What is Google Sheets?

I’ve been using Google Sheets for over a decade, and it’s been an important tool in both my personal and professional life.

But what is it, and why should you care?

What it is

Simply put, it’s an online spreadsheet created by Google. It’s like Microsoft Excel only in the cloud.

This makes it easier to collaborate with others (though Excel does now have an online version too).

It’s also a lot more beginner friendly in my opinion.

The interface is cleaner and I find it easier and faster to do things with Sheets than Excel.

It'll also save every change you make automatically. Rolling back to a previous version is pretty simple.

Wait, What's a Spreadsheet?

Think of a piece of graph paper. A spreadsheet is made up of a grid of cells like in the screenshot above.

Each cell can contain...pretty much anything. You can write text in it, or numbers or dates. They can contain one number or a huge paragraph.

The real value comes from manipulating data with formulas. You may have an idea that they are used by finance professionals and analysts.

This is a half-truth. They're very powerful for crunching numbers, so this is a huge use case.

But, they're great for the average bear too! 👇

Beginner’s Video

I made my first beginner’s video that you can check out below where I walk through some of the basics like:

1. Creating a Sheet

2. Entering Data

3. Formatting Data

4. Adding Tables

5. Filtering Data

6. Using Formulas

7. Using Built in Functions

There's more where this came from. Sign up to my newsletter to get regular updates and to be the first to know when my upcoming and comprehensive Google Sheets course is released.

Thank you so much!

It means a lot that you’ve read this, and I hope it’s informed and/or entertained you for a few moments today!

Would love to say hi. Here are the best places to find me:

✉️ LinkedIn
📺️ YouTube

Ways I can help:

• View my spreadsheet and creative products on my Gumroad store.

• Need a powerful automation tool for Google Sheets? Try Coefficient to automatically import data and sync with your business systems.

• Hire an expert to help complete your next Google Sheets, Apps Script or Google Workplace project.