Office and productivity

An AI assistant for work

Survive the office and go home two hours earlier. Learn to write diplomatic and firm emails, take spreadsheets apart without knowing formulas and summarise hour-long online meetings. Working right in Word, Excel or Outlook? You'll find prompts for Copilot in Prompt cookbook → Office with Copilot.

💡 A secret weapon: Don't just tell AI “write a nice email”, it will sound stilted (typical AI-speak). Give it your main thoughts as bullet points and say who you're writing to and in what tone. Feel free to send it one of your older emails as a style sample.

📧 Emails from bullet points and assertiveness

When you know what you want to say but not how to wrap it politely, write it to the AI as keywords.

Turning curt points into a polite and clear email GPTClaudeGemini
Turn my bullet points into a formal email. Tone: polite, professional and assertive. It mustn't come across as aggressive, but it must be clear that I'm tired of the delay.
My bullet points:
- The invoice was due on Friday.
- It's Wednesday today and I still have nothing.
- I won't work on the project now until the payment arrives.
- I need to know when they'll pay so I can plan my next work.
Don't change the facts from the bullet points and add nothing. 6 sentences at most.
A reply to a chaotic email from your boss ClaudeGPT
I got a long, chaotic email from my boss with lots of requests:
<email>
[copy the text of your boss's email]
</email>

1. List as bullet points exactly the tasks he wants from me (action items).
2. When a request is unclear or contradicts another one, list it separately as a question for the boss.
3. Write me a short professional reply (3 sentences at most): I confirm receipt, show that I know what he wants and say I'll get it done [by Friday].

🎙️ Notes from meetings and online calls

Got an hour-long meeting in Google Meet or Teams? Turn on the transcript, but only with the others' knowledge. After the call, copy the transcript and the AI tidies it up. Teams with Copilot and Meet with Gemini can take notes by themselves on some paid plans.

Notes and tasks from a long meeting (meeting minutes) ClaudeGPTGemini
Here's the transcript of our hour-long meeting about [the marketing campaign]:
<transcript>
[paste the transcript here]
</transcript>

Turn it into short, clear notes:
1. The main decisions we agreed on.
2. Who got which task and by when (all action items with names).
3. Important ideas suggested by [Mr Smith].
Write only the tasks, names and deadlines that were really said in the transcript. Where they're missing, write [not set].
One page at most, so it can be sent out by email straight away.

📊 Spreadsheets and data (Excel/Sheets)

Don't know how to write a VLOOKUP, a pivot table or a more complex formula? Describe to the AI in plain words where the data is and what should happen to it.

A formula generator from a layperson's description GPTClaudeGemini
I work in [Excel in English / Excel in another language / Google Sheets] and I don't understand formulas much. Help me write one.

I have two sheets:
- Sheet Prices: column A the product name, column B the price per item.
- Sheet Orders: column A the product name, column B the number of items.

In column C on the Orders sheet I need a formula that finds the price in Prices by the name and multiplies it by the number of items.
Write the formula for my program (a localised Excel has translated function names and may use a semicolon as the separator), so I can paste it straight into C2 and drag it down.
Explain it part by part and say what it does when a product is missing from the price list, and how to make an empty cell show instead of an error.
Analysing data straight from a file (ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini) GPTClaudeGemini

Upload the data as a .csv or .xlsx file (for example an export from your online shop) and then paste the prompt:

Grok also reads and summarises a spreadsheet, but according to independent tests (August 2026) it doesn't run calculations in code on the file. For numbers, use one of these three AIs; with Grok, recalculate the results.

The uploaded file contains records of our sales for last month. Find in the data:
1. Which day of the week do we sell the most products?
2. What percentage of orders is over [$50]?
3. One interesting anomaly or pattern that isn't visible at first glance, and how to use it for higher sales next month.

Calculate with the data analysis tool (in code), not in your head, and show the calculation. If the file is missing a column you need for the answer, say so.

▶️ YouTube video summaries (Gemini does it best)

Don't want to watch an hour-long podcast or tutorial? Gemini can process a YouTube video straight from the link (both belong to Google) and pull out timestamps too. NotebookLM also takes a YouTube link as a source. Other AIs mostly can't see video, so paste the transcript (captions) instead.

Summarising and mining a YouTube video Gemini
Watch this YouTube video: [paste the YouTube link]
No waffle, make me an accurate and clear summary for quick study:
1. **What it's about, in 1 sentence.**
2. **Key points:** The 5 most important things said in the video. For each, the timestamp when it's discussed, so I can play it. Only write timestamps where you really see them.
3. **A how-to or procedure (if there is one):** When the video teaches something, write it out as numbered steps I can follow.
4. **Conclusion:** What should I take away for practice?
If the video can't be processed (it's private or has no captions), say so and don't make anything up.

📝 Transcribing and summarising (extracting the essentials)

Cut long company documents, policies or manuals down to the bare essentials for your colleagues. For longer PDFs, NotebookLM is a good fit; it answers from the sources and cites them. Upload internal documents only to an AI your company allows.

A TL;DR of a long document for the team ClaudeGPTGemini
I'm sending you a long company policy on [new rules for taking holiday]. My colleagues don't want to read it.
Pull out the essentials (TL;DR) in 5 short, clear bullet points, so they understand what changes for them and from when.
When they have to sign something or do something by a deadline, put it first as a warning, in bold.
For each bullet point, give where it is in the document (page or article). Add nothing that isn't in the policy.