Writing excerpts for your WordPress posts can be an exhausting and time-consuming task, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of posts missing excerpts, and you have to manually write excerpts for every post.
That’s why, in this tutorial, we will show you how to autogenerate WordPress post excerpts using AI in Google Sheets, and how to import those AI-generated excerpts from Google Sheets to WordPress.
Here’s what you’ll need to automatically generate post excerpts in Google Sheets and import them into WordPress:
a) WP Sheet Editor plugin:
This bulk editor plugin allows you to increase your productivity by viewing and managing posts, pages, products and custom post types in a spreadsheet within WordPress.
You can download the plugin here:
Download Posts, Pages, and Custom Post Types Spreadsheet Plugin - or - Check the features
b) Google Sheets Sync service:
The Google Sheets Sync service allows you to export and import WordPress content using Google Sheets.
You can export and import immediately, as well as create scheduled exports and imports (one-time, in real time, recurring).
You can sign up to the service here:
Sign up to the Google Sheets Sync Service - or - Check the features
c) Any Google Sheets add-on to generate content
There are many add-ons for Google Sheets that can help you generate content.
In this example, we are going to use the GPT for Sheets™ and Docs™ extension, but you can use any other add-on.
Once you’ve gotten everything you need, you can follow the steps below in order to auto generate post excerpts and import them from Google Sheets.
Step 1. Connect WordPress to Google Sheets
When you sign up to the Google Sheets Sync service, you’ll get a helper plugin that will allow you to connect your WordPress site to your Google Sheets account, to the Google API, and to the WP Sheet Editor API.
Follow this guide to do it.
Step 2. Export your WordPress posts to Google Sheets
We have many WordPress posts on our site, but they’re missing excerpts. You can see that by paying attention to the Excerpt column.
To export our WordPress posts to Google Sheets, you need to start by opening the Export tool.
Select these values in order to export your WordPress posts to Google Sheets:
- What columns do you want to export: In this example, we will export some selected columns only (Title, Content, Excerpt).
- Which rows do you want to export: All the rows from my current search.
- What app will you use to edit this file: Google Sheets
- Name of this export: Add a name here, and this will be the name of your Google Sheet.
- Click on Start new export.
Now you need to click on the View Google Sheet link to view the Google Sheet generated by this export.
We have exported our WordPress posts to Google Sheets. The fields we have exported are ID, Title, Content, and Excerpt.
Step 3. Generate WordPress post excerpts using AI in Google Sheets
Now that you have exported your posts from WordPress to Google Sheets, you can start generating the excerpted posts using artificial intelligence.
For this, as we have mentioned, you can use any artificial intelligence extension that allows you to generate texts, summarize texts, etc.
You just need to enter the prompt where you want your post excerpt to be generated.
You can ask the AI tool to summarize the text from the Content column to write the excerpts.
We have autogenerated our first post excerpt in the Google Sheet.
Now it’s just a matter of autofilling the cells below to autogenerate the other excerpts.
Once you have generated all the excerpts, you’ll be ready to import them from Google Sheets into WordPress.
Step 4. Import AI-generated post excerpts from Google Sheets
To import the AI-generated post excerpts from Google Sheets into WordPress, you need to start by opening the Import tool in WP Sheet Editor.
Now you need to select these values in the Import tool:
- Source: Google Sheets
- Google Sheet file: Select the Google Sheet where you generated your product descriptions. If you don’t find the file, you can refresh the list.
- Click on Next.
In this example, we will Import all the columns, but you can Select individual columns to import if you want.
We will Update existing items, ignore new items and match the products using the record_id/ID fields.
Let’s click on Next.
Finally, you’ll see a preview of the data.
If everything is OK, you need to click on The preview is fine, start import.
And as you can see, our WordPress posts have post excerpts now!
A task that could have taken you many hours will only take a few minutes with WP Sheet Editor, Google Sheets, and any artificial intelligence tool that allows you to generate texts in Google Sheets.