The Scenario
Your data team maintains a 50-term business glossary in an Excel workbook — term names in column A, definitions in column B. Metabase was just upgraded to a version that includes a native glossary feature. The request from the head of data: push the entire glossary into Metabase so analysts see definitions natively when they hover over fields. The data is already in the workbook. The only gap is the 50 manual clicks it would take to get it into Metabase.
The bad version:
- Open Metabase, navigate to the glossary section, click New Term.
- Type the first term name, paste the definition, save.
- Click New Term. Type the second term. Paste. Save.
- Repeat 48 more times, spending about 90 seconds per entry and 75 minutes total on content that is already formatted and ready to go.
The glossary doesn't get imported because the person who owns it can always think of something better to do with 75 minutes than copy-paste.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Excel workbook. It can read term names and definitions from the workbook and create Metabase glossary entries in bulk — writing a status note per row when done.
For each row in this workbook, create a Metabase glossary entry using the term name in column A and definition in column B — write 'created' into column C when done
What You Get
- One Metabase glossary entry per row.
- Column C receives "created" for each successful row.
- Failed rows get an error note in column C — duplicate term, API error, or otherwise — rather than a silent skip.
- Analysts can immediately reference definitions natively inside Metabase questions and dashboards.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Some definitions are too long and need trimming
Read terms from column A and definitions from column B. If any definition is longer than 500 characters, write the first 497 characters followed by '...' into column D, then create the glossary entry using the text in column D. Write 'created' or 'trimmed+created' into column E accordingly.
Long definitions get trimmed automatically. You can review column D later to rewrite them properly.
You want to skip rows where column B is blank
For each row where column B is not blank, create a Metabase glossary entry using the term in column A and definition in column B. Write 'created' into column C. For any row where column B is blank, write SKIPPED in column C.
A clean status column showing exactly what was created and what still needs a definition.
You want a dry-run first
Read all rows in this workbook where columns A and B are both non-blank and write a preview into Sheet2: term name, definition length in characters, and whether a glossary entry with that name already exists in Metabase
The dry-run catches duplicates and blank-definition gaps before you touch the Metabase glossary.
Full import with error handling in one shot
For each row where column A and column B are both non-blank, create a Metabase glossary entry using the term in column A and definition in column B. Write 'created' on success, the error message on failure, or 'SKIPPED - blank definition' for missing column B into column C. In a Summary worksheet write total rows processed, total created, total failed, and total skipped.
One prompt, complete import, full receipt. The head of data gets the confirmation without a follow-up meeting.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open the Excel workbook with your business glossary, then ask it to push all 50 terms into Metabase in one pass. Also useful: scaffolding Metabase collections and dashboards from a workbook, and the hub overview on connecting Metabase to Excel.