VLOOKUP, sorting by multiple columns, conditional formatting, building pivot  tables, and so much more. But now, AI can do all of that for you. In this video, we'll look at how  AI makes seven manual tasks in Excel dead simple, even if you're completely new to spreadsheets.

Let's dive in. First off, head to the following website. You can click on the link in the top  right-hand corner, and I've included a link in the description below.

If you don't have an account  yet, click on Sign Up. If you haven't heard of Bricks before, it's an AI-powered spreadsheet  that's also free to use. Once you finish signing up or signing in, you'll land here on the main  Bricks screen.

If you'd like to follow along today, I've included a sample Excel workbook  in the description of this video. Feel free to download that, and then in the top right-hand  corner, import it into Bricks. This brings us to task number one that AI makes so much easier,  being able to join different tables together.

Over on the left-hand side, I have one table with  all of these different cookie orders that we've received here at the Kevin Cookie Company. But  one thing you'll notice is we have this column with the price, but there is no price. Over on  the right-hand side, we have another table called Products, and here we have all the different  cookies that we offer here along with the price.

I need to get this price from our product  catalog into this table with all of our cookie orders. Now, in Excel, you would probably use  something like VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP or INDEXMATCH, but those are hard. Let's instead try using  natural language.

Let's go down to this text field down below where we can prompt the AI.  Let's just type in a query. I'll type in, "Can you pull in the price into cookie orders?

"  That's the name of this table, cookie orders from Products. If we look over here, that's the name  of this table. I want to pull the price from here and bring it into here.

Let's send that to the  AI. Right up above, we see a description of what the AI did, but let's actually just look at the  table to see if it did the job correctly. Here, I see the classic chocolate chip cookie, and  it costs $3.

25. Over on the right-hand side in the Product category, here we have chocolate chip  for $3. 25.

Here we have Snickerdoodle for $2. 50, Snickerdoodle $2. 50.

And here we have the Double  Chocolate Chunk Cookie, my favorite for $3. 75. And here we see that it's $3.

75. I don't know about  you, but that's a lot easier than doing a VLOOKUP. For bonus points, let's see if the AI can fill in  this empty column with the order revenue.

That's the price multiplied by the quantity ordered. Down  below, I'll type in my prompt, "Can you calculate the order revenue? " And let's send that through. 

And there's the order revenue. This brings us to number two. You can sort multiple columns in  your spreadsheet with a simple prompt.

Here, I have the product, and I'd like to sort this  in alphabetical order. And in addition to that, I would also like to sort the order revenue from  the largest to the smallest. And luckily, I can do all of that with just a simple prompt.

Down  here in the text field, I'll type in my prompt, Sort by product, so that's this column right here  in alphabetical order. And then by revenue, so this column right here from largest to smallest.  Let's send that to the AI to see if it could take care of this task for us.

And just like that,  we have all the products sorted. So here we have all the classic chocolate chip cookies together,  then we have the double chocolate chunk cookie, and then the snickerdoodle. And if we look over  on the right-hand side, the order revenue has also been sorted.

Here, I have the largest on top, and  then it goes to the smallest for this category. And then once I hit this next category of the  double chocolate chunk cookie, here I have the largest again, all the way to the bottom of this  category where I have the smallest, and then here we repeat again. This brings us to number three,  conditional formatting with AI.

Basically, you want to highlight a cell, a row, or a column if  it meets some type of condition. For example, if it's a chocolate chip cookie, I want to highlight  this row. Or maybe if the order revenue is above a certain amount, you want to highlight that cell  or that row.

Now, conditional formatting takes a little bit of work and some expertise, but let's  try using AI. Down below, I'll type in my prompt. Highlight all rows where order revenue exceeds  50.

So here we could see these right up on top, these exceed 50, so these should be highlighted.  Let's see if the AI will simply do that for us. Over here, let's send that through.

If we look  up above, it's now highlighted all the rows where the order revenue exceeds 50. So here we see  all these orders above 50. If I scroll down, here we have more orders that exceed 50, so it's  highlighted all of those.

One of the neat things, this is live. So, let's say, for example, that  I changed the order revenue. Let's say that we offered a little bit of a discount and actually  this costs 48.

If I type that in, it removes the formatting because that no longer exceeds 50. This  brings us to number four, advanced filtering. Over on the left-hand side, if you're following along,  click into the grid titled advanced filtering.

On the left-hand side, I have a table with all of the  different orders that we've received here at the Kevin Cookie Company, and it includes a variety  of different products that we offer here. However, I would like to only see the orders that include  these three types of cookies. So, I need to filter this list based on these three different values. 

So how do we do that? Well, again, we're going to go down to the bottom to the text field, and let's  type in a prompt together. I want to filter this table.

So, let's start out by typing in filter,  and I want to filter this column. So, let's type in the product type, and you'll notice it  recognizes that column in the table location. This table is called location, so I'll select this. 

So, filter the product type location, and what do we want to filter it by? Well, I want to filter it  by these three cookies. So over here, I'll type in by, and then let's type in cookies in the filters  table.

