AI Quick Tips 28: Use ChatGPT to explain what Excel functions do

If you use Microsoft Excel functions and aren’t sure what they all do, then you are in luck.  You can use ChatGPT to give you a step-by-step explanation of any of them.

By the way, if you use Microsoft Excel and know what ALL of the functions do, you are lying.  We all have to look one up every now and then.  There are too many of them, and you can make your own… I digress

Since ChatGPT can be used to break complex topics into simpler steps, we can consider the Excel function(s) in question as the complex topic.  

You can use a prompt like the following:

• Background: You are a proficient Microsoft Excel user of 20 years, and you are also an expert technical trainer
• Task: Explain how the function below works in a clear and concise manner.  Provide step-by-step instructions on how to use the function effectively.
• Function: AVERAGE
• Additional instructions: Include best practices for optimizing the function’s performance
• Output:  Create the following 3 lists
  • List 1: Bulleted list on how the function works
  • List 2: Numbered list of the step-by-step instructions
  • List 3: Bulleted list of best practices

This could be done many different ways.  

I chose a simple function mainly because it was the first one that came to mind.  

If this is something that you’ll do often, you could easily turn this into a template so that you don’t have to type it out each time.  Just replace “AVERAGE” with “{function_name}”. 

By the way, you can probably (read: definitely) use Copilot to do this.  Especially if you have the built-in version.  That seemed too obvious though, so I provided a different option.