Things you can do with Google Sheets:

Transcription

1 Google Sheets What is Google Sheets? Google sheets is a free online spreadsheet program that allows you to create spreadsheets. Think of it as an online version of Microsoft Excel, which has similar and different features. If you installed Google Drive, you can create items in any software program and Save them to your Google Drive, but they will still open in the software that created them. Also, if you create a Google Sheet, it will always open in the web browser. A major advantage of Google Sheets is the ability to share and collaborate on sheets in real-time without sending attachments back and fourth. Things you can do with Google Sheets: Create and format text spreadsheets. Create and edit sheets that include formulas and calculations. Create charts to show data. Upload Microsoft Excel files and convert it to a Google Sheet. Share and collaborate on sheets in real-time. Choose share access and privileges. Download a Google Sheet to your computer in Excel, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF, HTML, or zip file formats. Translate sheets into other languages. sheets to other people as attachments. Creating Sheets There are many ways to create a Google Sheet. You can use the New Sheet feature in Google Drive, navigate to click New, upload an existing one (even Microsoft Excel files), or use a template from the online templates gallery. All of these methods will create a new sheet that is stored in your Google Drive and can be accessed from any device with Internet access. Keep in mind that if you create a Google Sheet while in Google Drive, it is saved to the folder you are currently viewing. Thus, if you have a folder name School Items, and you are viewing the contents of that folder, when you create the new Google Sheet from the button in Google Drive it will be saved in the School Items folder. Creating a New Sheet from Google Drive You use this method to create a brand new file in which you need to add all of the content and formatting. It is like loading an empty piece of paper into a typewriter. Basic Steps to Create a Google Sheet from Google Drive 1. Open your Internet browser. 2. Navigate to 3. If necessary, log in. 4. Click New in the upper-left of your Google Drive screen. 5. Click Google sheets. (Note: The new sheet appears on a separate browser tab and you must start typing or rename the sheet for Google to save it.) Uploading Existing Sheets Uploading sheets means copying one of your saved files to your Google Drive system. After uploading you can open the file in Google sheets. This keeps the file in the original format and makes a copy that is converted

2 into the Google sheets format. Converting it will allow you to edit and collaborate online from any device with Internet access. Basic Steps to Upload a Sheet 1. Open your Internet browser. 2. Navigate to 3. If necessary, log in. 4. Click New in the upper-left of your Google Drive screen. 5. Click File Upload. 6. Navigate to the file in your computer. (Tip: To select multiple files, press Shift or Ctrl and click all the files to upload.) 7. Click Open or Ok. Upload and Automatically Convert All Files You can also upload a variety of file types into Google Drive and have them automatically converted into a Sheet for editing and collaboration. The original file is copied and converted into Google Sheet format. This will be the setting until you turn it off and all files being uploaded are converted if the format can be converted. Files in Google Sheets format do not count against your disk space. Basic Steps to Set Up Automatic Converting 1. Click on the Settings icon in your Google Drive. 1. Click Settings from the drop-down menu. 2. Check the box next to Convert uploaded files to Google sheets editor format. 3. Click Done. Sheets can be converted into Google sheets format from the following types:.xls,.xlsx,.ods,.csv, plain text (.txt),.tsb, and.tsv. Creating Sheets from Templates Creating a sheet from a template means that you want to create a sheet based on another sheet. This method is used when a sheet is set up with formatting and a style, that you would like to use but only need to change the content. Examples of templates are invoices, monthly reports, account payable, timesheets, and much more. These templates that are premade yet customizable forms, docs, sheets, slides, etc. that other users created for you to use as a starting point. You can access templates anytime by going to Basic Steps to Create Sheets from a Template 1. Open your Internet browser. 1. Navigate to or go to and skip to step If necessary, log in. 3. Click New in the upper-left of your Google Drive screen. 4. Click Google sheets. 5. In the Google sheets sheet window, click File. 6. Point to New. 7. Click From template 8. In the browser tab that appears, use the links on the left to find an appropriate template category. 9. Once you find a template, click Use this Template. 10. Rename the template by clicking the name of it in the upper-left corner and typing an appropriate name. Google Sheets 2

