Shop / Prompts & Skills / Explain Any Excel or Google Sheets Formula in Plain English — AI Prompt With a Hand-Checkable Test Case

Checking someone else's formula before the total leaves your desk

A client, a colleague or another department sends you a workbook, and its totals are about to go into your report, your invoice run or your board pack. You did not build the formula that produces the headline number — so before the number travels any further under your name, it gets checked like borrowed work: explained, hand-tested, and read for its assumptions.

The pre-handoff checklist

1. Get the formula explained in plain English, cell by cell. Not "it calculates the total" — what each part reads, what it does when an input is missing, and where the result is meant to be pasted.
2. Hand-check one row you can already price yourself. The formula prompt ships with sample calculations and three dry-run cases for exactly this: predict the result before you look, then compare.
3. Read the assumptions line out loud. In the real sample below, the check ends by flagging that the input columns must hold numeric values, not prices stored as text. An assumption you have not verified is a number you have not checked.
4. If a column mapping is missing, ask — never guess. The prompt asks for the missing mapping rather than inventing one, and a borrowed workbook deserves the same discipline from you.

Goal: Multiply quantity in column B by unit price in column C, but keep incomplete rows blank.
Formula: =IF(OR(B2="",C2=""),"",B2*C2)
Paste in: D2; fill downward so row references update.
Why it works: OR detects missing inputs; otherwise the row's two cells multiply. No absolute references needed.
Manual check: Row 2 = 3 × 12.50 = 37.50; row 3 = 2 × 8.00 = 16.00.
Assumptions / verify: B and C contain numeric values, not prices stored as text.

Sample data above is fictional, shown so you can judge the output before buying.

What travels with the workbook when you pass it on

The sample's small print is the handover note most people skip:

• Where the formula lives — paste it in D2, filled downward so the row references update
• Why no absolute references are needed here — a detail that changes how safely the sheet can be extended
• What the inputs must be — numeric values in columns B and C, not text that looks like prices

Forward those three lines with the file and the next person inherits a checked formula instead of a mysterious one. Our earlier guide, Explain Any Formula in Plain English, walks through the teardown method itself; this page is about the moment the workbook belongs to somebody else.

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