Forty years ago, Dan Briklin and Bob Frankston created the first spreadsheet.
Today, we have many varieties of this simple, yet powerful, application.
There's Excel, the traditional go-to from Microsoft and then there are apps like Sheets, Google's free cloud-based offering.
In this post, we'll take a look at Sheets and show you how it works.
Getting started with Google Sheets
To get started with Google Sheets head over to sheets.google.com or open up Sheets through Google Drive.
When you open Sheets, you'll see a few different starter options based on Google's pre-made templates like:
- Invoice
- Weekly timesheet
- Expense report
Or you can start from scratch with a blank document.
The blank spreadsheet
So what can you do with a blank spreadsheet?
All spreadsheets are laid out in a similar way– with numeric rows running horizontally, and alphabetic columns running vertically.
You can add all sort of number and letter based data to each cell.
Google Sheets is pretty smart. If you start entering a data sequence like the days of the week or the months of the year, you don't have to type them all out manually.
Instead, you can type in the first few parts of the sequence, highlight them, and then drag the bottom right-hand side corner down.
Sheets will automatically fill in the rest of the data.
You can also use the spreadsheet to do all sorts of calculations.
Here's how you can use sheets to calculate a commission rate on daily sales:
Using a spreadsheet is a great, simple way to do calculations in your life and business.
But there's more to it than just doing the math. You can also use Sheets to create charts and graphs.
Here's how:
- Select the data you'd like to use
- Click on the graph button
- Sheets will automatically pick the best graph to fit your data. You can edit it in the chart editor menu.
Spreadsheets are extremely versatile
This is just a short introduction to the power of spreadsheets.
This incredibly versatile tool you can perform all sorts of business duties.
Until next time,
Have fun storming the castle!
P.S. Looking for more Google Drive tutorials?
- 5 Google Drive Features You (Probably) Didn’t Know About
- Get Started with Google Drive– The Beginner’s Guide
- Create Gorgeous Forms with Google Forms
- Google Slides
- Collaboration and connected docs
What are you doing this Wednesday? Join us for our Wednesday webinar!
Every week we break big, complex processes like building your email list and growing a successful YouTube channel into small, actionable steps you can put into practice straight away.
Webinars not your thing? Head over to our YouTube channel and watch the latest videos.
