whether you're a casual Google Sheets user or the literal glue that's holding the entire company together here are 10 incredible tips that will change how you use Google Sheets let's get started first up instead of manually formatting raw data we can now press Commander control a to select the entire data set right click convert to table and boom NE and tidy I can now rename this table to reference it in a formula change the table color like so and if I wanted to I could click the drop- down menu in this column header add a column type number currency since this column represents sales in us and if I want a shorter date I could click here Ed a colum type date date instead of date time and if I wanted to enable data validation in one go I could just click this drop down Ed aom type drop down change uh true to Green false to Red click done and there you go nice and easy and for some column types like dates we can actually go back here edit column type and select show placeholders so that when we add a new row by going all the way down here and clicking this plus icon for example we've added a placeholder that we could just double click and edit immediately Pro tip we can use an existing table template from Google by typing at table enter and selecting from one of the options here on the right and for whatever reason if you don't like this new tables feature we can always go back here and click revert to unformatted data by the way if you enjoy learning practical tips you might want to join my newsletter to receive an insanely actionable Google workspace tip every week link down below tip number two staying within the tables View in Google Sheets let's say in this project tracker I want to bucket these tasks based on the phase they're in I can click this icon that looks like a calculator for whatever reason and create a group based on the phase column and now I can clearly see how each phase is going alternatively I can click the drop down in any of the column headers for example under owner I can choose to group buy this column and now I've bucketed the tasks by different teams customer support engineering events Etc I can even save this view uh owner view so that even when I exit out I can quickly and easily get back to The View by clicking the calculator icon and clicking the owner view again Pro tip saving a grouped view also allows us to share this view specifically with our colleagues by sending them this URL and this works the same way just as filtered views which is what we're going to talk about next Google Sheets productivity tip number three is all about filters first up I'm willing to bet imaginary money that most of you did not know you could right click on a cell filter by cell value to create a filtered view in just two clicks drop a like if you didn't know that next if I were to select the entirety of column C right click and create conditional formatting whereby uh if the value is greater than six let's make this yellow um click done we can actually choose to filter by color fill color yellow color and I'll show you how this comes into play in a real life example later on in this video Pro tip instead of using true or false as binary options I high recommend using checkboxes for example you can do this within the tables feature by editing column type checkbox like so or if you're not using tables you can click at Mt C insert checkbox like so and we can now filter this column filter by value and let's say I select true we can see that Google Sheets recognizes checked boxes as true and unchecked as false and again you'll see how this makes a difference later on in this video moving on here are some data cleanup techniques everyone should know starting off nice and easy let's say I have a column of full names I can select the entire range like so commander control C to copy and in the next column over Commander control shift V to paste without formatting then with this range selected go to data split text two columns here and since the first and last names are uh separated by a space I can select space and now we have separated first and last names into two separate col columns now to make sure this data set doesn't include any duplicates we can click in command control a to select the entire data set go to data data cleanup and remove duplicates and since this data set has a header row as you can see here we check this box select remove duplicates and we're told how many rows have been removed bumping this up a notch to confirm this column only consists of emails we can use the is email function to return true or false and we can select the entire uh range down here command or control D to paste the formula down similarly to confirm this uh these are all indeed links we can use is URL to return true or false here and again we can select the entire uh range down here Commander control D and as you can see I've already added conditional formatting ahead of time to highlight all the True Values now as you can tell from the content that I make I'm extremely easygoing and would never micromanage anyone but just hypothetically speaking if I were to double check my colleagues I might use something like the count if formula and select the entire range down here and see how many false values there are uh how many mistakes were made right and I might even right click on the column header here and choose column stats just to double check ah there are indeed two false values and uh 43 true values just to make sure these numbers match up and a really Petty manager might even rightclick on the cell with the mistake choose a show edit history just to check who was enough to make that mistake but again it's all hypothetical I would never do this what I would most definitely do in my day-to-day is to use the at command to insert files events and people into Google Sheets for example I could type at copy to insert this Google slid presentation so that if the name of the file is updated the changes are reflected here automatically similarly I can type at to insert this event from my Google Calendar and