The Scenario
You are a UX researcher. The usability study ran for three weeks and produced eighty interview responses in an Excel workbook, the Interview Responses tab, with columns for ParticipantID, Date, and ResponseText. Synthesis starts tomorrow at 10 AM and every response needs to be a data item in the Dovetail project before your team can start tagging.
It is 4 PM the day before.
The bad version of this afternoon:
- Open Dovetail, navigate to the Q2 Usability Study project
- Click "Add data item" for the first row
- Copy the ResponseText, paste it as the content
- Type the ParticipantID as the title, save
- Switch back to the Excel workbook, move to row two
- Repeat seventy-nine more times
- You are still at row twenty-two when your colleague messages you that synthesis got moved to 8 AM.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that reads every row and creates the Dovetail data items for you, so you do not have to paste a single response by hand.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Read each row in the Interview Responses tab of this workbook (columns: ParticipantID, Date, ResponseText). For each row, create a Dovetail data item in the project 'Q2 Usability Study' using ResponseText as the content and ParticipantID as the title. Write the returned Dovetail item ID into column D for each row.
SheetXAI reads all eighty rows, creates one Dovetail data item per row in the right project, and writes the Dovetail IDs back into column D. The import runs in the background. When it finishes, column D has eighty IDs — a paper trail of exactly what was created and where.
What You Get
Eighty Dovetail data items, each linked to the Q2 Usability Study project:
- Title — the ParticipantID from column A
- Content — the full ResponseText from column C
- Dovetail item ID — written back into column D for reference
- Ready for tagging — your team can start synthesis at 8 AM
The IDs in column D matter more than they look. If you need to update a response later, or if synthesis reveals a data quality issue in a specific row, you can look up the Dovetail ID directly from the workbook without hunting through the project.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Real research exports are not always tidy. SheetXAI handles cleanup and the import in the same prompt.
When participant IDs are inconsistent
Some rows say "P001," some say "Participant 1," some are blank. You want consistent titles in Dovetail before the team starts tagging.
Normalize the ParticipantID column in the Interview Responses tab so all values follow the format "P001," "P002," etc., filling in blanks sequentially. Then create one Dovetail data item per row using the normalized ID as the title and ResponseText as the content.
When some rows have empty ResponseText
A few participants did not complete the survey. You do not want blank Dovetail items in the project.
For each row in the Interview Responses tab where ResponseText is blank, write "SKIPPED — empty response" into column D and skip the Dovetail import. For all other rows, create a Dovetail data item using ResponseText as content and ParticipantID as title.
When you only want responses from a specific date range
The tab has responses from three separate rounds of testing. You only want the most recent round imported into this project.
Filter to rows in the Interview Responses tab where the Date column is between May 1 and May 13. For each row in that range, create a Dovetail data item in the Q2 Usability Study project. Write the returned Dovetail item ID into column D.
When the tab has raw unstructured notes that need structuring first
The ResponseText column has long freeform interview notes, some with timestamps and interviewer annotations mixed in. You want clean participant responses in Dovetail, not raw transcripts.
For each row in the Interview Responses tab, extract only the participant's spoken responses from the ResponseText column (strip timestamps and interviewer notes). Write the cleaned response into column E. Then create one Dovetail data item per row using the cleaned text as the content and the ParticipantID as the title. Write the returned Dovetail item ID into column F.
The pattern: instead of cleaning the export first and then importing, you ask for both in one prompt. SheetXAI does the conditional work row by row.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any workbook with interview notes, survey responses, or research data, then ask it to import each row into Dovetail. The Dovetail integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to batch create Dovetail insights from an Excel workbook or the Dovetail in Excel overview.