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Hi Reader,

Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #331, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form!

Hardly a week passes at the moment without some technology announcement that makes me go "wow!".

This week it's Google's AI Studio that has been impressing me, offering a glimpse into what the future could look like.

What's different with this tool is that it lets you share your screen and have a verbal conversation with Gemini AI, so it can walk you through a problem.

In my case, I used it to walk me through building a pivot table. And whilst it didn't get everything correct (yet!), it's super impressive and feels like you're talking to an assistant, not your computer.

Check out how it worked below, in tip 331.

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➜ News

I.
​The Excel World Championships (yes, it's a real thing) make a splash in The New York Times.

It's a great article but I take umbrage with the final line:

“You’d never see this with Google Sheets,” he said. “You’d never get this level of passion.”

​Scenes from the ‘Super Bowl for Excel Nerds’ >>​

II.
​Gemini AI is now included in the cost of Google Workspace plans, for the Business and Enterprise tiers. Previously, it was a paid add-on per user.

This is great news!

​Read more >>​

➜ Sheets Tip #331: Can AI teach me how to build a pivot table?

In the introduction to this email I described how I used Google's AI Studio to walk me through building a pivot table.

Here's the video demo:

​

And here's how I did it:

• Go to https://aistudio.google.com/​
• Sign in with your Google account. It's free to use.
  ​
  When you log in, the homepage looks like this:

• Click on the "Stream Realtime" in the left menu.
• Share your screen and have a conversation with AI Studio!
• For example, you could say:
  ​
  ​"I want you to walk me through building a pivot table that summarizes the total sales price by property type."​
  ​
  (And say it out loud, don't type it in.)
  ​
• Because the Pivot Table once existed under the data menu, the AI tool will guide you there first (the only serious mistake it made).
  ​
  But you can interject and say "I don't see the pivot table option under the data menu, is it under one of the other menus?"​
  ​
• Once you have a basic pivot table, ask for help sorting the data or adding another category.

Another great use case is asking it to explain lines of code to you e.g. "can you explain what the code on lines 52 - 56 does?"

It's early days, so it's far from perfect. It does make mistakes so you can't rely on it blindly. You still need to cultivate your own knowledge.

But it's a glimpse into what's around the corner when we have infinitely patient AI assistants at our beck and call. And I think that's a bright future, where we can be dramatically more efficient, focused on insights and outcomes, not code syntax or formula issues.

What do you think?

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to a friend who might enjoy it.

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. Just a meteorite casually landing in your backyard, no big deal​