Turn a spreadsheet into an audio briefing
Upload an .xlsx to Lissin, ask what moved and by how much, and get a short audio briefing. To explore a dataset, look at the sheet instead.
The short answer
Upload the .xlsx and ask for an interpretation, not a reading. Lissin reads the cell values and sheet names. A script that narrates rows is unusable. One that answers ‘what moved, by how much, and what is the likely reason’ makes a useful two-minute briefing.
How to do it
Put the question in the prompt
‘Which lines moved more than ten percent against last month, and what do they have in common’ is a briefing. ‘Summarise this spreadsheet’ is a list read aloud.
Give the sheets meaningful names
Lissin reads sheet names with the data, and they are one of the few clues to how the workbook is organised. ‘Q3 pipeline by region’ tells the script what it is looking at; ‘Sheet1’ tells it nothing.
Upload the workbook, not a screenshot
Lissin reads XLSX files directly. A screenshot of a sheet goes through OCR, which misreads numbers far more often than the file itself does.
At a glance
- Format
- XLSX read natively
- Best use
- Change summaries, anomalies, month-over-month narration
- Poor use
- Reading tables row by row
- Transcript
- Included, synchronised to the audio
Hear what comes out
Shows already published on Lissin, free to play in the browser.
Questions
- Can it do the arithmetic?
- It reads the values, including what formulas have already evaluated to. Treat any figure the script derives itself as something to check against the sheet before you repeat it in a meeting.
- Will it read charts in the workbook?
- No. Chart objects are not part of the text Lissin extracts.
- Is this a good idea at all?
- For a recurring numbers review that somebody currently writes up by hand every Monday, yes. For exploring a dataset, no. Do that on a screen.
What this does not do
Wide sheets narrate badly and long ones narrate worse. Pivot tables, conditional formatting and anything whose meaning is a colour are invisible.
Make your own show, or hear a sample
Make a show from your topic or documents in the Lissin iPhone app (iOS 26 or later). Or listen to public shows in the web player without installing the app.
Last reviewed September 9, 2026 by Lissin Editorial.