Google Sheets → Excel

A named function from my Sheet shows an error in Excel

You built a custom named function in Google Sheets — your own reusable formula with a name like MARGIN or NET_PRICE. Open the file in Excel and every cell that used it shows #NAME?.

What’s actually breaking

Named functions are a Google Sheets feature: you define a formula once, give it a name and arguments, and reuse it like a built-in. The definition lives in the Sheet’s settings, not in the cells. When the file moves to Excel, Excel has no matching definition — so the name is unknown and every call to it resolves to #NAME?.

The important thing about this failure is that it is loud. Unlike a value that silently comes across wrong, a missing named function produces a real, visible error in the cell. That’s annoying, but it’s honest — the spreadsheet is telling you something is missing rather than pretending everything computed.

How xlsx-for-ai handles it

xlsx-for-ai reads the cell’s actual state and shows you the error rather than papering over it. When a named function can’t be resolved, the result is a visible #NAME? in the output — not a fabricated number in its place. You see exactly where the gaps are, so you can redefine those formulas in Excel.

We’re keeping this claim narrow on purpose. Today the honest promise is: you get a visible error, not a silently wrong value. We are not yet claiming to tell you specifically “this was a dropped Google named function, here is its definition” — distinguishing a dropped named function from an ordinary typo is work we’re still proving out. What you can rely on now is that the failure is surfaced, not hidden.

Because the error is visible, the fix is straightforward: find each #NAME?, and replace the named-function call with the equivalent Excel formula (or an Excel LAMBDA defined in Name Manager).

How to check your file

  1. Add the connector to Claude once — open Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector and paste https://api.xlsx-for-ai.dev/mcp/claude. Full steps are on the developers page.
  2. Read the live Sheet by id. In Claude, ask: 
    Read this Google Sheet and convert it to an .xlsx, with xfa.
Flag anything that won't survive the conversion:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/YOUR_SHEET_ID/edit
    Reading a live Sheet is read-only and uses a read-only Google token you supply — see the developers page for the one-time setup.
  3. Or skip the token — in Google Sheets choose File → Download → Microsoft Excel (.xlsx), then ask Claude to “read this file with xfa and tell me what it flagged.” Same reader, same flags.
  4. Read the flags. The result tells you exactly what it did and what it couldn’t carry across — so you review a short list instead of hunting for a wrong number later.
Before you convert: in Google Sheets open Data → Named functions to see each custom function’s definition — keep that list handy so you can rebuild them in Excel.

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