As of 13 August 2026, AI can clean up your business spreadsheet.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Make a duplicate of the original workbook and keep the untouched file in a separate location.
   2. Open the duplicate and record the sheet names, row counts, key columns, important formulas, totals and any fields that must not be changed.
   3. Remove passwords or access restrictions only if you are authorised to do so, then upload the duplicate to an AI spreadsheet tool such as Julius and paste the prompt.
   4. Replace the bracketed rules in the prompt with your actual requirements, including the definition of a duplicate and the approved date, category and formatting standards.
   5. Export the cleaned copy and its change log, then compare row counts, totals, formulas, column names and key records against the original workbook.
   6. Inspect every proposed or uncertain change yourself, restore anything that lacks clear evidence, and save the approved workbook with a new version name before using it in reports or operations.

   Prompt

   Clean the attached business spreadsheet without changing its business meaning. My intended rules are: [describe the correct column names, formats, duplicate rules, missing-value rules and any rows or fields that must never be changed].
   
   Work on a copy and preserve the original values unless a rule above clearly permits a change. Standardise spelling, capitalisation, whitespace, dates, phone numbers and categories only where the pattern is unambiguous. Identify possible duplicates, inconsistent entries, missing values, broken formulas and unusual rows, but do not delete, merge or guess about uncertain records.
   
   Return:
   1. a cleaned version of the spreadsheet;
   2. a change log with sheet, row or record identifier, original value, new value and reason for every change;
   3. a list of proposed changes that need my approval;
   4. a list of checks I should run against the original, totals, formulas and key business reports.
   
   Do not invent values, fill gaps with guesses, alter formulas without explaining them, or claim the file is correct unless you have actually checked it. If the spreadsheet structure or my rules are unclear, ask questions before making the relevant change.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.