Excel Formula Generator
Describe the thing you want a spreadsheet to do in plain English and get back up to three formulas, each with an explanation and a worked example. The default run matches your description against a built-in rule table and needs no key, no account and no network.
The Vocabulary Problem, Solved Backwards
Nobody forgets that spreadsheets can count things. What people forget is that Excel calls it COUNTIF and not "count how many", and that the lookup family has three members which differ in ways that matter. Describing the task in the words you already have is easier than recalling the function name, so the input is a sentence and the output is the syntax.
- A rule table of nineteen formulas sits inside the page, covering the tasks that account for most real spreadsheet work: deduplication, conditional sums and counts, VLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, text joining, trimming, case conversion, SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, IF, ROUND, percentages, MAX, MIN, TODAY and NOW.
- Each rule carries four things, not one: the formula itself, a sentence explaining what it returns, and a concrete example showing input and result side by side. The explanation matters more than the formula when you are trying to work out whether the function is the right one.
- Your description is matched against the keyword list of every rule, and the top three matches are returned. Three is a deliberate limit — a lookup task often fits both VLOOKUP and INDEX/MATCH, and seeing both is more useful than seeing one.
- The App selector switches between Excel and Google Sheets, and the Complexity selector between Simple and Advanced. Both are passed to an AI provider when one is connected; the built-in rule path does not read them.
- Every formula block has its own Copy button, so lifting the one you want does not drag the explanation along with it.
- Formulas are written against ranges like A2:A100 as placeholders. Substituting your own range is the only edit normally required.
Phrasing a Description the Matcher Can Work With
- Write the task as a verb and an object with a condition if there is one — "count how many cells in column B are greater than 100" rather than "comparison". The matcher looks for keyword phrases such as count if, sum where, remove duplicate, look up, highest.
- Leave the App and Complexity selectors alone unless you are going to connect a provider. In the built-in path they change nothing, so setting them and seeing no difference is expected rather than broken.
- Press Generate and read the explanations, not just the syntax. If none of the three returned matches what you meant, your description probably contained a keyword belonging to a neighbouring rule — adding the column reference or the condition usually separates them.
- Copy the formula, then replace the placeholder range with your own. The examples use A2:A100 and B2:B100 consistently so the substitution is mechanical.
- Paste into the formula bar rather than the cell, so the leading equals sign survives the paste as syntax rather than text.
Where the Rule Table Helps and Where a Model Does
| Alternative | Notes |
|---|
| Built-in rule match (default, no key needed) | Nineteen formulas, keyword matched, up to three results. Fast, offline, and honest about its edges: if your description does not contain a keyword the table knows, you get nothing useful rather than a confident wrong answer. |
| AI provider, connected by you | Reads the App and Complexity selectors, so asking for Google Sheets with Advanced complexity changes the answer. Better for compound requirements — conditional aggregation across two tables, or a formula that has to tolerate blanks. |
| Searching a documentation site | Reliable and authoritative, but you need to already know the function name to look it up, which is the whole problem this tool removes. |
| Recording a macro | Captures what you did rather than what you meant. Fine for repetition, unhelpful for a formula you want to type once into a cell. |
Three Descriptions That Land on Different Rules
The same underlying spreadsheet problem can match different rules depending on how it is phrased, which is worth seeing once.
- "sum column A and show the total" matches the SUM rule and returns =SUM(A2:A100). Straightforward.
- "sum only the rows where column A is above 100" contains the phrase sum only, which belongs to the SUMIF rule, so it returns =SUMIF(A2:A100, ">100", B2:B100) alongside the COUNTIF option — the count of matching rows is a number you often want at the same time.
- "how many cells are greater than 100" matches COUNTIF rather than SUMIF, because the phrase how many is a COUNTIF keyword. Reading the explanations immediately shows that one returns a count and the other a total, which is the distinction that decides which you paste.
- A description containing several keyword families — "remove duplicates and count how many remain" — returns up to three rules in one pass, ordered by the sequence they appear in the table rather than by any judgement about relevance.
- Note that the returned ranges are fixed placeholders, not inferred from your sentence. Saying "column C" does not produce a C range in the built-in path; that inference is a model's job, and it is the second reason people connect a provider.
Practical Questions Before You Paste a Formula
Does the tool know how many rows my data has?
No, and it does not try to. Formulas come back with fixed placeholder ranges like A2:A100, which keeps the output readable and stops the tool from guessing at the shape of a sheet it cannot see. For a sheet that grows, replacing the range with a whole-column reference or a structured table reference is a one-time edit that saves repeating it later.
Why do Excel and Google Sheets behave differently for the same formula?
The function names overlap heavily but the newer dynamic functions do not. Google Sheets added UNIQUE, ARRAYFORMULA and the filter family years before Excel had dynamic arrays, and modern Excel now has its own versions with different spill behaviour. The deduplication rule in this tool returns UNIQUE, which is the one case in the built-in set where the two applications may need different syntax; the App selector exists to steer an AI provider, and switching it in built-in mode will not change the returned formula.
Is there a downside to INDEX/MATCH over VLOOKUP?
It is longer to write and harder to read at a glance, and in exchange it can look leftward — returning a value from a column to the left of the lookup column, which VLOOKUP cannot do without rearranging the sheet. The rule table returns both for the same description precisely because the trade-off depends on your column order rather than on anything the tool can know.
What leaves my browser when I press Generate?
In the built-in path, nothing at all — the matching happens locally against a table compiled into the page, so you can use it with the network disconnected. If you connect an AI provider, the description you typed is what gets transmitted to that provider. The description rarely contains sensitive data, but it is still your choice to make, and you can always start with the offline path.
Last verified: October 3, 2026
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Maintained by Huang Bin · Last updated October 3, 2026