Did you know you can get this timeline view in Google Sheets?
Well, you can and here’s how.
Hey friends, I’m Tasia Custode, and welcome back to my YouTube Channel where I share tech
tips, app reviews, and a somewhat concerning amount of Google tips.
In today’s video, I’m showing you how to use timeline view in Google Sheets.
Let’s go!
So, if you aren't aware, Google Sheets has added a new timeline view.
So what is timeline view?
It is the perfect tool for managing projects, work back schedules, team member to-do’s,
and more by taking a boring old spreadsheet with dates and transforming it into organized
timelines.
With timeline view you’ll be able to track and visualize project tasks, campaigns, and
schedules.
Now it’s important to note that as of right now, timeline view is only available to Google
Workspace users, so it is not currently an option if you have a free Google account.
So with that said, here’s how to use timeline view in Google Sheets.
So in my Google Sheet, I’ve got an example work back schedule here for a video shoot.
So I’ve got a task list in one column, a start date column and a due date column.
To enable timeline view in Google Sheets, just highlights all the data you want included
in the timeline view, which you can do by clicking and dragging, or click on the first
cell, hit shift and click on the last cell, then head up to insert, then select timeline,
and click on OK.
From here, a new tab will be created for you with your timeline view.
So, you won’t lose your original sheet, but instead, have a new sheet with that timeline
view created automatically for you.
So right now the timeline view looks very blah…
And you know I’m all about color coding anything and everything.
So we can color code and further customize this timeline view.
So on this right-hand side is your settings panel.
If you don’t have the settings panel, you can access this by clicking on settings near
the top right and that will pop the panel back out.
We’re going to have a few options here to customize the timeline view.
First is our selected date range.
So this is what we selected on our initial work back sheet.
So you can see that here or adjust that cell range if you needed to here.
Then we’ve got our start date, end date, and card title columns set here - this is
pulling from the initial columns I set up in the original work back schedule.
Next, we’ve got our optional fields.
This is where we can change the card color, detail, and group if we’d like.
A card, by the way, is an individual task here on our timeline view.
So I’m going to set this card color dropdown to reflect my prod tasks because this is what’s
going to enable me to change the task colors.
Or if you wanted to you could adjust your colors by start or end date.
But, before I change the individual card color, let’s take a look at some of these other
view details.
Underneath the ‘card detail’ option, you’ll be able to adjust your timeline view.
If I choose prod task, it’s going to add that column info to the task.
So obviously, for this example, I don’t need a repeat of the task.
But maybe I want to view the start date beside the task.
I’ll click on start and now I’ve got the start date listed next to the card info.
Or I could choose to display the due date as well in the card detail.
Now I can further organize this view for ya by card group.
So this is going to make columns for us.
So, let’s pick prod task as an example, and now our timeline view has changed to list
out the production tasks in an organized column view for us.
This would be really helpful if you had subtasks.
Or, say we had ‘pre-production’ as a column, you’d have all those tasks listed there,
or Production, or Post-production, and so on.
But you get the idea of the different ways to customize the timeline view.
But let’s finally get to color-coding our cards on the timeline.
So remember, I’ve got my card color set to Prod task so now when I click on a card,
my card details will appear in the right-hand panel.
Here, I can change the color of the card.
So, maybe I want all my pre-production tasks listed in orange.
I’ll select that.
Or, you can choose a custom color as well, so maybe if you’re color coding multiple
client projects, that would work better for you.
But that’s all I have to do now is select my pre-production tasks and change them to
the peachy orange color.
Then maybe I want my production tasks to be in yellow, so I’ll click on that task and
change the color to yellow.
But you get the idea here.
Color code your cards however makes sense for you.
By the way, if you’re liking this video so far, remember to give it a like and subscribe
for more content like this.
In fact, I’ve linked to a few other handy Google Sheets videos in the description below
for ya.
But back to our timeline.
You can zoom in or out on your timeline view by using the zoom percentage option near the
top.
So if you’ve got a ton going on, you can zoom out to get a better look at all your
tasks.
Or, maybe you want to really zoom in on your view - this is where you do that.
There are also different display densities.
Comfortable is the standard option, but you can choose condensed to shrink up your timeline
here.
You can also change your view to view by day, week, month, quarterly, yearly, or multi-year.
And then of course, if you’re on a future task, you can just click on ‘today’ near
the top and that will pop you back to today’s date on the timeline.
And don’t forget, you can always rename your tab at the bottom by double-clicking
on the tab name.
Now interestingly enough, something you can’t do is drag to change the start and end dates
of any of your cards on your timeline view.
However, if we go back to our original work back schedule in this sheet here - first,
you’ll see your color coding has been applied to the columns you set.
But, if you change the date from this original tab, it will reflect on your timeline view
automatically.
So you don't have to repopulate your timeline view.
So, I’ll change the location scout to end on the 11th, and now when we go back to our
timeline tab, that card has automatically updated to reflect that change.
By the way, when you’ve clicked on a card and you have your card details to the right,
you can edit that data by clicking on ‘edit data’ in the bottom right and that will
pop you back over to that original tab, with that card data highlighted for you.
So, there are, of course, multiple ways to get to the same place.
So keep in mind, any changes you make to your original tab will be reflected in your timeline
view tab.
Including adding tasks and due dates.
So maybe I want to add in another task between the storyboard and shoot video task.
So I’ll add that and my new start and due dates.
Now, when I go back to my timeline view, that change is reflected automatically here with
that new card added.
Gotta love it.
So that’s it for your overview of the new Google Sheets timeline view, and remember
my lovely Custodeans, if you want even more Google Sheets tips and tricks I’ve got you
covered via the links in the description below.
So that’s how to use Google Sheets timeline view.
And now I want to hear from you.
Have you tried timeline view?
Let me 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!