#9: Reverse Prompt Engineering for Excel

Alright, yesterday we discussed a concept called Reverse Prompt Engineering.

Today we’ll see how you can apply it for Excel.

Reverse Prompt Engineering for Excel

Reverse Prompt Engineering helps us get to a prompt that can produce the desired outcome. After we have the initial prompt, we can use it for other purposes.

Let’s say that we have the following Excel formula:

COUNTIF(D5:D12,”>=21″)

We want to use ChatGPT to reverse prompt engineer this formula for us, so we will be able to use this prompt later.

The naive way to do this would be to give ChatGPT the following instructions:

However, if we “cold prompt“ ChatGPT it’s just not going to work.

We need to warm it up or “prime“ it.

So let’s start a new chat with the prompt.

This is a good start.

Then we can add the question and ChatGPT will be able to find the reverse prompt!

And the cool thing is that now we can use this prompt in the future.

Alright that’s it for today!

Best,
Gabor Soter, PhD

A little about me:

  • did my PhD in Europe’s largest AI and robotics research lab

  • worked as software engineer and CTO at Y-combinator-backed and AI startups

  • in my previous startup my team worked with OpenAI