Suppose you have to convert some amounts into a different currency. Now, you can do
this in Google Sheets using the Google Finance function, and it can actually look up the date—
look up the currency rate as of a certain date as well. We're not going to do that.
We're just going to look at it right now. Think about how you would do this: convert US dollars
to Canadian dollars or to Australian dollars or to the British Sterling pound.
You'd have to look it up and then do a currency conversion online or something. A bit messy,
right? So, what you can do is just do this: you go Canadian equals that amount. That's
what I want to convert. So here's an easier way to do it: you can use the Google Finance function
and here's how you do that. You go “I want to multiply this. This is my base figure in
US dollars.” And so I'm going to go equals that amount there that cell there times googlefinance.
And then what I want to do is double quotes. I want to say which currency that I want to do:
colon what I'm converting from US dollars. What I'm converting to
Canadian. And now, as soon as I hit that: done, now I can copy that formula just by
clicking here and it will convert all of these down here as well. If I hit double click here,
it has converted them all. But what about if we want to go from US dollars to
Australian dollars? Same thing again, except we're changing the currency times googlefinance.
Currency colon USDAUD.
and then I mark this double click and so that's converting from the US dollars through to
Aussie dollars. And now, what about the British Pound? So, by the way, I have formatted these
cells differently. So I've gone up to format. By the way, I have formatted these cells differently
because they're not going to have the dollar sign in front of them, and the way to do that
is I go Format, Number and then we're going down to more formats. I've actually got British Pound
Sterling there because I've just used it before, but I'm going to show you here more currencies.
And then I can select whichever currency that it is that I want or the one that I want is the
British Pound Sterling and I apply that
and there's the pound symbol. But now we still have to do the conversion so let's do that
and here's where I say I want to go from US dollars to Great Britain Pounds.
And once again I can double click or just drag and drop
to get the conversion. And so then, if I need to change the price of this service
and that's going to say $3000. Watch what happens to all of these? $3000 US. As soon as I hit enter,
it converts them all, so that's it. Google Finance and look up the details to make sure that you are
getting the exchange rate that you want. How Google calculates the exchange rate and Google
Sheets using the Google Finance function can look up historical currency conversion rates.