The short answer. "Not working" is four unrelated problems wearing the same face:
- Not there at all is an availability problem: plan, admin policy, or language setting.
- There, but Generate does nothing is a rate limit. Wait 24 hours.
- Works for some cells, not others is the 350-cell per-action cap.
- Works but returns something useless is usually a capability boundary, not a fault.
Work out which one you have before changing anything, because the fixes have nothing in common.
The AI function in Google Sheets fails quietly. There is rarely an error message, and the same blank cell can mean your admin turned the feature off, or that you pressed Generate too many times this week, or that the formula is doing exactly what it is supposed to do and you asked it for something it cannot see.
This is the full list of documented causes, in the order worth checking.
1. Your account is not eligible
Google states the requirement plainly: the feature requires an eligible Google Workspace or Google AI plan. It has also been distributed through the Workspace Experiments programme, which means two people in the same company on different plans can genuinely see different things in the same spreadsheet.
How to tell: type =AI( in a cell. If Sheets does not offer the function in autocomplete at all, this is your answer. It is not a formula problem and no amount of rewriting will help.
2. A Workspace admin has switched it off
Google lists admin settings as a distinct reason the function is unavailable. On a managed account, Gemini and AI features are administrable, and they are frequently disabled by default in organisations that have not finished a data-handling review.
How to tell: the function is absent for you but present for someone on a personal account in the same document. This one needs an internal request, not a workaround.
3. Your language setting is unsupported
This is the cause almost nobody guesses, and Google names it explicitly alongside admin settings. The relevant setting is your Google account language, not the spreadsheet's locale and not your browser's language.
How to tell: check the account language in your Google account settings. If it is set to something outside the supported set, the feature disappears with no explanation anywhere in Sheets.
4. You are not in Google Drive
Google documents that you cannot generate content with the AI function if you access Sheets through other cloud storage providers such as Box, Dropbox, or Egnyte with Google Drive.
How to tell: look at the URL. If you arrived at the spreadsheet through a third-party storage integration, move the file into Drive proper and reopen it.
5. You have hit a generation limit
If the function exists, the formula is right, and pressing Generate simply does nothing, you are rate limited. Google's wording:
The AI function has short term and long term generation limits. If you reach a long term limit, you temporarily can't click 'Generate.' You can wait for 24 hours and then try again.
There is no counter, no quota page, and no way to see how close you are. The only signal is the button going inert.
6. It worked, but only for the first 350 cells
If part of your column filled and the rest did not, nothing is broken. Google generates only the first 350 selected cells containing AI functions in a single action. This is the single most common "the AI function is not working" report and it is not a fault at all. We wrote up the 350-cell limit and the four ways past it in detail.
7. You asked for something it structurally cannot do
Three documented boundaries account for most "the output is wrong" reports:
- It cannot see your spreadsheet. The function has no access to the rest of the file or to your Drive. It only knows what the prompt string contains. "Summarise column B" produces a confident answer about nothing.
- Responses are text only. Asking for a table, an image, or structured data gets you a text approximation of one.
- Embedded AI functions are not supported. The spreadsheet reflex of wrapping a volatile call in
IFERRORor spreading it withARRAYFORMULAdoes not work here, which also means you cannot build your own retry logic around it.
A one-minute diagnostic
| What you see | What it is | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| No AI function in autocomplete | Plan, admin, or language | Check plan, then admin policy, then account language |
| Function exists, Generate inert | Long-term generation limit | Wait 24 hours |
| First 350 cells filled only | Per-action cap | Select the next block, or move off the cell function |
| Output ignores your data | No spreadsheet access | Put the data into the prompt string itself |
| Nested formula does nothing | Embedded calls unsupported | Call it directly in its own cell |
If the answer is that it will never do what you need
Several of the causes above are not solvable from inside the spreadsheet. A disabled admin policy is a company decision. An unsupported plan is a purchase. And the limits are limits.
If what you actually need is one prompt run over a few thousand rows with retries and visible failures, that is a different tool rather than a different formula. ReplyLabs runs the batch outside the sheet and writes results back into the cells, with a per-row status so a failure is visible instead of blank, and you bring your own model key if you would rather pay your provider directly. The trade-offs are laid out in BYOK versus managed pricing.
Related reading
- The 350-cell limit explained
- The AI tools for Google Sheets, compared honestly
- Troubleshooting guide
All limits and restrictions above are from Google's AI function documentation, checked August 2026.