at to insert the name of a colleague apart from just looking better than hyperlinks this actually enables a super useful feature when I select these cells right click I can now select data extraction and I can choose to extract the file name and the URL click extract and there you go for the event chip I can rightclick data extraction and extract the uh meeting title and the URL of the calendar invitation and for the people chips I can right click data extraction choose to extract the email and full name of the people although this is just a very simple example hopefully you can see that this would save a massive amount of time if we were to extract hundreds or thousands of rows Pro tip from within Google Sheets if we were to add names into two columns for example a list of reports and their corresponding manager we can select the entire uh table here go to insert go to uh chart here and under chart type scroll all the way down to organizational chart and click here to remove the header row and now we have a dynamic or chart that we can easily make edits to for example Tim cookie there you go and we can even choose to customize the color of this chart like so Pro tip number two you can type at today to insert today's dates or and I bet most of you didn't know this you can press command semicolon to achieve the same effect speaking of gamechanging shortcuts here are three Time Savers I promise you'll use every single day first up if you type in sheets. new into your address bar this opens up a new file and after pasting in some data instead of using your mouse you can actually just use command and control arrow keys to move around command and control right right down left and up while pressing Commander control we can now hold shift and this allows us to select cells across columns if we press the right arrow key and if we press down this allows us to select all these cells down across rows this enables us to for example press command control R to paste to the right or command and control D to paste down but let's undo that for now here's a real use case where I want to find the percentage of this product sales against total sales so here I would type equal this number divided by sum of this entire column and remember we can press Commander control shift d to select the entire range right press uh function F4 to lock this Range close bracket and then now go to the left command and control down right command and control shift up to select the entire range command D to paste that formula down and instead of using my mouse to click format this as percent I can press option forward slash to bring up the menu type in percent like so press enter and this has been converted to percentages and although that seemed slower than just using a mouse I promise you in full speed when you get used to this it's extremely quick next let's bring several tips together and go through a real use case here we have invited a list of clients to an event and on the right is their corresponding account manager who is responsible for inviting them and I want to highlight all the account managers who have yet to confirm their client attendance in order to uh shame them which again is hypothetical I would never do that I would first highlight the list of account managers command or control shift d to select the entire range option forward slash type in conditional formatting to bring up enter to bring up conditional formatting and since we want to highlight the account managers based on the values in column J to the left we want to under format rules select custom formula is equals j4 because we want to start right here right j4 right here if j4 equals false meaning they haven't confirmed their client's attendance yet we want to highlight their name in in Red so that they know they're in trouble click done and once for example the account manager confirms your client the color goes away by the way if you're someone who wants to become more organized in the workplace you might want to check out my workspace Academy course where you'll learn a powerful workflow designed to eliminate mental and digital clutter link down below moving on one of my favorite features to use that work is to select a cell or entire range you want your colleague to navigate to directly rightclick more cell actions get link to this range or cell and sending them that link as unfair as it sounds going the extra mile like this drastically increases the chances of your colleagues taking action on your request and if have you're wored about them messing up other parts of your sheet you can always right click on the column view more column actions protect range select set permissions rather uncheck everyone but yourself to restrict edit access to yourself only tip number number nine is a Formula that is surprisingly useful if you ever find yourself needing to convert currencies in a semi-real Time basis you can type equal select the number you want to convert times Google Finance uh Open Bracket uh quotation marks uh currency uh colon and type in USD which is the source currency you're converting from then type in for example Hong Kong dollars which is the target currency you're converting to uh quotation marks uh close bracket enter and select all the way down command and control D and the Hong Kong dollars column here will be continuously updated uh just delayed by 20 minutes and if you were to change the price uh in the original US dollar column for example like so the numbers will update automatically last but certainly not least is a trick I picked up from a strategy teammate years ago and it's to bucket related tabs and Google Sheets using colors for example key info red and two related tabs here are in pink blue light blue black gray and as you can see for the divider tabs key info sales and working all the columns have been deleted except for the first one to clearly indicate there is no content in this tab if you enjoy these tips and tricks check out my top productivity tips for Google Docs see you on the next video in the meantime have a great one