Deep dive with google sheets
- 1. Deep Dive with Google Sheets
- 2. The working environment Changing the size, inserting, deleting, hiding/unhiding of columns and rows To select a row or column, click on the number (rows) or letter (columns) of the row or column you want to select. This will highlight the whole row or column blue, to indicate you have it selected. To change the width of a column, or height of a row, hover your cursor over the grey line denoting the edge of the column or row, until your cursor changes to look like this:
- 3. Then click and drag the cursor left or right to change the width of this column. It’s the same process to change the height of rows. Pro-tip: To quickly change the column width to fit your cell contents, double-click when you’re hovered over the grey line.
- 4. How to add columns in Google Sheets? To insert additional columns or rows, click on the existing column or row next to where you’d like to insert a new column or row. With the column or row selected (highlighted blue), right click to bring up the options menu, then select Insert Before (or Insert After) for Columns, or Insert Above (or Insert Below) for Rows:
- 5. If you reach the outer edges of a Google Sheet, you’ll notice the rows and/or columns stop. But don’t worry, you can add more. If you’ve scrolled all the way to the bottom of your Sheet (or added that much data), you’ll notice that you’re given 1,000 rows by default. There’s a button to add more rows if you need, either 1,000 as shown, or any number you wish (up to a limit, more on that below). If you reach the right edge of the Sheet, i.e. the last column, then you add more columns in the standard way. Right-click a cell in the last column to bring up the menu and then choose to add a column to the right. Pro-tip: If you want to add more than one column, there’s a trick to do it in one go. As an example, say you wanted to add three new columns to the right side of your Sheet, begin by highlighting the last three columns that are there already, then right clicking and choosing to inser new columns. It’ll then insert three new columns for you!
- 6. Data Limit: Finally, keep in mind that each Google Sheet is limited to 2 million cells, which sounds like a lot but is 50,000 rows by 40 columns (a totally reasonable sized transaction database for an ecommerce store for example). Anyway, you’ll find Sheets slows down considerably before reaching that limit. Most people report a slight slow down with tens of thousands of rows of data and complex formulas and models.
- 7. Adding/removing multiple sheets, renaming them Click the big plus button in the bottom left of your Google Sheet to add a new Sheet (also called a Tab).
- 8. Why use multiple tabs within your Google Sheet? Well, like a book with chapters on different topics, it can help separate different data and keep your Sheet organized. For example, you might have a Sheet solely to record your global settings (any variables like name, email, tax rate, headcount…) and another for transactional data, and yet another for the analysis and charts. The button with the three bars, next to the plus, is your index button, listing all of the tabs in your Google Sheet. This is super useful when you start having a lot of different tabs to manage.
- 9. To rename a sheet, or delete a sheet, click the small arrow next to the name (e.g. Sheet1) to bring up the menu. Here you’ll see the option to rename, to delete, or even hide (and unhide) Sheets. For naming, I try to indicate what’s in that tab, so use names like: Settings, Dashboard, Charts, Raw Data.
- 10. Formatting You’ll find all of the formatting options on the top tool bar, so you can center your headings, make them bold, format numbers as currency etc. You may find them all on one single row, or you may find some under the More button, as shown in this image: They’re similar to a word processor and pretty self- explanatory. You can always hit undo if you make a mistake (Cmd + Z on Mac, or Ctrl + Z on PC).
- 11. Try the following to format our basic table: ● Make the heading bold and size 14px ● Center the column headings and make them bold ● Center the tier column ● Change the date format to 01-Jan-2018 (Hint: the date format is found under the button that says 123.) ● Add a dollar sign, $, to the fee column ● Add a border around the whole table. (Note, you can also find the formatting options under the Format menu, between the Insert and Data menu options.)
- 12. Alternating colors Let me show you the option to add alternating row colors (banding) to your tables. Let’s apply it to our basic table, by highlighting the table and then from the menu:
- 13. Format > Alternating colors Remember, a little bit of formatting goes a long way. If you Sheet is more readable and tidy, people will be more likely to understand it and absorb the information.
- 14. Removing formatting This is my number 1 productivity tip in Google Sheets. To remove all formatting from a cell (or range of cells), hit Cmd + on a Mac or Ctrl + on a PC. This will save you so much time when you’re wanting to remove formatting that isn’t yours or that you no longer want or need.
- 15. Data and basic formulas
- 16. Different types of data You’ve already seen different data types in Google Sheets in our basic table. The key point to understand with spreadsheet data is that each cell contains the data itself, and a format applied to that data. For example, suppose a cell contained: 2, or 2.00, or $2, or $2.00 In each case the underlying data is the number 2, but with a different format applied each time. If we add 2 to each of these cells we get back the number 4 in every case (with formatting applied).
- 17. You’ll notice that currency data, percentage data and even dates are actually just numbers under the hood (dates? Really? Yes, they are, but that’s a discussion for another day). They’re all right-aligned, hanging out on the right edge of their cell. Text is left-aligned by default. If you want to force something to be stored as text, you can prepend a single quote, ' before the cell contents. So typing in '0123 will show as 0123 in your cell and be left-aligned. If you omit the single quote mark, then it’ll be stored as a number and show up as 123 without the 0.
- 18. Doing math on numbers Easy-peasy, just like you do on a calculator. You click the cell you want to do your calculation in, type an equals sign (=) to indicate you’re performing a calculation and then type in your formula, e.g Notice how calculation will show in the formula bar (1) as well as in the cell (2). You’ll notice that you get a preview of the answer (in this case, 25) above the formula.