Overview
Generate report from excel? You've gathered data, perhaps stats about your latest marketing campaign or your sales data from last year. You need to figure out the trends, whip up some charts, and turn them into a report or presentation. Wouldn't it be nice to have an assistant who could do that for you?Computers aren't that great at dreaming up new ideas. They are, however, great at finding trends in data and crunching numbers—perfect for that chart-building job. Here's how you can use Google's latest bits of artificial intelligence to find trends from your next spreadsheet, document, or presentation with the Explore tool.
Explore your Spreadsheet data
Explore is a one of the newest features in the Google Apps suite. Throughout the suite, Explore tries to recommend the best insights to add to your document or the nicest ways to format your data. It is best in Sheets, where it can actually answer questions about your data in plain English. It's a tool you'll definitely want to make part of your regular workflow. Here's how it works.Just create a spreadsheet as normal, filled with your data and organized with column headers. The best spreadsheets for Explore are real spreadsheets formatted like you'd actually use them, with data that's designed to be compared or summarized. A list of city names or book titles wouldn't give Explore much to work with; a list of cities with their population and pollution index scores, however, or a list of books with their sales numbers and publication dates would work well. Now that you've got your spreadsheet, tap the Explore button on the bottom right corner of Google Sheets. That'll open a sidebar with Answers, Formatting, and Analysis—each designed specifically for your data in that spreadsheet.
Analysis is the most straightforward—it's pre-made charts and stats pulled from your data. Google will look at your spreadsheet, decide some of the best ways to visualize the data, and turn each into charts. Underneath the chart, it'll explain the findings, perhaps telling you the range of the data or how much it changed per year. Tap the magnifying glass to view a full-screen copy of the chart, or tap the + icon to insert it into your spreadsheet.
Formatting is the simplest tool—just tap one of the suggested color schemes to redesign your spreadsheet. Or, click the Edit button to open your spreadsheet design tools.
Answers is the most powerful and fascinating part of Explore, the tool that feels like a very simple AI assistant built into your spreadsheet. Google Sheets shows some default questions like "Average of column name" or "Correlation between column 1 and column 2" on the top of the Explore sidebar. Tap them to get that answer, for an easy way to explore your data. Or, select some data on the spreadsheet—say a column of numbers—and the Explore tab will show their sum, average, and other quick calculations in the top right.To take Answers further, type your own question into the Explore search box. Ask something that's easy to find with a standard spreadsheet formula—such as "Which year had the best sales?" in a spreadsheet with a Year and Sales column—and Explore will likely find the correct answer. To confirm the answer—or just to see how Google Sheets found it—click the See formula link on the bottom of the answer block. That can help you see if the answer was incorrect, too. For example, Sheets used the =Max() formula on the year column when I asked for the best sales year in my spreadsheet—something that only told which year number was the highest (which would always return the most recent year).So it's not perfect, but it is fun—and the Analysis charts and data are a great way to quickly pull insights out of your data.
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