3 Renaming Sheet Files Whenever you create a new sheet it is titled Untitled Sheet. The name appears in the upper-left corner of the new sheet screen. There are many ways to rename a sheet based on whether the sheet is in your Drive list or opened in sheets. You should change it. Name files in a manner in which you know the contents. Try to be descriptive and avoid numbering files that have edits from previous versions. Note: Names can be up to 255 characters long. Basic Steps to Rename a Google Sheet When Open in Sheets 1. While in the sheet window. 2. Click the wording Untitled Sheet or other wording in upper-left. 3. Type the new name. 4. Click Ok. Basic Steps to Rename a Google Sheet When in Drive 1. From Drive, click the More menu button. 2. Click on Rename. 3. Type the new name. 4. Click Ok. or 1. Click the File tab from your doc. 2. Click Rename. 3. Type the new name. 4. Click Ok. Saving sheets Basically, you never need to save a Google Sheet. Google sheets nearly instantaneously and frequently saves your sheets saves to a secure, online storage facility. Thus, you can create sheets without the need to save it to your local computer that can be accessed from any Internet device. Also, in the event of a local hard drive crash, browser shutdown, computer freeze, or other issue, you will not lose your saved content. Since Google sheets saves the file so frequently, sheets also keeps a complete revision history of your sheet, so you can revert to any version, at any time. The status of your sheet is displayed to the right of the toolbar menu at the top of the sheet. Entering Data Inputting data in Sheets is different than word processing. First, you do not have a blinking cursor unless you are currently entering data. Sheets appears like a large table consisting of cells, rows, and columns with an active cell. A cell is a single square in the sheet. The active cell is the cell with the blue box surrounding it. It is the cell where data is entered. A row is the entire group or cells going horizontally (left and right) and they are labeled with a number. A column is an entire group of cells going vertically (up and down) and they are labeled with a letter. You identify a cell with the column letter followed by the row number. Thus, the first cell in any sheet is known as A1. Also, a range is a group of adjacent cells. Click in a cell and input your data. Sheets will automatically format the data and it may be cut off if it is inputted in a cell next to another cell that has data. Thus, data will cross into the next column unless there is data in the next column. If your data appears to be cut off, do not panic. Always look in the formula bar (area next to the fx below the toolbar) to see what data is in the cell. To the right is a picture of a sample sheet and the formula bar. You should notice the text in A1 is the active cell and it matches the data in the formula bar. Google Sheets 3

4 Keep in mind that sheets is not a program to type large paragraphs of text. Each cell has a limit on the number of total characters (around 50,000 characters). Sheets is used to line up data in rows and columns, perform calculations, and chart data. Editing and Formatting Sheets Working in Google Sheets is like working in any spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel, Lotus 123, and such. If you are familiar with any of these programs, then Google sheets will feel similar. When inputting data, it is best to type in as much of the material as possible into the proper cells, rows, and columns. and then format the your sheet afterwards. Generally, to format data that has been typed, you need to highlight or select the cell or range and then apply the formatting changes. To better understand the possible changes, you should have an idea of the toolbar. Below is a picture of the Google Sheets Toolbar and a list of the commands with their function. You can always point to a button and it will tell you what the button does. Button Function Description Print Print the sheet. Undo When you need to go back an action per click. Redo Format Painter Format as currency Format as percent Decrease Decimal Increase Decimal More Formats Font Repeat the last Copies the formatting from one area to another. If you single click format painter you may copy the formatting to multiple areas. If you double-click format painter you can copy formatting to many areas. If you double-click format painter, be sure to click format painter when finished to turn it off. Use this button to add a dollar ($) sign and decimals to a number. Thus, if you type 4 and format as currency the cell will display $4.00. Use this button to add a percent (%) sign and decimals to a number. It multiples your number by 100%. Thus, if you type 4 and format as percent the cell will display %. Lower the amount of decimal places, one place per click. Raise the amount of decimal places, one place per click. Format the data in the cell with other formats such as a Number, Date, and more formats. Click the drop-down to see a list of various fonts. Arial is the default font or typeface. Google Sheets 4

5 Font Size Bold Italics Strikethrough Fill Color Borders Merge Cells Horizontal Alignment Vertical Alignment Text Wrapping Insert link Insert Comment Insert Chart Filter Functions The size of the letters. The bigger the number the bigger the text. This setting impacts the way it prints. Make the text darker and thicker looking. Make the text sort of slanted and fuzzy. Make the appear with a line through it. Add a background color to the cell or range that is selected. Add lines to cells or ranges that print. Combine more than one cell into a single cell. Use this command to horizontally align the text in a cell or range on the Left, Center, or Right. Use this command to horizontally align the text in a cell or range on the Top, Center, or Bottom. Turn on text wrapping for a cell or range, so that text inputted into sheets does not wrap to the next line when it reaches the right border of the cell. Make text in a cell clickable to a webpage, address, or other files. Add a comment or a range that offers suggestions, notes, etc. Insert a chart that presents the data in a graphical manner. Apply a filter to display only the data you want based on a criteria. Example of filtering would be if you have a list of customers, only display customers with last name Smith. Insert a pre-made function to calculate data. Examples of functions are Sum, Average, Count, etc. Formatting Numbers, Date, Time, Etc. Text inputted into sheets is formatted automatically by Google Sheets, but you can manually format data in a variety ways including: percent, decimal, date, time, and more. Even after Google Sheets formats a cell, you can choose to change the format. For example, if you type a date, 8/1/15, sheets will change it to 8/1/2015. You may want to keep the four-digit year, but you can change the date format to one that uses a two-digit year instead. Basic Steps to Apply Specific Formatting 1. Select the cells you want to combine. 2. Click the Format button on the toolbar. 3. Select what type of formatting you desire. You may need to choose more formats or you can even create your Google Sheets 5

