AI features

Writer and Spreadsheets have AI help built in: draft and rewrite text, translate a whole document, look up a word, fill cells with AI answers, translate cells, build a table from a description, and turn a question into a formula.

When AI is available

AI features are off until your organization turns them on. Until then you still see every AI menu item and button, but they're disabled, and hovering one says "AI features aren't turned on yet". In a spreadsheet, the AI-based functions (AI, GOOGLETRANSLATE and DETECTLANGUAGE) show #N/A with the same message.

A few more things to know:

You need to be signed in. AI features aren't offered to people using a document through a link without signing in.
There's a daily limit for each mailbox. When it's reached you'll see "You've reached today's AI limit"; it resets the next day (at midnight UTC).
Check the result. AI can make mistakes — every AI window says so. Nothing AI writes is added to your document until you choose to insert it (the one exception is the AI() function, whose answer is its cell's value).
What's sent. The text you ask about — your prompt, the selected text, the words to translate, or the cells a formula refers to — is sent to the AI model (Claude, by Anthropic) to produce the answer. SingleSign doesn't keep a log of that content.

In Writer

Help me write

Insert ▸ Help me write opens a box next to your cursor. Describe what you want — "a short intro for our Q3 plan" — and click Create (or press Ctrl+Enter). The answer appears as it's written; Stop ends it early.

When the answer is ready you can:

refine it with one click — Rephrase, Shorten, Elaborate, More formal, More casual, Bulletize or Summarize — or type your own instruction under Refine further;
Retry for a different answer;
Insert it at the cursor, or Discard it.

Headings, lists, bold and other formatting in the answer come through when you insert it.

Refining text you've already written

Select some text and a sparkle button appears next to it. Click it for the same choices — Rephrase, Shorten, Elaborate, More formal, More casual, Bulletize, Summarize or Custom instruction…. The window then shows the rewrite, and Replace swaps it in for your selection (or Insert adds it after).

Translate document

Tools ▸ Translate document makes a translated copy: pick the language under Translate into — there are 55, from Arabic to Welsh — and click Translate. The copy is saved in your Documents as "Document name (Spanish)", for example, and Open takes you to it. The original isn't changed. Every tab, header, footer and footnote is translated, and formatting, tables, chips and images stay where they are; code blocks and equations are left as they were.

Dictionary

Tools ▸ Dictionary opens a panel that looks up the word at your cursor (or the text you've selected), with its part of speech, definitions, an example sentence and synonyms. Type another word and press Search to look it up. Definitions are in the document's language, set in File ▸ Language.

In Spreadsheets

The AI function

=AI(prompt, [range]) puts an AI answer in a cell — a summary, a classification, a short answer or a rewrite, optionally using the contents of a range:

=AI("Summarize this customer review in five words", A2)
=AI("Is this feedback positive, negative or neutral?", B2)

Fill it down a column to process a whole list. Answers are saved with the spreadsheet:

Only editors generate answers. Everyone else who opens the spreadsheet sees the saved ones.
Changing the prompt gets a new answer. Changing the data it refers to doesn't — the saved answer stays until you select the cells and choose Data ▸ Refresh AI results in selection.
Asking the exact same question about the exact same data again reuses the earlier answer, and doesn't count toward the daily limit.

GOOGLETRANSLATE and DETECTLANGUAGE

=GOOGLETRANSLATE(text, [source_language], [target_language]) translates text. The source can be "auto" (the default) to detect it, and the target defaults to the spreadsheet's language. Example: =GOOGLETRANSLATE("Hello World", "en", "es").
=DETECTLANGUAGE(text_or_range) returns the language code of the text, such as fr for French.

Both use the same AI service, so they follow the same rules as the rest of this page. While a result is on its way, the cell shows #N/A with "Loading…".

Help me organize

Data ▸ Help me organize builds a table from a description. Type a prompt — "a project tracker for a website launch with owners, due dates and status" — and click Create. You'll see a preview (the first 50 rows); Change prompt to try again, or Insert to add it. The table goes on a new sheet named after it, already formatted as a table. Anything in the answer that looks like a formula is entered as text, never run.

Help me with formulas

Select the cell the formula should go in and choose Tools ▸ Help me with formulas, or click the sparkle at the end of the formula bar. Describe what you want — "total sales for the East region" — and click Suggest. You'll see the formula with a short explanation of how it works; Insert puts it in the cell. The column headings and a few sample rows around your selection are sent along, so the formula uses your real columns.