Google’s ready to make its flagship learning app a little bit better for those relying on the free tier. The learning tool I’m talking about is NotebookLM, and it, in addition to Google Docs and Google Slides support, will soon gain support for Google Sheets as well.
This comes soon after the tech giant rolled out back-end improvements to boost the tool’s performance, quality, and its overall contextual understanding, alongside the option to tell the tool to adopt a goal, voice, or role for specific projects.
For reference, NotebookLM currently lets you import information from links (YouTube and general websites), alongside copied text, and even Google Docs and Slides saved in your Google Drive. These are all supported sources on the platform’s base (free) tier, and you’ll soon be able to add Google Sheets and Excel files (.XLS and .XLSX) to the list.
The tech giant didn’t explicitly announce support. Instead, it only confirmed it in passing in an X reply, as highlighted by Android Authority.
Closing the feature gap for free users
“Coming very soon,” said the official NotebookLM X account in reply to a user requesting Google Sheets support. So although we don’t really have a timeframe just yet, we do have confirmation that support is indeed on the way.
For what it’s worth, Google Sheets is already a supported file source on NotebookLM’s paid tier. Free users, however, have had to rely on workarounds like converting Sheets to supported formats like PDFs or Google Docs to leverage data and analyze it via NotebookLM. Sheets support should give users one less reason to subscribe to Google AI Pro to gain access to NotebookLM Plus.
Why would one want to import Sheets into NotebookLM, you may ask. Well, NotebookLM isn’t just about Audio and Video Overviews, it is fundamentally a research tool that can help you make sense and connect the dots across all of your dense Excel files. Think of running vast charts, data sheets, or just your own personal expenses through the tool to produce detailed data-driven reports full of insights, which can later be converted into mind maps and even overviews if needed.
