Mojibake (mo-jee-bah-keh) from the Japanese meaning character change
I’ve recently discovered the joy of using AI with Excel.
Despite plenty of support, I’m still incapable of writing anything more than the most basic SQL. I can just about manage something like SELECT*.* FROM <insert table name> and most of the time I get that wrong. On the flip side I’m very good at understanding and unpicking the logic so can structure data and outputs really well.
That’s where tools like ChatGPT and Copilot come in.
Now, I first tried an Excel specific version – Numerous AI – but I found the way it worked wasn’t broad enough. It structured it’s AI queries like a standard Excel formula. What I needed was something that took the brief and suggested the best way to do it. Since I moved over, the way I use Excel has changed completely.
I started off with a couple of simple buttons on a bespoke ribbon. Age and a strong familial disposition for wonky eyes can make the standard sheet formatting hard to read. Behold the buttons that change the formatting (row height, font size, line spacing) and freeze the view. Then I got a bit cheeky and added a few Donorfy specific buttons: welcome specific tab labels for update imports and one that adds in a column for file numbers to split data into <1000 row limits.
That bit of cheek led to even greater heights. I now have a whole ribbon dedicated to data normalisation. I can shift addresses around, split them up, join them together, repair postcodes, re-format phone numbers and find duplicates that dupe reports miss. And I’ve even snuck in a few that fix Mac and Mc names and make sure that O’s have an apostrophe when needed.
Sometimes it’s not even a button related task. I’ve got a wonderful client who are Irish. Oh my word! Irish names are beautiful to hear, but tricky to write and often they get corrupted. Who knew there’s a name for it – mojibake (pronounced Mo-Jee-Bark-Ay). It’s what happens when characters get scrambled between systems. If you provide your AI of choice the scrambled characters, it will un-Mojibake it and tell you what it should be using your standard keyboard.
The day I discovered it could do that, was a joyous one. Even better than discovering a cheeky £20 in a long-discarded bag.
This may not be for you, but I’ve found the use of AI with Excel has been a game changer. Do I think that AI should be used for everything? No, but that’s for other discussions. It’s hard to deny its usefulness when it’s been used to extend the capabilities of medicine or create safeguards for vulnerable people.
I’ve been using a few tools to make this kind of work quicker and cleaner – and I’ve got some space over the coming months to help get that sorted.
And if you know a team that’s a bit stuck with their data – whether that’s processes, their CRM, or just getting things to work as they should – I’d really appreciate an introduction.
#DataQuality
#CRM
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