April 10, 2026
OpenAI Academy
Explore, analyze, and turn data into clear insights and actions in ChatGPT, Excel, or Google Sheets.
ChatGPT can help you move from raw data to useful insights with minimal setup. You can upload a CSV or Excel file directly in ChatGPT, paste in a table, or connect a data source (if supported in your workspace), then start asking questions in plain language. You can also use ChatGPT within Excel and Google Sheets, provided your workspace settings allow it.
Instead of building formulas, pivot tables, or dashboards for every question, you can quickly explore data, clean up tables, generate simple visualizations, and extract key takeaways in a format that’s easy to share. It’s especially useful early in the process—when you’re still figuring out what’s in the data, identifying anomalies, and deciding where to dig deeper. It also helps translate findings into summaries others can review and act on.
Data analysis directly in ChatGPT
- Start with the decision you’re trying to support. A simple frame is: “I’m trying to decide ___, based on ___.” This tells ChatGPT what “done” looks like and keeps the analysis focused.
- Provide your data along with any critical context—definitions, timeframe, and what key columns represent. You can provide data via file upload, or by using a connected app.
- Ask for an approach, not just an answer. or example, request an exploratory data analysis (EDA) summary followed by hypotheses to test. This leads to more structured and reliable results than jumping straight to conclusions.
- If visuals would help, request them explicitly—what to plot, how to segment, and any must-haves like axis labels or units.
- Ask for outputs you can reuse such as a clean final table or a short executive summary that translates findings into action.
Data analysis in Excel or Google Sheets
If a lot of your work happens directly in a spreadsheet, ChatGPT for Excel and Google Sheets(opens in a new window) gives you a faster way to build, update, and understand that work without leaving the tools you already use. It lives in a sidebar inside your workbook, so you can ask for changes in plain language and review the result directly in the sheet. You can think of ChatGPT for Excel or Google Sheets as an in-product collaborator for spreadsheet mechanics and first-pass analysis.
The better your prompt describes what to preserve, the better the result. In practice, prompts work best when you specify the tabs to use, the tabs to avoid changing, the output you want, and whether ChatGPT should explain its plan before editing.
Tips for success
- Help ChatGPT help you by sharing what “good” looks like up front including what success metric you care about, the timeframe you’re looking at, and which groups or segments you want to compare.
- If the numbers really matter, you can also ask it to show how it got there including the assumptions it made, any formulas it used to calculate metrics, and quick checks for missing data or unusual spikes.
- It also helps to set a few simple ground rules so the analysis stays trustworthy. For example, you can tell it not to treat correlations as causes, to point out any limitations in the data, and to flag anything that looks off. And before you share results or make a decision, do a quick reality check—pick a couple key numbers and spot-verify them to make sure everything adds up.