Live data from Hacker News

ChatGPT for Excel

chatgpt.com

201–209 of 209 posts

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#201
post #16

As someone that knows a high-flying portfolio manager who works at a very well known firm that I wont name... I can confidently state these tools are DOA. Ive spoken to them at length about the nature of what these people actually do day-to-day. If you think its just about using excel then you're already way off. They (OAI+Anthropic) very much do not get exactly what these people are doing in the job (accounting+corp…

As a former investment banker, I mostly agree. This is probably 10% of the work

Even 10% might be generous.

I bet the bozos at OAI and Anthropic think a person who deals with stuff like cost of capital is going to go ask an LLM for it.. when in reality the individual needs to know how/why they chose what they did.

Comical stuff.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#202
post #102

I’ve always found it unbelievable how bad Gemini’s Google Sheets interaction is. Copying the sheets into Claude and then modifying them there and copying them back actually outperforms it. Nowadays I just make single-purpose websites with Claude Code because Google Sheets has such poor AI integration and is outrageously tedious to edit. They had all the parts and I have a subscription and it still does terrible thing…

I mean, you're wrong. As a Xoogler, everything was in Sheets. Our roadmap was in Sheets. It's more they don't care.

This combined with the other guy saying they use Sheets through the API really makes for some of the funniest imagery. “Dave, did you finish that ticket to make the button blue?”

“Oh yeah, mate, give me a second to just whip up a script and set that task to complete. Do you remember if it was B729 or C624 that I should change?”

“It’s B729. But change the script to use ‘completed’ all right?”

“Yeah, give me a minute. Just need to spin up a Google project and activate the Sheets API (New). Now let me just get credentials. Got it. Yeah, now let me get Gemini to fix up the script. All right. Looking good. Shall I run it?”

“Yeah, lgtm”

“Done”

“Good process, guys. Velocity is at an all time high. Cell B729 is set to ‘completed’ as we planned.”

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having great luck having Claude Code generate, read, and update spreadsheets by writing Python code that uses gspread.

Can it work with comments in sheets as well? When I looked into it, that seemed like a limitation.

You mean cell notes? If so, perfectly well, yes.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#205

This looks bad for Microsoft. They added a Copilot button to all their products but it doesn't do much more than open a chat side panel. I recently tried Claude Cowork for PowerPoint and I was stunned by the content as well as design quality of the deck it produced. That's a threat for Microsoft because now you don't need the editing tools of PowerPoint, AI replaces it, so all you need is the presentation mode of Pow…

That’s right lol

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#206

This looks bad for Microsoft. They added a Copilot button to all their products but it doesn't do much more than open a chat side panel. I recently tried Claude Cowork for PowerPoint and I was stunned by the content as well as design quality of the deck it produced. That's a threat for Microsoft because now you don't need the editing tools of PowerPoint, AI replaces it, so all you need is the presentation mode of Pow…

PowerPoint is the poster child for the class of applications that AI totally obsoletes: * A large application whose outputs are independent of the all (people still print slides; when presenting nobody knows or cares what app was used) * Complicated and requires users to learn lots of skills unrelated to the work they’re doing (compare to Excel, where the model and calculations require and reflect domain knowledge ab…

I recall reading comments like this when PowerPoint was invented as it would kill all graphic design jobs. The absolute reverse happened. It created an entirely new industry. There is no AI today, or in the near future, that can combine human emotive story telling with impactful design, animated flow and interactivity. Yes it can create flattened boring 'documents' with no passion or depth. I for one would never want to be asked to stand in front of an audience and actually have to present a deck created by Copilot or Claude. Feast your eyes on this PowerPoint creation made by very talented real human designers and ask yourself the question "How long before AI can do this?" https://www.brightcarbon.com/portfolio/intersystems-partners...

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PowerPoint is the poster child for the class of applications that AI totally obsoletes: * A large application whose outputs are independent of the all (people still print slides; when presenting nobody knows or cares what app was used) * Complicated and requires users to learn lots of skills unrelated to the work they’re doing (compare to Excel, where the model and calculations require and reflect domain knowledge ab…

I recall reading comments like this when PowerPoint was invented as it would kill all graphic design jobs. The absolute reverse happened. It created an entirely new industry. There is no AI today, or in the near future, that can combine human emotive story telling with impactful design, animated flow and interactivity. Yes it can create flattened boring 'documents' with no passion or depth. I for one would never want…

Wait, how does PowerPoint do emotive storytelling in a way that a human driving an AI tool could not?

It sounds like you’re confusing my argument that AI can replace PowerPoint tools like gradient, layers, fonts, etc, with an argument I did not make that AI will take humans out of the equation.

Re: ChatGPT for Excel

#208
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office, or rather Microsoft 365 applications have had web versions for a decade now.

That's besides the point though. With a self-contained HTML, you don't need to go to a special website, you don't need an account or sign-in, heck you don't even need the Internet, and it works pretty much on every device that supports HTML5.

a solution in search of a problem. everyone can open a powerpoint in google docs, hotmail, libreoffice etc.

now the person receiving the file has a DIFFERENT experience than they are used to with every other presentation. different hotkeys, different troubleshooting.

Post reply on HN