Thursday, June 20th, 2024
Make sure you’re in the correct cell depending on which app you’re using:
Click in the cell below the row and in front of the column you want to freeze.
Then View > Freeze Panes > Freeze Panes.
Click in the cell in the row and the column you want to freeze up to and including.
Then View > Freeze > Up to row # and Up to column #.
Select the first cell/block of cells, then hold the CTRL key on the keyboard while you select other cells. This also works to select non-consecutive cells for functions such as SUM!
You can do this in an instant – in Excel you use the Format Painter, in Sheets, it’s called Paint Format.
Select a cell containing the formatting you like. Click on the Format Painter button on the toolbar. Then highlight cells you want to copy the formatting to.
Select a cell containing the formatting you like. Click on the Paint Format button on the toolbar. Then highlight cells you want to copy the formatting to.
Ensure you have blank columns ready for the split data. Select the column to be split. Then:
Choose Data > Text to columns
choose a separator (space in this case) then click finish
Choose Data > Split text to columns
choose a separator (space in this case) then press the Enter key
You don’t need to copy and paste or fiddle around with the mouse, just use a keyboard shortcut:
Ctrl ‘ (note on a UK/US keyboard this is the apostrophe to the right of the semi-colon key)
Ctrl D
You can either :
a) Split the view of the current worksheet in two by highlighting a column or row then clicking View > Split
you can now scroll the two parts of the workbook separately
or –
b) View anywhere in the workbook, including a different worksheet, by having two windows open side by side – click View > New Window,
then View – Arrange All
two copies of the workbook now appear in different windows that can be navigated independently
There are no menu options in Sheets as there are in Excel, how there is a simple solution to this – you can replicate either of the above by simply having two browser windows open at once side-by-side, with the same URL in each!
if you don’t know this one you really ought to…
Ctrl X to cut
Ctrl C to copy
Ctrl V to paste
(these work on most other apps too – if you right-click you’ll usually see them appear as options)
In the Home tab of the ribbon click Clear – Clear Formats
From the menu select Format – Clear Formatting
Click on the starting cell, then hold the Shift & Ctrl keys and press the relevant arrow key (up, down, left or right) to select the cells. It will stop the selection when it reaches the end of the data set or hits a gap.
(Example 1: user has selected cell D6 and pressed Shift Ctrl ⇒)
(Example 2: user has selected cell D6 and pressed Shift Ctrl ⇓)
Click anywhere in the data and press Ctrl A on the keyboard to select the entire data set
Pressing Alt allows you to access any visible menu command by following the on-screen prompts to navigate to a menu tab then a command.
Step 1: press Alt once to show the menu tabs (and other options) that can be selected by pressing the appropriate key
Step 2: after pressing a key (H for Home in the above example) to choose a menu tab, you’ll now see the menu commands that can be accessed with the appropriate key(s)
Pressing Ctrl / (forward slash not backslash!) brings up a list of all keyboard shortcuts that you can turn on and access at any time.
There we go! We hope our tips help you get the most out of your spreadsheet apps and become more productive in the workplace.
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It can be surprisingly easy to save yourself a bit of time and effort in the workplace just by making use of some of the many brilliant tools that are available in spreadsheet apps. Not everyone uses them (yet!) but they can help everybody work more efficiently. Here are our ten tips for working productively in Excel and Google Sheets.
Read more on Ten Tips for working productively in Excel and Google Sheets…
Tuesday, April 30th, 2019
Written by Jane Hames
This article is aimed at people who use Google Sheets instead of Microsoft Excel as their main spreadsheet application. If you’d like to know more about Glide Training’s on-site training for users of Google Sheets and other Google G Suite products please click here.
Read more on Google Sheets – how to split text into separate columns…