Every small business has one of these somewhere: a list of subcontractors, suppliers, or leads scattered across text messages, business cards, and a notes app, with no phone number, address, or category attached to half of them. This weekend's build turns that mess into a real directory in under an hour, using two Gemini features that Google has built directly into Sheets — no add-ons, no API key, and no script to maintain.
What's new in Sheets
Google has spent 2026 folding generative AI straight into the Sheets toolbar instead of leaving it as a side chat. Two features matter for this build. Help me organize lets you describe a table in plain language and Gemini builds the columns and rows for you. Fill with Gemini goes further: point it at a column and it can generate text, categorize existing data, summarize it, or pull in real-time information from Google Search to fill in the blanks — which is exactly what turns a bare list of company names into a directory with categories and contact details attached. There's also a lighter-weight Smart Fill that spots a pattern across two columns you've already started and offers to finish it, no prompt required.
Both features live behind the sparkle icon in the toolbar or the menu that appears when you select a range, and they require Workspace "smart features" to be turned on for your account — most personal and business Google accounts have this on by default.
What you're building
The end result is one tab with a clean, sortable table: Name, Category, Phone, Website, Location, and Notes. It replaces the scroll-through-old-texts routine with a sheet you can filter by category or search by name, and it takes about as long to build as it takes to read this post.
Step 1: Dump the raw list in
Open a blank Sheet and paste whatever you've got into column A — company names, half-remembered contractor names, whatever. Don't clean it up first. Messy input is exactly what these tools are for.
Step 2: Let Gemini build the structure
Select your list, open the AI panel, and use Help me organize with a prompt like: "Turn this list into a table with columns for Category, Phone, Website, Location, and Notes." Gemini will lay out the columns and, where it has enough context, take a first pass at filling them in.
Step 3: Fill the gaps with real-time lookups
For anything left blank, select the empty cells in a column and use Fill with Gemini with a targeted instruction — for example, "look up the phone number and website for each company" or "categorize each business as electrical, plumbing, excavation, or other." Because Fill with Gemini can draw on live Google Search results rather than only what's already in your sheet, it can often find a business's phone number or category even when your original list was just a name.
Step 4: Verify before you trust it
This is the step people skip and shouldn't. Read down the filled columns before you rely on any of it — a wrong phone number for a subcontractor you call once a year is a minor annoyance, but a wrong one for someone you're trying to reach on a Friday afternoon during a callback is not. Spot-check a handful of entries against a quick search or your own memory, and delete or fix anything you're not sure about. Treat the AI pass as a fast first draft, not a finished directory.
Step 5: Make it usable
Once the data looks right, select the range and use Sheets' built-in "Convert to table" option so you get sortable columns and a dropdown-friendly Category field for free. Freeze the header row, and you have a directory that's actually pleasant to use instead of a wall of text.
Where this approach breaks down
Fill with Gemini is strongest on well-known, easily searchable businesses — a national supplier or a contractor with an active web presence. It's much weaker on the guy who does excavation work out of his truck and has never had a website, because there's nothing for it to find. For those entries, you're still doing the legwork by hand, which is fine — the point of this build is to eliminate the busywork on the entries that do have public information, not to replace your own knowledge of who you actually work with.
It's also worth remembering this is a convenience layer over Google Search, not a verified business database. If you're using the directory for anything that matters — sending a deposit, signing a contract — confirm the details directly with the business first.
The takeaway
You don't need a CRM or a custom app to fix a messy contact list. If you already have a Google account, the tools are already in Sheets: paste your list, describe the table you want, let Fill with Gemini take a first pass at the gaps, and spend ten minutes checking its work. That's a real improvement over a scattered list of texts, built in one sitting.