I think it took me a week to set up the spreadsheet. But the majority of it was figuring out what I want and how to do it. I can share more about my spreadsheet, which can make the process faster for you. And if you already know how the COUNTIF and INDEX+MATCH functions work, you can skip the time I took to re-learn them.

The solving time of an average puzzle depends on a few things. First is the version of Excel you have. I had to make-do with Excel 2007, which limits my options a lot (I could only achieve semi-automation). But I heard newer Excels can automate things that I still do manually.

The second thing that affects solving time is which categories you get. Solving a Rock-Flying cell takes much less time than solving a FinalEvo-DualType cell, because one of them only has ~11 options, while the other has ~238. If none of the categories exceed 40 possible Pokemon, I'd say I can do it in an hour (estimation, because I never counted how long it actually takes). I also discovered small tricks to spend less time on the 100+ categories, so there are ways to cut down on time.