Hey it's Paul, welcome to my 21st newsletter!

If you're like me, maybe you're terrible at Excel formulas.

Well, Google has just solved the problem by integrating AI into Google Sheets (their free online version of Excel).

It's like your spreadsheet merged minds with ChatGPT!

Let's dive in!

Google added an incredible new "Smart Fill" feature that allows AI to understand and process your data automatically.

So what's the point?

Activate mail images to see illustrations

For example, suppose you have a list of people’s full names, like John Smith, Mary Jones, etc. And you want to separate their first names and last names into different columns.

You can use Smart Fill to do this automatically, without typing or using formulas:

Just type John in the cell next to John Smith, and Mary in the cell next to Mary Jones. Then Smart Fill will understand that you want to extract the first names from the full names, and it will suggest to fill in the rest of the cells for you.

Activating Smart Fill

Enabling this powerful new tool is simple:

Go to labs.google
Scroll down and click "Learn more" in the Google Workspace section
Join the waitlist

(As last time, scroll down to the bottom of the email if you don't have access to Google Labs)

Once activated, the AI will instantly detect relationships in your data and fill in values for you. It's like having a virtual assistant!

My Favorite Use Cases

Here are some of the many ways Smart Fill has already helped my workflow:

Categorize feedback by theme
Organize news article by topic
Convert address data to consistent format
Extract phone numbers from text fields

I'm blown away by how much time these tasks would have taken manually.

The AI processes in seconds what would take me hours!

Accessing Outside the US

Google has limited it to the US for now, but I was able to get Smart Fill working nicely from Europe using a VPN.

And don't forget that you can also use the Opera web browser, which has a free VPN built-in.

I definitely recommend trying this if you handle large datasets.

Let me know what uses you come up with! I think Smart Fill will be a total game changer for taming data.

Have a great weekend and see you next week!

Paul

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