Your spreadsheet nightmare ends today

Stop building formulas the hard way

July 07, 2026

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I used to dread opening a spreadsheet. You know the feeling. A financial model breaks, and you spend an hour hunting for the single cell that killed everything. I have been there more times than I want to admit.

So when I hit a breakdown from an AI pro on LinkedIn, I stopped scrolling. The line that stuck with me: most people use less than 10% of what Excel can actually do. And the part founders should sit up for, according to him, 63% of advanced users have already stopped doing Excel by hand. They are not clicking through menus anymore. They are directing AI to do the heavy lifting.

He described the old way. Building models manually for hours. Nested formulas, broken references, the whole painful mess. That was just a normal Tuesday. Now the same work takes minutes if you know how to ask. I love that framing, because it flips the whole thing on its head.

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It was never about being technical

This is the part I think most people miss. The shift has nothing to do with being a spreadsheet wizard. It is about describing what you want and letting AI handle the execution.

No syntax to memorize. No manual formatting. Just the outcome you actually care about.

The three tools, and what each is actually for

What I appreciated most is that he named specific tools and what each one is good at. No vague hand-waving. Here is the rundown.

Copilot. Lives inside Excel and edits your live workbook directly. It cleans data, fixes formulas, and explains errors right there on the spot.

ChatGPT. Solid for writing formulas and running full analysis on messy datasets.

Claude. The one he reaches for when he needs VBA explained properly, step by step.

That last one is underrated. VBA can feel like a black box, and having something walk you through it line by line changes the game for anyone stuck maintaining old macros.

The five steps that keep the output honest

Here is where the post got genuinely useful. He laid out a clear order for prompting AI on spreadsheet work, and every step earns its place.

  1. Have the AI identify your columns first. Before anything else, ask it to read and label what each column actually holds. This keeps every formula that follows accurate instead of guessing at your data.

  2. State the business outcome, not the formula. Do not ask for a specific function. Describe the result you want, like "show me month-over-month revenue growth," and let the AI work out the mechanics.

  3. Break big asks into steps. Instead of one giant prompt trying to do everything, split it into smaller pieces. Each step is easier to check and far less likely to go sideways.

  4. Verify formulas against numbers you already know. Before you trust anything at scale, test it against values you know are correct. Catch the error on ten rows, not ten thousand.

  5. Never paste sensitive data into a public tool. Keep revenue figures and client data out of public AI. This one is non-negotiable for anyone running a real business.

Read the logic in that order. Identify the data, aim at the outcome, chunk the work, verify, and protect what is confidential. It is the difference between AI that saves you time and AI that quietly slips in an error you will not catch until a board meeting.

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Why a founder should care

He put a number on the payoff. AI can cut spreadsheet work by 40 to 60% in time. That is not a small edge. That is a founder getting their week back.

I keep coming back to that. Most of us treat spreadsheets like a chore to survive. But if half the hours you sink into them can just disappear, that is real time back for the work only you can do. Strategy. Customers. Product.

What I keep noticing

The thing I respect about how he framed it is the balance. He is clearly excited about the speed, but he built guardrails right into the advice. Verify before you trust. Protect sensitive data. Identify columns first. That is the mark of someone who has actually been burned by a bad formula, not someone hyping a shiny tool.

If you have been avoiding this because you think you need to be technical, his whole point is that you do not. You describe what you want clearly, and you check the output. That is a skill anyone on your team can build this week.

So try one thing before you close your laptop tonight. Open the messiest sheet you own, ask your AI of choice to name every column, and watch how much sharper the next answer comes back.

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