I'll select this, and let's click on send. This brings us over to the right-hand side  where it generated a new table with that filtered view. Here, we only see orders for  those three cookie types.

This brings us to number five. You can summarize or group your data  just by typing in a prompt. My manager has asked me to pull together a view of the revenue by  location.

So how do we do that? Well, luckily, I could simply ask AI, and it should be able  to take care of this task for me. Down below, let's test this out.

Let's type in show me revenue  by location. So here, I want to see this revenue by all of these different locations we have.  And let's see if the AI can answer this.

The AI generated a new pivot table that shows me where we  have all of our different retail store locations, and then it also pulled together an aggregate  or a sum of all of the revenue by each one of those locations. Number six, you can also create  charts using AI. Right up here, we just inserted this pivot table, and I could look at the data and  try to make sense of it, but sometimes a visual is just a lot more impactful and also easier to  understand, but I'm not quite sure what type of visual I should insert.

So down below, let's  see if I can get some guidance. I'll type in, can you suggest a chart for this data? And  let's see what comes back.

And look at that, what a high achiever. Not only does it suggest  a chart, but it also goes ahead and generates a bar chart. Here it shows me revenue by location. 

Here I have all my different locations, and right up above, I see all the different revenue. If  I want to make additional tweaks to this chart, right up on top, I can click on this edit icon,  and here I have full control over what this chart looks like. And lastly, we have number seven. 

Another way that you could simplify your spreadsheet work with AI. You can easily remove  duplicates. Here I have a list of people who've signed up for the Kevin Cookie Company newsletter,  where you could learn all about the latest trends in the cookie industry.

Like how we keep the  chocolate fresh in our chocolate river. Of course, you'll have to sign up for the newsletter to  find out how. If you look here in this row, it looks like John Doe signed up for the newsletter  at john.

doe@example. com. And right down here, it looks like we have another entry for John Doe. 

I'm assuming he probably doesn't want to receive two newsletters every time we send it out. So,  I'd like to remove the duplicates, and I'm sure we have some other duplicates in this list as  well. So, let's try using AI.

Down here in the text field, let's type in the prompt. I'll type in  remove duplicates based on the first name column, the last name column, and the email column. So, if  it finds any matches, for example, this John Doe, and this John Doe, it'll automatically remove  the duplicate.

Let's see what happens. And just like that, John Doe will now only be receiving  one newsletter from us every single month. On the downside, our marketing team now doesn't have  quite as many subscribers to our newsletter.

This brings us to bonus tip number one. And while it's  not directly related to the AI, it is some really nice functionality to make sure that your users  enter valid data into forms. Here, for example, I'm pulling together an order form for the Kevin  Cookie Company, and you can imagine when people place details into the order form, they enter all  sorts of different crazy values.

And I want to limit or restrict what people can enter. So first  off, let me turn this into a table. So right up here, I'll highlight this, and in the center of  the screen, let's click on Bricks.

And here's the option to turn this into a table. Let's start by  clicking on this. Now that I've inserted a table, here we could see that I have a table.

Let  me adjust the column widths so we could see some of these values better. I can change the data  types allowed in these different columns. So here, for example, I have a column with the order date. 

And currently the data type is set to general, but we could be more specific. This is called order  date, so I expect someone to enter in a date. And in this list with all the different data types,  we have an option for date.

Let's go with month, month, day, day, and year. Let's type that in.  And there it's now set the data type.

And look at this. When I want to select an order date now,  I'll double click and look at that. It opens up a date picker.

So, let's put the order down as  let's say December 31st. I'll click on that. And that way it ensures that people always enter in a  valid date.

On the order form, I also want people to select a cookie type. And of course we don't  offer infinite cookies here. We have a set list, but you can imagine when you don't require a  specific entry, people come up with all sorts of different crazy ideas.

So here too, let's click  on this data type column. And over here, I can use something called tags. I'll click on this.

This  now inserts a dropdown. And when I click on this, I can manage the values. Let's select this. 

Currently we're offering two different cookie types. So over here, I'll type in those different  cookie types. We have chocolate chip, and then we also have sugar.

Maybe later we'll go in and add  more. Over here, I'll click on save. Now when a user comes in and they click on this dropdown,  they only have those two different options to choose from.

I'll select chocolate chip. Over  on the right-hand side, I also have column for fulfilled. When we send out the order, we like to  mark it down as yes, we've sent it out.

But our fulfillment team enters all sorts of different  values in like sent, or yes, or true, and it's hard to analyze when you have all those different  values. So, let's click on this data type column. And we have something called a checkbox.

When I  insert that in, when our fulfillment team sends it out, they can simply check that box, and we  all know what that means. Now that we've gone through and we've done all this analysis using AI,  you might be wondering, well, is there any way I could get this back into Excel? And absolutely you  can.

In the top left-hand corner, let's click on menu and here's the option to export. When I click  on this, this exports a new spreadsheet in Excel format, so you can now open that in Microsoft  Excel. All right, there you go.

So, what do you think? Will you ditch formulas and functions  in favor of AI? Let me know in the comments.

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