The Scenario
You are an office facilities manager. The company is relocating to a new office in six weeks. You have 50 employee home addresses in a Google Sheet. Column A has the address, columns B and C are blank.
HR wants to send every employee a commute guide showing the nearest transit station and the next few departure times so people can plan their new routine before day one.
The bad version of this week:
- You open a transit app and search for the first address
- You find the nearest station, write the name in column B, write the distance in column C
- After 10 rows, you realize you also need departure times, which are on a different screen
- You go back to row 1 and start over
- Friday arrives and you have complete data for 22 of 50 employees. HR sends the guide to 22 people and calls you about the other 28.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your spreadsheet that reads the address column and calls HERE to find the nearest transit station and next departures for each employee.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
For each address in column A of my sheet, geocode it and then use HERE to find the nearest transit station name and its distance in meters. Write the station name to column B and the distance to column C.
SheetXAI geocodes each address, calls HERE Transit, and writes station name and distance back. For departure times, extend the prompt or add a follow-up.
What You Get
A transit-enriched employee list for the commute guide:
- Column B — nearest transit station name for each employee address
- Column C — walking distance in meters from home to the station
Sort column C ascending and the employees with the shortest station walks appear at the top, useful for identifying who has an easy commute and who might need a transit subsidy conversation.
Want the next three departures written into columns D through I? Ask SheetXAI to extend the output in a follow-up prompt.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Employee address data from HR systems is rarely clean. SheetXAI handles common issues in the same prompt.
When departure times are needed alongside station data
HR wants station name, walking distance, and the next 3 departure lines and times in one row.
For each address in column A, geocode it and use HERE to find the nearest transit station name (column B) and walking distance in meters (column C). Then fetch the next 3 departures from that station and write line name, destination, and departure time to columns D, E, and F; G, H, and I; and J, K, and L respectively.
When addresses are in a non-standard format
Your HR export used "Apt 4B, 123 Main St, Chicago, IL" with the apartment number first.
Normalize the address format in column A to standard US format (street number, street name, city, state) and write the cleaned address to column B. Then geocode column B using HERE and find the nearest transit station, writing station name to column C and walking distance to column D.
When you only need data for employees in a specific region
The office is moving from Chicago to Denver. Only employees already in the Denver metro need the commute analysis.
For rows where column D contains "Denver" or "CO", geocode the address in column A using HERE and find the nearest transit station. Write station name to column B and distance in meters to column C. Skip all other rows.
When you need station data, departure times, and a commute score in one pass
HR wants to rank employees by commute convenience to identify who might need extra support post-relocation.
For each address in column A, geocode it using HERE. Find the nearest transit station and write the name to column B and walking distance to column C. Fetch the next 3 departure times and write the first departure time to column D. Then calculate a commute score in column E: "Excellent" if column C is under 300 meters, "Good" if between 300 and 800 meters, "Moderate" if between 800 and 1,500 meters, "Poor" if over 1,500 meters. Sort the final list by column E descending so the hardest commutes appear first.
The pattern: geocoding, station lookup, departure fetch, and scoring in one prompt, so HR gets a ranked list they can act on immediately.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any sheet with employee or customer addresses, then ask it to find nearest transit stations using HERE. The HERE integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. See also how to bulk-geocode a list of addresses or the HERE in Google Sheets overview.