8 Ways ChatGPT Can Help You While Using Mac Numbers

If you work with Mac Numbers you can use ChatGPT to get help with functions and formulas, generate sample data, clean up data and more.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.  Here's some ways you can use ChatGPT with Numbers on your Mac.
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You can find a lot of information about using ChatGPT with Excel. You can do a lot of that with Numbers as well on your Mac. Now a big difference is there aren't any apps or extensions that integrate ChatGPT with Numbers like they do with Excel. But you can still use just regular ChatGPT with Numbers to accomplish a number of tasks and make things a lot easier for you. 
So I'm just using ChatGPT at the website, chat.openai.com. I'm not using any special app. A lot of people ask me where do I find ChatGPT in the Mac App Store. Just go to the website and use it directly from them. That's all I'm doing here. Nothing fancy. The first thing I'm going to show you is you could simply ask for Help in finding the right function. So, for instance, if you know what you want to do you could search the function's help in Numbers or use Ask ChatGPT with a prompt like this. So I'm just asking in Mac Numbers which functions can I use to determine if a value is contained in another table. I'm going to submit this and I'm going to get a bunch of different options. There's VLOOKUP, there's Count IF, there's Index & Match and you can read through these. 
Now if you already know the function you want to use but you can't seem to get it right you can always ask for Help with that specific function. So here I'm asking In Mac Numbers how do you use the Match Function. When I submit that I'm going to get not only a definition but use as an example. You can ask for more. For instance I just typed give me some more examples. I got a variety of different examples here and I can continue to learn how to use specific functions. Maybe even functions I already know how to use but I can learn new ways to use them. 
I can also just ask ChatGPT to make the formula for you. So, for instance, here I'm asking for Mac Numbers give me a formula that will reduce the final sale price. Column C is the base price and Column D is the tax percent and Column E is the shipping charge. When I submit this it's going to give me the formula right there. You could always use this little Copy Code button here or just select it and Copy & Paste. But even more important than that you get a description of exactly how it works. So instead of Copying and Pasting you can read about it, learn how it works so you know how to use it the next time or modify it to fit your needs. 
Now you can also use ChatGPT to help you get started with a spreadsheet. Here I'm asking I want to create a spreadsheet to keep track of items I own, like books, DVD's, etc. What column headings should I have? A lot of times we sit there and think what should I put as a different columns for what ever reason I'm creating. Here I'm just going to ask ChatGPT to actually think about that for me and give me some suggestions. So when I have it generated here it's going to give me this list and a lot of these are really good ideas. It doesn't mean you need to take them all. You can take these sixteen ideas and maybe just take ten of those but maybe there's one of that ten that you didn't think of before you asked. 
Now one of the main things I use ChatGPT for now is to create sample data. I do that for my tutorials but also do that if I'm creating a spreadsheet and I want to make sure  it works properly before I put real data in. So if you really want to test it on some sample data like a hundred different rows it can be difficult to create it all by yourself. But you can ask ChatGPT things like give me a list of a hundred random first names. Then you're going to get that list like this and then notice how I can easily select here at the beginning, want to go to the end Shift Click to select the whole thing. This is just text in a browser window after all. Then I'm going to do Command C to copy. In Numbers here in the new spreadsheet I select a cell and I'm not going to do paste because it's going to paste these styles taken from the webpage. But I am going to do Paste and Match Style. Now I've got some data to start with. But you can go much further than that. Here I'm asking I want to create a spreadsheet to keep track of my student's grades on tests. The columns are A (the name), B (test date), C (test score), D (extra credit). Can you give me 20 rows of sample data. Now when I submit this I get a Table here in the webpage. Once it is all generated I can select the table, like this, just click and drag and I will not use the Headings there and just do Command C to copy. Then in Numbers I'm going to, again, go Edit, Paste and Match Style, and you can see how it pastes all of that data in here. Notice how the dates here come in as text when you do it this way. But I can easily click the letter B here at the top of the column, go to Cell, Data Format, Change it to Date & Time and it will reinterpret those cells and give me actual dates. 
Now instead of sample data you can actually get real data from ChatGPT. So you can use a prompt like this, give me a spreadsheet with data for US States with the following columns. State population, Average Income. When I have it generate this it is going to give me real data. I can Copy & Paste it the same way as I did the sample data. You can get much more specific as to which column that you want. It will draw on various different data sources. 
ChatGPT can also analyze data in your spreadsheet. Now it can't access data in your spreadsheet here but it can copy and paste the data giving it to ChatGPT and ask it to do something. So, for instance, I've got this table here. It has student's names and grades and it all looks fine. But I might want to analyze this and I may not want to just create tons and tons of formulas in order to do that. So I'm going to select all of the data in the Table here. You can see there is a 100 rows. Copy it. Say something like this: given the spreadsheet data are there any rows that have unusually high remote values. Now I'm going to use Shift and Return to go to the next line without submitting. I'm going to paste in this spreadsheet. You could see how it just appears as text there and then I'm going to submit it and it is going to show me a lot of different work. It is going to show me some unusually high values, there's one that is 109, and one that is unusually low, 20. So this could be a way to just find outliers. But also a way to maybe check for invalid data. 
Now if you want to ask more things about that same data you don't need to resubmit the data. It remembers the conversation. Remember you're having a conversation here, you're not just asking individual questions. So you could do something like this. Which students have three good scores and one bad one and what are those scores. It assumes you mean the data you already submitted. So I'll send that. So, that gives you some idea. You can get really creative with how  you ask things and you can just keep reasking if you don't get the results you want the first time. 
You can also ask ChatGPT to clean up data. So a good example are phone numbers. Sometimes you get phone numbers in different formats. Here I've got six different rows and six different ways of entering a phone number. So, if I were to copy those over and then go and ask something like this, Clean up this list of phone numbers by putting everyone in a format here, you can see the format I have specified. Then I'm going to do Shift, Return and Paste those numbers in there. Then you could see it gives me those phone numbers in that format. I can now Copy them from here, switch back to Numbers and simple Edit and Paste Match Style those results over the original text.
Now here's an additional tip. Sometimes when you ask for data, like this, you get a table that looks like this and you can Copy it but if you Paste it in Numbers it really doesn't work out. Other times you get it as a regular looking table that you can Copy & Paste but sometime selecting can be difficult. You can ask it to Give me the data as a csv and then it will generate that same data but you can see it is a little bit easier here to see it as comma separated variables. I can click this Copy Code button right here. But you can see here not only was it easier to copy but it was easier to paste. Just a regular Command V will do it and I get the data without any styling. I don't have to use Edit and  Paste & Match Style. 
There's a look at how you can use CharGPT in a variety of ways with Numbers. A few things to remember. 
1. It is a conversation so keep asking questions and then if you don't get the result you want ask for clarification, ask for variations, and everything. Remember that it is not exact. This isn't coding so you don't have to use exactly the words I'm using. As a matter of fact it is learning from previous things that you've asked. So you may get different results than I did asking exactly the same thing. Just ask using your own natural language and then keep asking for adjustments until you get what you want. 
2. Also remember ChatGPT is kind of like having a human assistant. It is going to give you lots of information but it is not always going to be perfectly right. It may not understand you completely or it may generate a result that doesn't get you what you want so you have to ask it again. 
3. Look at the answers you get from it critically to maybe avoid errors. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “8 Ways ChatGPT Can Help You While Using Mac Numbers”

