How To Make Your Spreadsheets Talk (without AI, ChatGPT, bots, or anything more than just you the human)

The hottest topic on the block around technology this week is ChatGPT. But you don’t need to know anything about machine learning or artificial intelligence or any advanced technology to make your computers talk to you in a human-like way.

You can even make your spreadsheets feel more human!!

I do this by trying to identify where a user of a spreadsheet might see an unexpected error, do something unexpected, and or just to be nice and chat with the user and let them know that this spreadsheet isn’t just all numbers and data - it is a tool that is human-driven and that you can have a relationship with, similar to how you would have with other humans.

One of the easiest ways to do this is in spreadsheets is with the IfError() formula. You have a bunch of formulas adding things up, moving things around, doing whatever they are doing to your data. But if unexpected data comes in, or someone changes something that they didn’t realize would have an impact elsewhere in the spreadsheet, those formulas can start looking like “#N/A” or “#NAME?” or “#REF!”. And let’s be honest, a lot of users see those and really do see a more human-like message, one that says something like “Watch out! This is scary technology and it is broken and you’ll never be able to figure out how to fix it, mwahahahahaha”.

So instead of that message, you can wrap your formulas in the IfError() formula. This let’s you choose to show something else instead of an error message. You could replace that error with something so much nicer, such as “Hi! Something seems to have gone awry. If you aren’t sure how to investigate this, please contact your friendly spreadsheet expert for more help”.

Here is how it works: You have a formula that adds up two cells, let’s say A1 and B1. So your formula is =A1+B1. Now if someone writes a letter in one of those cells instead of a number, you’ll get a nasty error message. OR instead, you could write this IfError() formula:

=IfError(A1+B1,”Hi, this is your friendly spreadsheet assistant. It seems like something has happened in cell A1 or B1 that isn’t working out so well anymore. Can you please make sure that there are only numbers in these cells? If this doesn’t help, please reach out to Emily for some extra help”)

As in, if the thing before the comma results in an error message, then instead show what comes after the comma.

It always feels nice to have a friendly voice responding to you - especially from a computer. No advanced tech needed - just you the human adding your human touch so other humans have a better relationship with their tech.

Here are some additional examples of how you can use text to foster relationships between people and their spreadsheets: