Excel or Sheets Formula From Plain English

Describe a calculation in plain words and get a working formula, a line-by-line explanation, and the edge cases that will silently break it.

Write a formula for [Excel / Google Sheets: pick one; the function sets differ].

What I want to calculate: [PLAIN ENGLISH, e.g. "sum column C where column A says 'West' and the date in column B falls in the current month"]
My layout: [WHERE THINGS LIVE, e.g. "headers in row 1, data in A2:F500, dates in column B"]
My version, if I know it: [e.g. "Microsoft 365" / "Excel 2016" / "no idea"]

Give me four things:

1. THE FORMULA: paste-ready, using my actual cell references. If my description is ambiguous, make the sensible call and state it in one line ("Assuming 'this month' means the current calendar month, not the last 30 days"): don't stop to ask.

2. HOW IT READS: one line per function, explaining what it does to MY data, not a textbook definition. I should be able to modify this formula myself next month.

3. WHAT WILL BREAK IT: the 2-3 realistic failure cases for this specific formula: blanks, numbers stored as text, dates that are really text, trailing spaces, case sensitivity. For each: the symptom I'd see ("returns 0 with no error") and the one-line fix or check.

4. THE MODERN VERSION: if a newer function does this better (XLOOKUP over VLOOKUP+MATCH, FILTER, SUMPRODUCT, LET for readability), show it and name the versions that support it. If I said an older version or "no idea", make the compatible formula the primary answer.

Rules:
- Don't wrap everything in IFERROR by default: blanket error-hiding hides bad data. Suggest it only where a miss is legitimate (a lookup that can validly find nothing), and say what it will mask.
- If what I described is really a pivot table or Power Query job (repeated manual formulas across changing data), say so and give me the three-step version of that path instead of a heroic formula.

How to use

The layout line is what separates a paste-ready formula from a template you still have to adapt. Give real columns and rows. For anything gnarly, paste 5-10 sanitized rows of actual data; the model catches text-formatted numbers and layout surprises it can't guess from a description. If the formula errors, paste the exact error and the formula back rather than re-describing the task.

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