John

8 months ago

I often tell people to use the browser and ask questions for getting help, but you just showed that asking ChatGPT is way more helpful. Thanks.

Chris O'Connor

I have been trying out some chatgpt operations based on your suggestions. I was asking it to average a string of numbers from a column in a numbers spreadsheet. interestingly it was not correctly summing the string I gave it. See this equation it gave me:

"The total value of the provided string of numbers is:

4 + 3 + 3 + 5 + 4 + 4 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 3 = 53"

I knew the correct sum = 51. I was surprised that such a purportedly sophisticated site could fail such a simple task.

Gary Rosenzweig

Chris: Yes, it can get some things wrong because it is simulating human response. So humans can get this wrong and thus so can ChatGPT. Always good to check results when asking a direct calculation question like that. Did you try calling it out? Like asking on the next line "But that is wrong." It will apologize and try again.

Gary, yes I did ask it to double check. I even asked it to take two numbers at a time and then sum the results. It seemed to be misreading some of the numbers. Eventually, after reframing the equation several times, I did get it to respond with a correct answer. But following all this, when attempting to re-ask the original question, it answered incorrectly again, this time coming up with 52, one closer but still wrong. But I get your point, it is perfectly imperfect. Love all your stuff!! Thanx

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

Art Busbey

When I ask ChatGPT to make a spreadsheet, as you did in several examples, it tells me it can't make spreadsheets and keeps printing out a rather primitive text 'table' with delimiters (bang characters, commas, etc.). Did you do something special?

Art: Nothing special. Ask it for the data in CSV format, maybe?

8 Ways ChatGPT Can Help You While Using Mac Numbers

Comments: 7 Responses to “8 Ways ChatGPT Can Help You While Using Mac Numbers”

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