This is a smart idea dressed in the wrong tool. What u/nugama is describing is exactly the kind of data problem that a traditional spreadsheet can handle, but only with a lot of manual setup and maintenance. The request is straightforward: build a table of ingredients, costs, and locations, then have that table auto-populate a recipe sheet whenever you type an ingredient name. In Excel, this requires VLOOKUP or INDEX/MATCH formulas, careful cell locking, and a willingness to troubleshoot when a typo breaks the lookup. It works, but it treats the spreadsheet like a database that happens to look like a grid.
The deeper insight here is worth naming. This user wants their data to work for them, not the other way around. They want to type "chicken breast" and instantly see its cost per pound and whether it lives in the freezer or the fridge. That is a relational data problem, linking a lookup key to associated values, and it is the exact kind of repetitive, error-prone task that AI-native tools are designed to eliminate. Instead of building a formula that breaks when a cell shifts or a name changes, imagine a system that simply understands your ingredient list as a structured catalog. You type an ingredient, and the assistant knows where to find its cost and location because it understands the relationship between those columns, not because you hand-coded a reference.
What this means in practical terms is that u/nugama is already thinking like a power user, but they are fighting the limits of a tool built for accountants in the 1980s. The real solution is not a better Excel trick. It is a platform where you can define your ingredient catalog once, then ask natural questions like "what recipes can I make with items in my pantry under five dollars?" or "show me the total cost of this lasagna before I shop." The table is already there. The logic is already there. The missing piece is a system that treats your data as something to converse with, not something to formulaically reference.
Our take is simple: stop building workarounds for a tool that requires them. If you are manually creating lookup tables and worrying about cell references, you are spending time that could go into actually cooking and budgeting. Explore a solution that lets you define your ingredient list once, then automatically surfaces cost and location when you write a recipe. The goal is not to master Excel. The goal is to get dinner on the table and know what it costs. Focus on that.