By Kate Yuan

(JW Insights) Apr 19 -- A team at China’s Peking University developed an auto AI tool for Excel - ChatExcel (酷表), which can help users with different tasks through typing in queries, JW Insights learned on April 18.

Source: Peking University

Yuan Li, assistant professor at the School of Electronic and Computer Engineering of Peking University, said, “ChatExcel can complete self-running and export Excel tables after users input commands in natural language, without the need to memorize various formulas. It is designed to reduce the difficulty of using this professional software.” The team also includes three master’s and doctoral students.

ChatExcel also supports continuous interaction and updates. "Users can test results, return and redo at any step, and make adjustments and modifications at any time. It can also realize cross-table collaboration,” Yuan added.

The tool is entirely open and allows for unlimited usage. Users do not even need to register, which greatly reduces the threshold and technical difficulty of using Excel.

The ChatExcel beta version was released on February 28. The daily active users peaked at 110,000 just half a month later, and the cumulative number of unique visitors exceeded 2 million, according to Peking University.