Visual Builder

The Visual Builder lets you construct common formulas through a structured UI instead of raw syntax — great for teaching, for complex nested logic, and for the functions most people have to look up every time.

Supported formulas

The Visual Builder currently covers five formulas:

QUERY is a Google Sheets-specific function, so the builder hides it when you’re running inside Excel.

How to use it

1. Open the Visual Builder from the sidebar menu (or, in Google Sheets, pick Open Cell in Visual Builder to preload the active cell).
2. Choose the formula you want to build from the Formula dropdown.
3. Fill in the fields — each has a label explaining what it expects.
4. The Live Preview at the bottom shows the generated formula as you edit.
5. Click Insert to write it to the selected cell, or Save to Snippets to stash it for later.

IF builder

The IF builder uses a visual tree:

• Each node is a condition (e.g. A1 > 100) with a then and else branch.
• Either branch can be a plain value, a cell reference, or another nested IF — add as many levels as your logic needs.
• Combine conditions with AND/OR wrappers.

The builder handles all the parentheses and nesting; you just describe the shape.

Lookup builders (VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, INDEX+MATCH)

The three lookup builders walk you through the same conceptual fields, adapted to each function’s quirks:

1. Search value — what you’re looking for.
2. Search range — where to look.
3. Return range — what to return.
4. Match type / mode — exact, approximate, wildcard, etc. (XLOOKUP adds search mode for direction.)

INDEX + MATCH can look to the left of the search column — something VLOOKUP can’t. The builder uses that when you pick it, stitching together the two functions for you.

QUERY builder

For Google Sheets’ QUERY function, the builder gives you a structured interface for the SQL-ish fragments:

• Data range — the source table.
• SELECT — which columns to return.
• WHERE — filter conditions.
• ORDER BY — sort results.
• LIMIT — cap the row count.

Each field is optional and composed into the final QUERY string in the preview.

Round-tripping

The builder can also read a formula back into its visual form. Open the Visual Builder over a cell that already contains a supported formula and Formula Foundry will try to parse it back into fields — so you can tweak it visually and re-insert.

Tips

• Use the Visual Builder to learn syntax — the live preview is a working cheat sheet.
• After inserting, open the same cell in the Editor if you want to fine-tune the formula further.
• Custom variables work inside Visual Builder fields — they’re substituted at insert time just like in the Editor.