From a weak prompt to a useful result
Write an email about the meeting.
I'm a project coordinator. Write a short, friendly email to my team of six moving Thursday's 2 p.m. planning meeting to Friday at 10 a.m., because the client presentation moved to Thursday. Ask them to reply if Friday doesn't work. Keep it under 120 words and include a subject line.
The strong prompt gives the AI everything it needs: who is writing, who is reading, what changed, why, what action is needed and how long it should be. The first draft will be much closer to what you want.
Summarizing meeting notes
Prompt
Here are my notes from today's meeting. Turn them into a table of action items with three columns: task, owner and due date. If an item is missing an owner or a date, list it under "Needs follow-up" instead of guessing.
Asking the AI not to guess is a simple way to reduce made-up details.
Getting help with a spreadsheet formula
Prompt
In Excel, column B has dates and column C has dollar amounts. Write a formula that adds up the amounts for March 2026 only, and explain how it works.
A typical answer is =SUMIFS(C:C,B:B,">="&DATE(2026,3,1),B:B,"<"&DATE(2026,4,1)). Before you rely on it, test it: add up a few March amounts yourself and confirm the formula gives the same total.