Can't get AI to accurately analyze a spreadsheet – help needed

ChatGPT accepted it but said it couldn't do anything with it because it was too old. Perplexity wouldn't even accept it.

Once I converted to .xlsx, it worked fine in all of them.

Not only did Claude not complain about the old format, it wrote a short JavaScript program it used to do the analysis, which you could download and use.

Get an MCP for your spreadsheet [1], which would enable any LLM that supports MCP to do more sophisticated functions.

I asked Claude what it can do with spreadsheets; here's what came back:

    Claude can perform a wide variety of tasks with spreadsheets! Here are the main categories of what I can do:
    
    ## Data Analysis & Statistics
    - Calculate averages, medians, standard deviations, and other statistical measures
    - Find correlations between different columns
    - Identify outliers and anomalies in the data
    - Group data by categories and analyze patterns
    - Perform trend analysis over time periods
    
    ## Data Cleaning & Processing
    - Remove duplicates and handle missing values
    - Standardize formats (dates, phone numbers, addresses)
    - Split or combine columns
    - Filter and sort data based on multiple criteria
    - Validate data quality and identify inconsistencies
    
    ## Visualizations & Charts
    - Create interactive charts (bar, line, pie, scatter plots, histograms)
    - Build dashboards with multiple visualizations
    - Generate heatmaps and other specialized chart types
    - Create geographic visualizations if location data is present
    
    ## Business Intelligence
    - Calculate key performance indicators (KPIs)
    - Perform financial analysis (profit margins, growth rates, etc.)
    - Analyze sales data, customer segments, or inventory
    - Create summary reports and executive dashboards
    - Compare performance across different time periods or categories
    
    ## Advanced Analysis
    - Build predictive models for forecasting
    - Perform cohort analysis for customer behavior
    - Calculate conversion rates and funnel analysis
    - Cross-tabulate data to find relationships
    - Generate pivot table-style summaries
    
    ## Data Transformation
    - Convert between different file formats
    - Restructure data (pivot/unpivot operations)
    - Merge data from multiple sheets or sources
    - Create calculated fields and derived metrics
    - Export processed data in various formats
    
    ## Automation & Workflows
    - Create step-by-step data processing workflows
    - Generate code that you can reuse for similar analyses
    - Build templates for recurring reports
    - Set up automated calculations and formulas
    
    Would you like me to demonstrate any of these capabilities with your current spreadsheet, or do you have a specific analysis goal in mind?