The AI could not reformat my Excel file. I lost two hours.

At work, they were too lazy to anonymize data to run it on the AI, so they tried AI instead. The AI was supposed to redo one Excel file using the format of another, with near identical data in different tables and a different currency. Two hours were lost.

2 hourssaved

This one went wrong. Read what happened so you don’t hit the same problem.

How it works

Poster gives the AI two Excel files
The AI tries to redo one file in the format of the other
The job does not get done
Two hours are lost

Why it’s worth knowing

A plain format job, the same data in two files, still ate two hours and got nowhere.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on bsky.app. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be

2The prompt, with the steps

3The check when it’s done

Upgraded prompts are coming soon.

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Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.