If you're using Google sheets and you have some data that looks like this on
the left and you want to make it apparent that it's a table, use some nice
colors, make it obvious what the headers and the title are, that's what we're
going to do in this tutorial. We're going to start with unformatted data and work
our way over to something that looks like this. Here we go. If we do one
cell, let's say we wanted to do A1, you hover over it with the mouse and you
left-click one time. That selects it. Don't double click. If you double click,
it brings you inside the cell and it thinks that you want to change the
contents of it. The second way that we're going to select data is we're going to
either select the entire column, and I did that by left clicking on the A, or
you can do the entire row. Let's left-click on the 2 and, while that's
highlighted, if you hold down the shift key, you can go down and it selects more
than one at a time. You can also select the entire sheet by clicking
here in the upper left hand corner. That's everything. So, when you're looking
at this data, the first thing that you want to do is make it apparent that
these are dollars. We're going to highlight all of those. I just left clicked in
F3. I held down the shift key and I used the right and down arrows to select this
entire range. I'm going to go up and click the dollar sign in the
toolbar. That formats it as currency but then I want to go to column F because I
don't really find it to be material what the cents are on a particular item. I
kind of want it on the totals because I want to see everything down to the penny.
Let's go ahead and decrease the decimal places. I want
you to see, for example, this is $1.99, but decrease it by 2, oops wrong way. If I
decrease it by 2, it rounds for me. Google sheets uses a standard
rounding convention and this turns $19.99 into $20.00. The value in here is still
$19.99. If I double click, it's in there. We've just changed how it's
displayed. Let's take this sample data. This is the title of the entire
table. It's not a header for a particular column so we should probably merge these
rows. I left-clicked in A1, I held down the shift key, and I pressed the right
arrow. Or, you can just take your mouse left click, select all these, left click
and drag. Let's merge cells. It's a little icon here that's merging them so you
merge them together. But, I want it centered horizontally as well so this
icon gives you three options. Center it left, center in the middle center to the
right. Let's put it in the middle and then let's make it bold. That would be
right here and we're gonna make a 24-point so you really see, "hey this is
table with sample data." Actually, I'm gonna make it a little smaller.
It's kind of annoying. There we go. Now what I want to do is a really handy
shortcut that was added just a few months ago to Google Sheets. I'm going to
select what I'm considering to be the table here. But, if you see I also
selected the header which is row 2 and the footer which is row 7. You'll see why
here. I go to format. I'm going to say alternating colors. Why it doesn't just
say format it as a table I don't know. But, alternating colors, and then on the
right-hand side it brings up these options. Now I have a header and it
doesn't know that I have a footer you got to tell it that. I have a
footer as well. You see the row 7 there became darker. I'm gonna click, and click
it again, and then you just choose the color and hit done. Now when you look
at this, it looks more like a table. It's apparent that these are the types of
units that we're looking at. This is the content, the actual data. Let's make
it more apparent though that these down here are totals. I selected A6. I'm
going to hold down my control key and select G6.
That enables you to select two individual cells at once, two or more.
What I'm going to do here is put a bottom border on. I'm not doing an
underline. I'm doing a bottom border and I'm going to explain the difference.
First, I'll let you see it. There's the two bottom borders. I didn't do an underline
because, if you sort this data for some reason, the underline is going to move.
But, if you do a bottom border, it should stay with row 6. I also don't like
this font. Let's use the trick where you select the entire worksheet by
clicking in the upper left hand corner and then we'll drop down the font and
we'll change it to Calibri. I think that it would be better if the header,
the content of the cells in the header, was Center aligned. Let's click
on the 2 to select that entire row and then go to the vertical alignment which
is here. Line up vertically. Let's say I want to zoom in 200% on this, but
when I do, things are too wide. So, I'm going make the unit cost without
a space in here. You'll see why in a little bit. I'm gonna make the unit cost
a lot skinnier like this and I going to make the units skinnier. Then, maybe I could see
everything. Let's make it a little bit more skinny...a little bit more.
What happened here was I made it so skinny that
this isn't fitting well. What I have to do is, or one of the options that I
can do is, to rotate it. You can do this with all your headers if you want. You
could select row 2 and rotate. The other option-this unit cost is also
running over a little bit. I'm going to shrink it some more so you can tell.
What I'm doing to shrink this and just changing the column width by hovering
over the line that separates the two. Holding down the left mouse button and
moving left and right. My other option to make this
fit, I could just shrink the font but a fancier option is to wrap the text, which
is this middle option you see. That put one over the other. If you don't like
how the others are all down at the bottom of the row because now the row is
taller, let's change the horizontal alignment. That would be, where would that be?
Vertical alignment, excuse me. Let's change the vertical alignment. Let's put
them in the middle. Now they're all lined up. That should pretty much cover the
basic things that you can do with your data to format it and make it
look more like a table. This draws the users eye down to the important parts or up to
the important parts like the header or down to the footer. Let's go ahead and
make these bold. That way it's more apparent that they're the sum.
That's about all for the basics. I hope that's helpful to you and if you
want to see more tips like this you can subscribe to this channel and see what
else comes out. Thanks!