6 Merging Cells Often in a sheet, you want to combine adjacent cells into one big cell. This is useful for titles and headings. If you look at the image to the right, you will see that columns G and H and rows 1-3 have been merged into 1 large cell. The text in the cell is centered horizontally and vertically. You have a few options when merging to Merge All, Merge horizontally, Merge vertically, and Unmerge. Merging All, combines the rows and columns into a single cell. Merge horizontally merges across the rows maintaining each row that was selected. Merge vertically merges the rows to maintain the number of columns that was selected. Basic Steps to Merge Cells 1. Select the cell or range. 2. Click the Merge cells button on the toolbar. 3. Select the type of merge (combining) you desire. Using More Than One Sheet in a Spreadsheet (Workbook) File Spreadsheet programs allow you to create many sheets within the same file. Do not confuse Sheet1 with the file name. The entire spreadsheet is the file, but each sheet at the bottom represents sheet with data related to the entire spreadsheet file. For example, if you want to track monthly expenses for the year 2016, the Sheet file or workbook would likely have 13 sheets in it. Twelve sheets representing each month (January 2016, February 2016, etc.) and one sheet which summaries the 12 sheets. Thus, one file has many sheets inside of it and each sheet can be named to represent the data. When you start a new spreadsheet (workbook), there is one sheet listed at the bottom called Sheet1. The picture to the right shows an example. If you click the tiny arrow or right-click where it says Sheet1, you have options to Delete, Duplicate, Copy to, Rename, Change color, Protect sheet, Hide, View comments, Move right, and Move left. Inserting Formulas and Math Operators Google Sheets is able to insert many functions or formulas to perform calculations with the data. Thus, when you look at a sheet, some of the data may be a result of a calculation. If you click in a cell and look in the formula bar, you will see if it is inputted data or the result of a function. To the right is an example of the cell showing the result 450 in cell A3 and the function =SUM(A1:A2) appears in the formula bar. All functions and formulas start with an equal sign and they use cell references to refer to the cells with data. When creating formulas remember the Order of Operations. In mathematics, you may want a certain math to happen before another math. To accomplish it, you must use the Order of Operations. To remember the order of operations, use the acronym P lease E xcuse M y D ear A unt S ally. P for parenthesis, E for exponents, M for multiplication, D for division, A for addition, and lastly S for subtraction. Thus, in Sheets a formula typed in a cell as =2*(3+5) would give the result of 16 because parenthesis comes before multiplying. Feel free to create your own basic arithmetic formulas. For example, if you have 200 in cell A1 and 250 in cell A2, if you type =A1+A2 in cell A3, you will get the result of 450. It is important that you refer to the cell with Google Sheets 6

7 the value. When doing this, if you change the value, the formula will instantly recalculate and update all cells that have formulas based on the cell that changed. Below is a table with the basic math operators: Operator Symbol Name of Symbol How to Input Addition + Plus sign Hold SHIFT and Press = on number row or plus on keypad Subtraction - Hyphen Press the key next to 0 on number row or = or hyphen on keypad Multiplication * Asterisk Hold SHIFT and press 8 on number row or asterisk on keypad Division / Forward slash The same key with the question mark or slash on keypad Exponents ^ Caret Hold SHIFT and Press 6 on number row Another way to have totaled A1 and A2 in the previous example would be to use a function that would look something like =sum(a1:a2). The Sum function and many others can be inserted into sheets without typing the entire function as well as selecting the cells you want to use. Basic Steps to Insert a Function 1. Click the cell where you want the result. 2. Click the Function button. 3. Click the function from the list or choose more functions. Find the function and Insert it. 4. Complete the function by choosing the appropriate data. Using Auto-Fill to Extend a Series or Copy Auto-fill is used to repeat a pattern or copy data in a spreadsheet. Auto-fill is the little blue box in the lower-right of the active cell or selected range. Note: When dragging the blue box, you can only select those cells that are directly above, beneath, or beside the highlighted cells. Basic Steps to Use Auto-Fill 1. Enter your content. 2. Highlight the cells. A small blue box appears in the lower-right corner. 3. Click the blue box and drag it to select additional cells where you'd like your content to repeat. If Auto-Fill recognizes a pattern in the content of the selected cells, it fills in the remaining items to complete the pattern. For example, if you have Monday in A1, Tuesday in A2, and Wednesday in A3, if you drag the Auto-fill box down the column it will finish the pattern by auto-filling Thursday, Friday, Saturday, etc. If Auto-Fill doesn't recognize a pattern, it will just repeat (copy) the content that was highlighted. Adding Images You can add several types of images into your sheet, including.gif (not animated),.jpg, and.png. Images must be less than 2 MB.You can upload images from your computer or locate images from Drive. You can also add images from the Google search option, LIFE magazine photos or add images from the stock photos Google makes available. Google Sheets 7

