You’re creating your gorgeous Google Sheet, but it’s taking way longer than it needs
to.
Well guess what?
You don’t have to know advanced formatting settings to master Google Sheets.
It’s time to increase your efficiency with these handy Google Sheets tips for productivity.
Hey friends, I’m Tasia Custode, and welcome back to my YouTube Channel where I share tech
tips, app reviews, and a TON of Google tips.
In today’s video, I’m sharing the best Google Sheets tips for productivity.
You ready to save time in Google Sheets?
Then let’s go!
So let’s kick things off with the best Google Sheets formatting tips, all included for you
as tip number 1.
If you’re anything like me, you may have a lot of tabs in Google Sheets.
Ya’ll know I’m a big fan of color blocking my Gcal, well the same can be said for my
Sheets.
I like to assign colors to certain tabs to know at a glance where I am in a particular
process.
So, as an example, I use Google Sheets for billing, I like to assign colors based on
the invoice status.
To do so, just right click on the tab or click the downward facing arrow, and assign it a
color.
Another favorite formatting tip is that if you have a really long list of items or lots
of rows in your Google Sheets, you may want to consider alternating the colors to make
everything easier to read.
To do so, head to format, then select alternating colors.
Here, you can choose which colors you want to alternate and if you want the header included
in this selection or not.
You can even pick your secondary colors too.
Lastly, if you’re creating a Google Sheet that needs a column of yes or no answers or
a maybe a column to act as a checklist that you can check off the list once complete,
you can do that too.
Select the colum and head to data, then select data validation.
From this pop-up you can choose ‘list of items’ from the criteria section and manually
type in yes,no, then select save.
So now these cells in this column have a yes or no dropdown.
But, to save time, you can also just have this be a checklist.
So we’ll head to insert, then select ‘checkbox’ and now there are neat little checkboxes you
can tick off as needed.
Google Sheets tip number 2: send a link to a custom range.
This is really helpful if you just need someone to view or input data into a specific column
or row.
To do so, simply highlight the column or row you need to share, right click, and click
on ‘get link to this range’ and the link is automatically copied to the clipboard.
When the person opens that URL, they’ll be brought to that Sheet with that range already
highlighted for their attention.
And if you’re finding these tips valuable so far, remember to hit that like button and
subscribe to my YouTube Channel for more content like this.
Productivity tip number 3: protect and lock specific ranges.
So, alternatively, if you need to share the sheet but don’t want someone to mess with
a specific range, you can set that too.
So let’s say we’re sharing this sheet with some team members but we don’t want
them to touch this column by mistake or reorganize this column.
We’ll select the range we want to protect, then head to data, then select protected sheets
and ranges.
From here, under the range tab, select set permissions, then uncheck the email addresses
for those you’re sharing with.
Then click done.
Now, only you and those you allow to change this range will be able to do so.
And BONUS: the exact same thing can be done for an entire sheet too.
Google Sheets productivity tip number 4: quickly duplicate a tab or copy a tab.
A time-saver indeed.
I’m constantly duplicating tabs within my Sheets.
To do so just head to the tab you want to duplicate and right click and select ‘duplicate’.
This quickly creates another tab for you in this same sheet you have open.
That’s really handy, but let’s say you want to copy an entire tab with its exact
formula over to a new sheet.
You can do that too.
This time, right click on the tab and hover over copy to.
Here, you can choose to either copy this tab over to a new sheet entirely or you can choose
to add it to an already existing sheet.
If you choose this option, you can either find your spreadsheet from here, or you can
grab the url of it and paste it into here.
Either way, your tab will be copied over to the other spreadsheet with all the existing
formatting in place.
Voila!
Google Sheets tip number 5: Remove duplicates.
This is a must if you’re running long lists, maybe contests, or even signups and you want
an accurate count.
So here I am in a tab that has a list of people signed up for an email newsletter.
Sometimes people sign up multiple times and we want to fix that.
So, we’ll highlight the table, head to data, and select ‘remove duplicates’.
Since this particular table has a header I’ll select that option.
And I just want to remove duplicates from column a, so I’ll just leave that selected
and then I’ll hit remove duplicates.
And last but not least is tip number 6: see a complete revision history of your Google
sheet.
Well you knew Google Sheets would have the same functionality as found in docs!
This is beyond helpful if someone else makes a whoopsie with your Google sheet.
For this one, just head to file, version history, and select ‘see version history’.
Now this will show you the complete version history of the entire sheet, when the changes
were made and by whom.
But we can get even more niche.
Let’s say someone altered something in a specific cell and you want to know who the
heck would do such a thing to your precious sheet.
Just right click on the cell and select ‘show edit history’ and here we’ll be able to
see who made what changes and when.
And don’t fret my lovely Custodeans and Tasianiacs, if you want a quick run down of
the best Google sheets keyboard shortcuts, you bet your butts, I’ve got you covered.
You can watch that right here or via the link in the description below.
So what do you think about these Google Sheets tips for productivity?
Have you tried any?
Let everyone know in the comments below.
As always, thanks so much for watching, if you liked this video, I want to know so give
it a like, a share or leave that comment below.
You can click right about here to subscribe to my channel and right here and here for
more Google Sheets inspo.
Thanks for watching, and see ya next time!