Google Sheets can now suggest corrections for your formulas

Google Sheets is now adding the ability to suggest context-aware corrections to your formulas. The feature works similar to the formula suggestions added last year. It analyzes the data, and if it detects that an improvement can be made, it will offer a suggestion box with a new version that can replace the current formula, including the ability to accept or reject it.

This new feature will work on formulas that contain a “VLOOKUP error, missing cells in range input, or locking ranges when applying formulas across cells,” such as the example below where it suggested replacing a VLOOKUP with a combination of INDEX and MATCH functions in order to get more accurate results.

This will be available by default for all Google Workspace and legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers, as well as users with personal Google accounts, but can be disabled by going to Tools > Enable formula corrections within Google Sheets. The rollout for this feature began yesterday (April 14th) but may take longer than 15 days to make its way to both Rapid and Scheduled Release domains.

I’m very glad to see that this feature is being made available to paid and personal account users. We could all use a little help every now and then when it comes to analyzing data and writing formulas, especially for those like myself who are not on friendly terms with math.