8 To insert an image in your sheet: 1. Click the Insert drop-down menu from the toolbar and select Image. 2. Depending on what image you would like to add to the doc, select from the following options: Upload : Choose an image from your computer and click the Select button Take a snapshot : Use your webcam to capture an image to use in your sheet By URL : Type the URL of an image from the Web and click Select Your albums : Choose an image from one of your photos albums stored on the web Google Drive : Choose an image stored in Google Drive Search : Search the stock photography archive, or the Google and Life archives, and select an image 3. Once you have found what you were looking for, click the image and the Select button Images can be edited from within the doc itself and can be annotated using the Drawing tool. To delete the image from the file, click the image itself, and press the Delete key. Adding Drawings You can place your own drawings into a spreadsheet. A drawing is drawn in a program that opens in Google Sheets. In the program you can draw from scratch, add a picture, add artwork to a picture, and much more. To add a Drawing: 1. Click the Insert drop-down menu from the toolbar and select Drawing. 2. Create your drawing using the shapes and options in the toolbar. 3. Add the image to your sheet, spreadsheet or presentation by selecting, Save & Close. Printing It is easy in Google Sheets to Print sheets to paper. Once in the Print dialog box, you can choose options for number of copies, pages, etc. Basic Steps to Print a Google Sheet 1. While in the document window. 2. Click the Print button or click the File menu and click Print. 3. Choose your options on the left. 4. Click Print. Exporting Sheets When you complete a sheet, you can download a copy of it in other formats such as Microsoft Excel (.xlsx), OpenDocument Format (.ods), Rich Text Format (.rtf), PDF Document (.pdf), Comma-Separated Values (.csv current sheet), Tab-Separated Values (.tsv current sheet) and Web Page (zip). You may need to do this to attach the file to an message when the file needs to be in a specific format. Basic Steps to Export a Sheet 1. While in the document window. 2. Click the File menu. 3. Point to Download as 4. Click the file format you desire. Google Sheets 8

9 Feedback and revision With Google Drive, files are accessible from any computer or mobile device connected to the Internet. This opens up many possibilities for starting and continuing the writing process. Online sheets take out the hassle of remembering thumb drives or having to use the same computer to access a file. There is no risk of forgetting or losing the sheet, because everything is stored online. With access to your files readily available wherever you are, it is easy to find time to create or revise sheets and share it with others. It does not matter if your collaborators are in the same room or the same country, everyone can edit at his or her convenience. Insert a Comment Comments are useful in adding notes to your sheet and are visible to anybody the sheet is shared with. It is useful to communicate with other collaborators about areas within the sheet as well as making notes about changes or potential changes. Comments do not show up when the sheet is printed or published as a web page. To add a Comment: 1. Position your cursor or highlight the text where you would like the comment to appear. 2. Click the Insert menu and choose Comment or click the Comment button on the Toolbar. 3. Type your comment in the box. 4. Click the Comment button. 5. To edit, delete, or resolve the comment, click on the comment box and select your option. Track Changes Google sheets has a comprehensive Doc revision history. Since it uses a nearly continuous autosave, you can backtrack a sheet to any previous time of editing. Also, it is helpful when collaborating on sheets and many suggestions are being offered. As the owner of a sheet, you can control and reverse any changes made by collaborators. Sharing Sheets Google sheets makes it easy to collaborate on sheets with others. You can share your sheets, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, and any file in Google Drive with others. You have many choices on ways to share, but it may vary on the type of file. You can share it via a link that you or post on a website or directly to people using their address, or post it publicly. When typing in addresses and share directly to people, you can choose the level of sharing which include: can view, can comment, can edit. For your first opportunities to share items, we will focus on Google files (Sheets, Google Sheets, Google Presentations, Google Forms, and Google Drawings). You can share files from your Google Drive or from a file that is open. Below are basic steps for both: Google Sheets 9

10 Basic Steps to Share from Google Drive 1. Make sure you are logged into your Google Drive. 2. Navigate to the file. 3. Click on the file. 4. Click the Share button on the toolbar. 5. Choose your options in the dialog box (either click Get Sharable link or type in addresses). 6. Click Done. Basic Steps to Share from an Open Google File 1. Click the Share button on the toolbar. 2. Choose your options in the dialog box (either click Get Sharable link or type in addresses). 3. Click Done. Google Sheets 10