The Scenario
You are a used-car dealership manager. Your buyer just acquired 90 vehicles at a fleet auction. The auction sheet gave you VINs in column A of an Excel workbook, the Inventory tab, and nothing else. Before listings go live on your website, you need make, model, year, and manufacturing country for every row, plus MPG and fuel type for the ones without window stickers.
Your listing deadline is tomorrow at noon. Your parts manager estimates four hours of manual VIN lookups, and he has other work.
The bad version:
- Parts manager opens the NHTSA decoder, enters VIN one, copies make, model, year into the workbook
- Does ten rows, realizes column alignment is off, goes back to fix it
- By row thirty he is missing the manufacturing country field entirely
- At noon tomorrow he hands you a workbook with 90 rows and 40 blanks.
The one-prompt version is done before lunch.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook. It reads the VIN column and calls the API Ninjas VIN decode endpoint for each row, then calls the vehicle specs endpoint for MPG, transmission, and fuel type.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Decode every VIN in column A of the Inventory tab using API Ninjas and write make, model, year, and manufacturing country into columns B through E. Then for each vehicle, fetch MPG, transmission type, and fuel type from API Ninjas and add them to columns F through H.
SheetXAI calls the VIN decode endpoint for all 90 rows, writes the four profile fields, then calls the specs endpoint and adds the three fuel and transmission fields.
What You Get
A complete vehicle inventory workbook ready for your listing tool:
- Column B: Make
- Column C: Model
- Column D: Year
- Column E: Manufacturing country
- Column F: MPG
- Column G: Transmission type
- Column H: Fuel type
Ninety rows decoded and specced in one prompt. Your parts manager spends the morning doing actual parts work.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Auction workbooks always have edge cases. SheetXAI handles them inline.
When some VINs are malformed
Older vehicles and some imports have non-standard VIN formats.
Decode every VIN in column A of the Inventory tab using API Ninjas. If a VIN returns an error or fewer than four fields, write "VIN ERROR" in column B and leave C–E blank.
When you want to group by make for the website upload
Your listing tool uploads by make, so you need the workbook sorted and grouped.
After decoding all VINs, sort the Inventory tab by column B (make) ascending, then by column D (year) descending within each make. Add a blank separator row between each make group.
When you want to flag high-MPG vehicles for a badge
Your listing template supports a "Fuel Efficient" badge for vehicles above 30 MPG.
After writing MPG into column F, add "Fuel Efficient" in column I for any row where column F is above 30. Leave column I blank for everything else.
When the full listing-prep run is one prompt
Ninety VINs, decode, specs, error flagging, sorted by make, and fuel-efficiency badges all before noon.
Decode every VIN in column A of the Inventory tab via API Ninjas and write make, model, year, and manufacturing country into columns B–E. If a VIN errors, write "VIN ERROR" in column B. Fetch MPG, transmission, and fuel type and write into columns F–H. Add "Fuel Efficient" in column I where MPG is above 30. Sort by column B ascending, then column D descending within each make. Add a blank separator row between make groups.
The pattern: two API Ninjas calls per row, error handling, sorting, and a derived flag all in one instruction.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any vehicle inventory workbook, then ask SheetXAI to decode VINs and add specs using API Ninjas. The API Ninjas integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. See also how to enrich an EV fleet with battery data in Excel or the API Ninjas in Excel overview.