If there's one application I have come to appreciate more and more throughout my career it's the humble spreadsheet. Without this application, I would be lost.
I use this type of software every day and have been using it since 1995 and Microsoft Excel.
However, since working with Google Apps more frequently I've found I tend to do a lot more work with Google Sheets at work than Microsoft Excel. I have found the sharing and collaboration feature with Google Sheets a handy and powerful feature.
What is a named function in Google Sheets and when is it best to use this new feature in your spreadsheet? Google Sheets new Named Functions feature enables you to refactor long formulas into what appears as a native function in your Google Sheets spreadsheet. Use this feature in Google Sheets if you find you …
How do you use the Google Sheets SWITCH() formula? The SWITCH() formula in Google Sheets enables you to compress a series of IF statements, even nested IF statements, into one succinct function. Take a recent example where I refactored the following formula which helped to add the appropriate years, months or days to an existing …
How can you set a default value when using the VLOOKUP function? As VLOOKUP throws an #N/A error when the searched item cannot be found in the first column range, wrap the VLOOKUP function in an IFERROR formula and set the value to the default sought. For example like this: Where default_value is the placeholder …
How many ways can you underline in Google Sheets? There are three broad approaches when seeking to emphasise text in Google Sheets by applying underlines. These three approaches are: underlying specific or whole text in the cell, underlying the whole cell itself with different styles, or using underscore characters. Here is each approach with examples …
How can you create a unique ID with date values in Google Sheets? To create a unique ID of date values in Google Sheets use the TEXT() function to change the date into a string and then append any other useful identifier to that string to make the value unique, such as ROW() or a …
How do you fix Google Sheets when it is running slow? The five ways to speed up working in Google Sheets when it is running slow are: filter your data when working on specific rows, convert formulas to values where possible, sort your data if you are working with functions like VLOOKUP, create a unique …
How can you wrap text in a cell in Google Sheets? There are 3 ways you can wrap text in a cell in Google Sheets. The most popular method is to click on the Google Sheets wrap icon, whereas the two other two methods are more manual and require you to enter the line break …
How do you make the range and column index number in a VLOOKUP function in Google Sheets dynamic? The VLOOKUP function is a popular formula used in spreadsheets to source data using the first column of a range as the primary key to search the search_key and then to return the intersection of the cell …
How can you alphabetize or sort your data in Google Sheets? There are 5 ways to alphabetize data in Google Sheets: two approaches involve using formulas; namely, the SORT() and QUERY() functions, and the other three approaches involve using the menu items located in the menu bar. All approaches require knowing if the sorting will …
Can you use multiple criteria to filter data in Google Sheets using the QUERY function? Within the query parameter of the QUERY function the WHERE clause enables users to filter data based on multiple criteria. The three types of logical operators permitted when combining multiple criteria are AND, OR and NOT. Here are some examples …
