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# Google Gemini: Your Spreadsheet Assistant
- URL: https://www.jeffsu.org/productivity-ping-134/
- Published: 2023-12-08T01:00:37.000Z
- Updated: 2025-09-05T13:00:56.000Z
- Description: #134
- Author: Jeff
- Tags: #newsletter, Gemini

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## Your wish, my command (kinda)

I’m known for being pretty detail-oriented at work so my manager tasked me with creating a Budget Management spreadsheet for 2024 (no good deed goes unpunished 😞).

Here’s the prompt I used to kick things off in Google Bard:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/db/85/db858a9d-1c4f-4993-8042-faa87b9bb3c1/content/images/2023/12/image-4.png)

#### Prompt for your reference

My manager just asked me to create a budget management spreadsheet for our team of 4\.   
Basically we need to update our budget forecasts for each quarter, and ideally whenever one of us provides an input for a quarter, that input is taken out from the total budget pool.   
Create a table that helps me with this

And here’s what Bard gave me:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/db/85/db858a9d-1c4f-4993-8042-faa87b9bb3c1/content/images/2023/12/image-5.png)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/db/85/db858a9d-1c4f-4993-8042-faa87b9bb3c1/content/images/2023/12/image-6.png)

I obviously had to make some edits to the final output in Google Sheets but as you can see, Google Bard helped a lot with the initial heavy lifting!

## Bonus tip for ex-Excel users (pun intended)

The next time you find yourself thinking, “Man I wish Google Sheets included a specific Excel function”

You can prompt Bard with something like this:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/db/85/db858a9d-1c4f-4993-8042-faa87b9bb3c1/content/images/2023/12/image-7.png)

#### Prompt for your reference

Is there a =XLOOKUP function equivalent in Google Sheets?   
If so, please give me an example and teach me how to use it properly

Google Bard will even give you a step-by-step walkthrough on how to use said formula:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/db/85/db858a9d-1c4f-4993-8042-faa87b9bb3c1/content/images/2023/12/image-8.png)

[What interesting use case have you tried?](https://www.jeffsu.org/productivity-ping-134/#ghost-comments-root)

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