Iro AIWhat you'll be able to do
- Turn a plain-English request into a working Excel or Sheets formula
- Debug #REF!, #VALUE!, and #N/A errors by asking the right way
- Clean and reshape messy data without doing it by hand
- Get AI to explain what an inherited spreadsheet actually does
- Sanity-check AI formulas so you never hand up wrong numbers
Inside the path
A focused set of five-minute lessons — each one ends with a hands-on exercise, not a quiz you can guess.
Describe it, don't derive it 5 min
The prompt pattern that turns "I want the total for each region" into the exact formula.
Fix any formula error 5 min
Paste the error and the formula; learn how to get a fix and an explanation you'll remember.
Clean messy data fast 6 min
Split names, standardize dates, dedupe, and reshape without manual find-and-replace.
Understand a sheet you inherited 5 min
Get AI to explain nested formulas and logic so you can trust and change them.
Check before you trust 5 min
The quick tests that catch an AI formula that's confidently wrong on the edge cases.
Try a sample exercise
This is the kind of card you'd practice inside Iro — you do the thinking, then get feedback.
◆ Sample exercise · Prompt practice
You have a sheet with a Full Name column ("Ada Lovelace") and you need two new columns: First Name and Last Name. You ask AI for help.
Your task: Choose the prompt that will get you a formula you can actually paste in and trust.
- "How do I split names in Excel?"
- "In Excel, column A has full names like 'Ada Lovelace' in A2 down. Write a formula for B2 that returns the first name and one for C2 that returns the last name, assuming a single space. Explain what each part does and how it handles a missing space."
- "Split my names please."
- "Give me the best Excel formula."
See why the second prompt wins
The winning prompt names the tool (Excel), gives the exact cell references and a data example (A2, "Ada Lovelace"), states the assumption (single space), asks for an explanation, and asks how it handles an edge case (missing space). That's the difference between a formula you paste in blind and one you understand and trust. In Iro you'd write your own and get feedback on the details that matter — cell refs, assumptions, and edge cases.
Why AI is so good at spreadsheets — and where it slips
Spreadsheet tasks are a sweet spot for AI: the goal is usually easy to describe in words, and the answer is a small, testable piece of code (a formula). Describe what you want and your columns, and a model like ChatGPT or Claude will hand you the formula, explain an error, or suggest a cleaner structure.
Where it slips is the details humans skip: it can invent a function that doesn't exist in your version, get a range off by one, or assume your data is cleaner than it is. None of that is a reason to avoid AI — it's a reason to test the formula on a few rows and read what it actually does before you trust it on the whole sheet.
Excel or Google Sheets — the skill is the same
Almost everything here works in both Excel and Google Sheets; you just tell the model which one you're using so it picks the right function names. The transferable skill is the same: describe the goal, give real context (cell references, a sample row, your version), ask for an explanation, and verify. Learn it once and it works wherever your data lives.