I was working remotely with my dad recently and realized how much time-saving little Google Sheets shortcut I had underestimated. These are not advanced formulas or pivot tables; Simple tricks to save you time if you’re working with basic organizational spreadsheets. Some of these are old Excel tricks; but some even mine boundary colleagues have just discovered.
Easily rearrange rows and columns by dragging from the row number
If you want to reorder a row, you can do it in one step by first clicking the row number to highlight the row, and then clicking and dragging. from line number for easy placement wherever you want.
I’m ashamed to admit that before I learned this trick from my partner, who is a one-time Google Docs product manager (full disclosure), I spent a lot of time reordering things by first adding a blank line, then dragging the content into it. new field and finally deleting the old row. Do not do this.
Start a new Google Sheet by typing “.sheets.new” to your browser
Google owns the “.new” top-level domain, so this also applies to: docs.new, slides.new, cal.new, etc. In 2019 they started allowing other websites to use the domain name; so there is Spotify playlist.newMiddle story.newetc.
Quickly resize columns to fit content by double-clicking between column headers
This is as easy as it sounds – if you want your column width to automatically resize based on the shortest or longest entry, simply double-click between the column headers. This also works in Excel.
Paste something with clear formatting with Command + Shift + v on Mac or Ctrl + Shift + v on PC
I’m pulling data about Boundary it comes from many different sources, all with their own fonts and styles, so this trick works. Using Command + Shift + v instead of command + v on Mac or Ctrl + Shift + v instead of ctrl + v On PC, you can remove old font and font sizes when pasting and adding clear text.
You can also paste plain values by double-clicking a cell before pasting, but this is a bit more cumbersome. To clear formatting from multiple cells at once, highlight them first and then command + \ on Mac or Ctrl + \ on PC. one ton More keyboard shortcuts like this cataloged by Google here.
Adding multiple hyperlinks to a cell
It’s more of a PSA – you can only bridge whole cells for a long period of time. My colleague Jay Peters recently discovered that this is no longer the case; Now you can add as many links as you want. Before adding your links, click in the cell and highlight the word or phrase you want to hyperlink.
Leave a comment if you have any other favorite Google Sheet tricks you’d like to share! And since I’m using my parents’ and my brother’s cats for my sample dataset, here is my cat Olivia hitting one of her signature poses.