Formula Foundry simplifies formula creation and management in Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel, with an AI assistant for generation and debugging. Key features: -Visual builder for IF, QUERY, XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP -AI assistant to generate or explain formulas -Automatic Excel ↔ Sheets translation -Reusable variables (e.g., @@TaxRate) -Formula snippet library -Rich editor with syntax highlighting Now with full native Excel support via Office Add-in. Free trial, no card required: formulafoundry.io
As someone who spends most of my life in a proper IDE, jumping into Excel always feels like I'm trying to code with my hands tied behind my back. No variables? No multi-line visibility? It’s a mess.
I’ve been playing with the early build of Formula Foundry and it's basically the "Modern C++" update that spreadsheets desperately needed. The variables feature alone makes things actually maintainable. It’s refreshing to see a tool that doesn’t just "AI away" the logic, but actually gives you the infrastructure to build it right the first time. Good luck with the launch, guys.
@bjorn_king , really appreciate that! You hit the nail on the head - the lack of "state" in standard formulas is exactly why they become unreadable spaghetti so quickly.
That’s why I prioritized the variables engine. Under the hood, I’m treating the workbook as a flat dependency graph, and the variables act as named nodes that we can inject anywhere. It’s a lot closer to how we think about scoped logic in C++ than the "cell-referencing" nightmare we've all grown used to.
I'm still tweaking the evaluation order to make sure it's bulletproof for circular dependencies, so I’d love your brutal feedback on that once you’ve pushed it to the limit!
It's insane how many human hours each day are spent squinting at a tiny formula bar trying to deconstruct the logic. Hundreds of millions? Billions?
This is a great fix - one of those "oh yeah how did this not exist before?" kind of moments. I hope every spreadsheet power user gives it a look.
@cushmachine , you hit the nail on the head! I honestly think "billions" might even be an underestimate when you consider how much of the global economy runs on these formulas.
I asked myself that same "how does this not exist yet?" question every single day while building this. It turns out, building a custom engine that can parse the quirks of both Excel and Google Sheets into a clean, visual IDE is a massive technical headache. Most tools just try to put a "band-aid" on the formula bar, but we realized we had to build a whole new environment from the ground up to actually fix the "squinting" problem.
Thanks for the support - it makes all those late nights debugging the parser feel worth it! Do you have a specific "formula from hell" that you're excited to throw into the builder first?
Hi guys! I am learning to be a data analyst for few years now. I spend many, many hours in Excel every day. Sometimes my head hurts because I must remember so many long formulas for my homework.
I tried Formula Foundry today and it is really cool! For me, it is much easier to see the “blocks” of logic than just a big mess of text. It helps me to understand how the formula works, not just copy and paste it. This is a very good tool for students who want to learn fast. I will show this to my class! Good luck with launch!
@yana_lymych , that is so awesome to hear! Honestly, when I was starting out, I also spent way too much time hunting for a missing comma instead of actually analyzing the data. It’s frustrating.
That’s exactly why we built the Visual Builder. I wanted to separate the logic from the syntax. If you can understand the logic flow, the spreadsheet shouldn't get in your way. Keep going with your studies - we need more good data analysts!
If you find a specific formula in your classes that feels "impossible" to build, send it to me. I’d love to see if I can make the engine even better for students like you.
This formula linter add-on has already sped up my daily spreadsheet work. I used to copy/paste formulas into another tool just to debug or clean them up, which completely broke my flow.
Being able to see syntax highlighting and errors directly inside the spreadsheet is a huge improvement, and honestly a game changer for complex formulas.
Highly recommended if you work a lot in Google Sheets or Excel. Big kudos to the team for building something so practical.
@victoria_romanova1 , that "copy-paste dance" was exactly the friction I was obsessed with eliminating! There is nothing worse than losing your train of thought because you had to jump out of your workbook just to find a missing comma in another text editor.
Getting a real-time linter and syntax highlighting to work smoothly inside the spreadsheet environment was probably one of my biggest "pull-my-hair-out" challenges during development. The APIs for Excel and Google Sheets weren't exactly designed to host a professional IDE, so I had to get pretty creative with how the engine hooks into the grid.
Hearing that it’s keeping you in the "flow" is the ultimate compliment for a developer. Thanks for the kudos - it makes the struggle with those API limitations totally worth it!
I recently started my own jewelry shop, and I quickly realized that being a business owner means spending a lot of time in spreadsheets. Honestly, I found formulas very frustrating at first. I would rather spend my time creating new pieces than fixing broken cells!
Formula Foundry has been a lifesaver for me. It makes my inventory and pricing sheets much easier to manage. Instead of staring at a long line of code, I can see the logic clearly. It makes me feel much more confident that my numbers are correct. A great tool for small business owners who want to get back to their real work!
@pauline_van_putten , thank you so much! It’s really cool to see Formula Foundry being used for a jewelry business.
When I was building the engine, I really wanted to help people who "hate" spreadsheets. I know that for a creative person, a wall of text in a formula bar is the last thing you want to look at. That’s why I worked so hard on the visual aspect - I wanted the logic to feel more like building a project and less like writing code.
I'm glad it’s saving you time so you can get back to your designs. I've seen your work and it's amazing - don't let messy formulas slow you down!
I have been following the progress on this for a while and it is so great to see it finally live!
Honestly, I usually try to stay away from big spreadsheets because they always feel so messy and old-fashioned. But Formula Foundry actually makes it look like a modern workspace. It's very clean and everything is where it should be. You can tell a lot of thought went into the user experience here. It doesn't just work well, it looks great too. Big congrats to the whole team on the launch!
@oleksandr_zemlianoi , thanks so much! I really appreciate you saying that.
You know how it is - getting a tool to look "simple" and "clean" is usually twice as much work as building the actual features. I spent way too many hours making sure the UI didn't feel like a typical, boring spreadsheet add-on. I wanted it to feel like a place where you actually want to work.
So glad the effort on the design side shows. Let's grab a coffee soon and I'll show you some of the crazier logic I'm working on for the next update!
@oleksandr_zemlianoi Thanks Oleksandr! Its great to hear, and thats exactly the problem we're trying to solve for, messy and old fashioned spreadsheets. We figured it was about time that spreadsheets got a modern upgrade that still had a low bar to entry and didnt require you learn a completely new tool just to use the tool youre trying to get stuff done with. Just a simple and easy solution was our aim!
I spend a lot of time documenting complex systems, so readability and user experience are very important to me. It’s nice to see a tool that prioritizes both.
The traditional spreadsheet formula bar is painful to work with, and makes it hard to see what’s actually happening when things get complex. Formula Foundry’s approach of pulling formulas out and making them readable and structured makes the logic a lot easier to follow and work with.
Congrats on your launch! This is a really nice approach to a messy problem.
@yanisahs Thank you Yanisa! We are very glad to hear Formula Foundry's UI/UX is resinating with application functionality and documentation experts like yourself. We couldn't stand by and let the tiny formula bar (among other challenges) continue to battle folks who are frequently working in spreadsheets themselves, or with a team. Better visibility, leads to better formulas, leads to better outcomes! Thank you again!