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Gemini in Google Sheets lets eligible users describe spreadsheet tasks in ordinary language—from creating formulas and charts to analyzing data and changing formatting—through a side panel. It can also build or edit larger parts of a spreadsheet, but its suggestions and actions should be reviewed before you rely on them. This side-panel workflow is different from Sheets’ separate =AI() cell function, which generates text in a cell rather than editing the sheet.
What Gemini can do in Google Sheets
Google documents Gemini as more than a chat assistant: prompts in the side panel can produce spreadsheet content, analyze information, and perform actions that alter how a sheet is organized or presented. Available tasks include:
- Create content: generate tables and formulas, or fill ranges.
- Analyze: produce data analysis and insights, identify trends, and solve optimization tasks.
- Visualize: build charts and graphs.
- Organize and edit: create pivot tables, sort or filter data, use find and replace, and apply number formats.
- Change sheet structure or presentation: add conditional formatting, dropdowns, or checkboxes; format tables; and insert, delete, or freeze rows and columns.
- Use connected information: summarize emails and files from Gmail and Drive.
Google lists these capabilities in its Collaborate with Gemini in Google Sheets help page. What appears in your account can depend on eligibility and availability, and Google cautions that Gemini may not support every request.
How to prompt Sheets through the side panel
Open the Gemini side panel in Sheets and state the task you want done. For a broad job, Google’s Build workflow can create a new sheet or handle an end-to-end task in an existing one. The flow can include reviewing a plan and template outline, and answering clarification questions if Gemini needs more detail. See Google’s Build or edit entire spreadsheets with Gemini in Sheets guidance for that workflow.
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Google documents examples such as “Summarize this spreadsheet,” “Identify trends in this table,” and “Create a pivot table that shows the sum of sales by region.” Its examples also include “Create a chart with date on the x-axis and total on the y-axis,” “Make a line chart,” and “Sort by date in descending order.” These are sample prompts, not guarantees about the result.
Make the request specific
A useful prompt pattern is to identify the relevant sheet or table, name the action, and specify the desired output. For example, if you want a chart, state which fields belong on each axis. Google’s prompting guidance says a role or persona and an action verb can help shape a prompt; its documented example for a formula is “Create a formula to find cell C1 in range D:G, output value in column G.” Other official examples include “Find the number of unique customers in the North America region” and “Create a social media tracker for marketing.”
If a workbook contains several tabs, Google says you can reference multiple tabs in a side-panel prompt and narrow the selected tabs to focus Gemini’s attention. When a sheet contains multiple tables, Google recommends focusing on specific tables for more comprehensive analysis. For prompt guidance, see Learn about prompts for Gemini in Docs, Sheets, Slides, Vids & Forms.
Review changes before relying on them
Check generated formulas, summaries, charts, and edits against the underlying data and the task you intended. In the broader Build flow, review the proposed plan and template outline, and respond to clarification questions when they appear. Google’s help page states: “Google Workspace with Gemini is constantly learning and may not be able to support your request.” It also documents an Undo option for actions, so use it if an action changes the sheet in a way you do not want.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsSide-panel conversation history is not a reliable place to store work: Google says it can be lost if the browser reloads, the file is closed and reopened, or the computer goes offline. Insert useful generated output into the spreadsheet if you want to keep it. For suggestions from the Tables feature, Google separately warns that “Gemini feature suggestions don’t represent Google’s views, and should not be attributed to Google.”
Eligibility, file type, and language availability
Google says the Sheets side-panel feature requires an eligible Google Workspace or Google AI plan and is also available through Workspace Experiments. The help material does not provide a complete account-by-account or geographic rollout matrix, and eligibility can change; check the current settings and help information for your account rather than assuming access. Google does not establish one universal plan or price for this feature in the cited documentation.
Gemini features work best with native Google Sheets files. If you are working in an Excel workbook, Google instructs users to save it as a Google Sheet before using these features.
Google’s supported-language page lists the Sheets side panel in Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish are marked with an asterisk for Gems support; that annotation should not be read as a different list of side-panel languages. See Supported languages for Google Workspace with Gemini for Google’s current listing.
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Gemini side panel vs. the AI function in a cell
Sheets has a separate AI function workflow. Google documents =AI() or =Gemini() for generating text, summarizing, categorizing, sentiment analysis, and accessing current information from Google Search. Unlike the side panel, the function returns text in a cell; it does not edit sheet structure or access the entire spreadsheet or other Drive files. You can provide context with its optional range argument, and Google advises supplying relevant data to improve output quality.
| Workflow | Where you prompt | What it does | Context and limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini side panel and Build | In the Sheets side panel | Can generate or edit spreadsheet content, analyze data, create charts, and perform documented sheet actions; Build can handle broader sheet tasks. | Can use selected or referenced tabs and focused tables. Requires eligible access, and Google says not every request is supported. |
| AI function | In a cell with =AI() or =Gemini() |
Generates text in the cell, including summaries or classifications. | Does not access the entire spreadsheet or Drive. Supply relevant context with the optional range argument. |
Google explains the function and its limits in Use the AI function in Google Sheets. It also says an AI function edit is attributed to the user in version history after Generate and Insert or Refresh and Insert.
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