How to use Gemini AI to make templates in Google Sheets

Need ideas or motivation to help you build a spreadsheet in Google Sheets? You can browse through the templates that are included in this office app and select one to customize. But a more intriguing option is to use the tool in Sheets called Help Me Organize. Powered by Google’s generative AI technology, Gemini, you can use it to generate a template that’s more tailored for you.

Based on a brief description that you write (referred to as a “prompt”), Help Me Organize generates a table with headings, placeholder text, and possible formulas in its cells that you can then adjust to your needs. It’s mainly designed to create templates for project management. But you can tease it to make templates that include some formulas and tables that can be used to create charts.

This guide explains how to use Help Me Organize and provides tips for getting best results.

Who can use Gemini AI in Google Sheets

If you have a Google Workspace account, the Gemini AI tools that include Help Me Organize are available as an add-on — called Gemini for Google Workspace — for an extra subscription charge. If you have a regular Google personal account, you can pay for a Google One AI Premium subscription to have access to these tools. Or, for no cost, you can sign up for access to Workspace Labs with your Google account to be permitted to try out Help Me Organize.

How to access Help Me Organize in Google Sheets

You access the Help Me Organize tool from a right side panel that you open while in a spreadsheet in Google Sheets. The spreadsheet can have existing data on it. But for generating templates, it’s best to use Help Me Organize on a new, blank spreadsheet or on a new sheet in an existing spreadsheet. You can add a new sheet to a spreadsheet by clicking the + sign that’s toward the lower-left corner of the opened spreadsheet.

To launch the “Help me organize” panel, click Insert and select Help me organize at the very bottom of the menu that opens.

In the “Help me organize” panel that opens to the right of the page, a large text entry box invites you to write a prompt inside it. Some example prompts that are meant to show you how you can write your own cycle through this box.

When you open the “Help me organize” panel, its entry box shows example prompts.
Howard Wen / IDG

How to use Help Me Organize

Click inside the entry box on the “Help me organize” panel, type a description of the kind of template you want Gemini to generate, and click Create.

Type a prompt into the box on the “Help me organize” panel and click Create.
Howard Wen / IDG

Depending on the complexity of your prompt, it may take several seconds for the AI to generate a template — but it may not be able to generate anything. If it’s unable to, try entering your description again but use fewer words.

Gemini may “think” for a while as it generates a template.Howard Wen / IDG

How to insert a template generated by Gemini

If Gemini produces a result, the template will appear over your spreadsheet. It’ll start from the upper-leftmost cell, with the template’s columns and rows spreading out from here.

Review the template Gemini generated, then insert it in your spreadsheet or start over.
Howard Wen / IDG

You can scroll through the template to see what you think of it. Keep in mind that you should always consider what Gemini generates as a rough draft that you’ll need to modify to make it more suitable for your use (such as replacing placeholder text and scrutinizing and modifying any formulas). It is a template, after all.

Scroll to the bottom of the template — you’ll find a small toolbar attached to it. If you like this template, click Insert. It’ll then be inserted into your spreadsheet.

If you don’t, click the X. The template will be removed from your spreadsheet. You can try writing another prompt in the “Help me organize” panel. Note that if you create a new template, you can’t go back to the previous version.

Optionally, you can rate if you like this template or not by clicking the thumbs up or thumbs down icon. Your feedback is used to help train Gemini to produce results in the future that may be more preferable.

Once you’ve inserted a template in your spreadsheet, you can tweak it however you like: change heading names, add rows or columns, adjust formulas, enter real data, and so on. See “How to use Google Sheets for project management” for details on working with templates in Sheets.

How to write a prompt in Help Me Organize

Unsure about how to write a prompt? Need inspiration? Here are some general tips that can elicit useful templates from Gemini:

1. First, describe a specific project that you want to track.

Examples:

budget breakdown

business travel itinerary

payroll schedule

2. Describe or specifically name headings that you’d like to see in the template.

budget breakdown that includes in the following order: revenue, rent, utilities, internet, expenses

business travel itinerary with sections for travel to airport, airline, flight number, hotel, and so on

payroll schedule for employees named Mike, Pedro, Shawna, and Tasha

Including specifics in a prompt will help Gemini generate a better template.
Howard Wen / IDG

3. Use numbers and math formulas.

a table depicting 12 months with 3 categories per month

payroll schedule that’s monthly across one year

a table that calculates compound interest at 3.5% over 3 years

Gemini can create a template that includes formulas.
Howard Wen / IDG

4. Describe dropdowns, lists, task lists, or to-dos.

a dropdown with selections that include Greek, Japanese, Italian for a business luncheon

a project tracker with task lists assigned to people

a to-do list for onboarding a new employee

A generated to-do list with status dropdowns.
Howard Wen / IDG

For more on working with dropdowns, see “Google Sheets power tips: How to use dropdown lists.”

5. Describe a chart.

Gemini can’t generate charts directly, but you can prompt it to create a template (table) that you can then derive a chart from. Examples:

a bar chart with 9 labels

a line chart with 4 categories

a pie chart depicting 3 categories

Describe a chart you’d like to create.
Howard Wen / IDG

Insert the generated template in your spreadsheet.

Next, select the template by clicking its top-leftmost cell.

Then, on the menu bar over your spreadsheet, click Insert > Chart. By default, a pie chart will be generated. The “Chart editor” panel will also open along the right of the page, so you can change the pie chart to another type or make other adjustments to it.

A pie chart based on a template that Gemini generated from a prompt.
Howard Wen / IDG

It’s worth noting that in this pie chart example, Gemini went beyond what was asked for, breaking each of the three categories into three sections with different colors. Thus, the resulting pie chart has nine sections instead of three. That’s unlikely to be what most people would be looking for from the original prompt — a good illustration of why you always need to check and adjust Gemini’s output, or simply discard it and start over.

6. Don’t be afraid to describe something complicated.

a budget for at least 12 departments in my office for one year and assign supervision to employees

a project manager for 8 salespersons who have to sell seashells to the 10 biggest cities in the US Midwest with an April deadline

a weekly restaurant employee work schedule for 10 back-of-house kitchen employees and 6 front-of-house employees over 4 weeks

Gemini can often handle complicated prompts.
Howard Wen / IDG

Remember that the best way to use Help Me Organize (or any generative AI tool) is to experiment and play around with the wording of your prompts. You never know — Gemini may surprise you with a result that’s better or more useful than what you originally envisioned.

In summary

Keep these tips in mind to write prompts that will trigger Gemini to give you the best (or at least most interesting) results in Help Me Organize:

Define exactly what you want to use the template for. How would you describe it in three words?

Use headings or numbers (such as dates or math formulas). These can imply columns and rows in the template.

If you want the template to have a dropdown or other list type, describe it.

Use Gemini to generate a table that you can then derive a chart from.

Don’t be afraid to experiment — even if your request sounds complicated.

As with all AI-generated content, the templates created with Help Me Organize should never be seen as final — but they can give you a big head start for all sorts of spreadsheet-related tasks, from setting up complex schedules to creating charts to performing time-oriented calculations.

This article was originally published in February 2024 and updated in December 2024.