While teaching is largely the relationships we build with students, there is also another crucial element… record keeping, grading, assessment, analysis, organization. This necessitates a strong ability to utilize spreadsheets. You will save time and sanity by starting Google Sheets.
1. Create a New Spreadsheet
New Spreadsheet
Google Sheets live in Google Drive. There is no save button and even if you leave the name as “Untitled spreadsheet” it will still be in you My Drive. Use the “New” button in Google Drive to select “Google Sheets.” Filter for your spreadsheets at sheets.google.com.
My favorite way to create a new Google Sheets spreadsheet is to open a new tab and type in sheets.new
2. Enter Values Into Cells
A spreadsheet is a table. There are rows and columns. Simply click on any cell to enter a value. You name the cell first by the column letter and then by the row number. For example C5. You can increase the width of the cells by dragging the edge of the column indicator or by double clicking on the edge of the column indicator.
Important: Make sure you press enter (or use the Tab key) to save the text in the cell.
3. Navigating the Spreadsheet
Pressing the Enter key will not only save the text you entered into a cell, but it will go DOWN to the cell below it. You can immediately start typing without having to click on the cell.
The Tab key is magical. If you use the tab key after entering text into a cell, it will go to the cell to the right. Continue using tab to enter data into the row. Press enter to return to the first column where you started using the Tab key.
Using Sheets in a Google Sheets Spreadsheet
A spreadsheet can be organized into multiple sheets. Each sheet is located with a sheet tab at the bottom of the screen. Click the plus icon in the bottom left to add a new sheet. Click on the 3 lines icon in the bottom left to scroll through your sheets.
4. Cell Referencing
You can go beyond simply entering text in a spreadsheet. When you start your cell with an equals sign you are able to add actions to your spreadsheet. A very simple action you can take is called cell referencing. You will REFER to another cell in the spreadsheet. In one cell type an equals sign and then simply CLICK on another cell and press enter. Notice in the screenshot below I am in cell F12. I typed the equals sign and clicked on the cell C12. In C12 I have the value of “13.” Upon pressing enter, this value in C12 will appear in F12. This allows me to have the same value multiple times in my spreadsheet. However, if I edit the original value, it will be updated everywhere in the spreadsheet.
You can perform other actions within Google Sheets by utilizing formulas. For example =SUM(A2:A10) will add up the values that are in the range from cell A2 to cell A10. You can change the numerical values in the range of cells anytime and the sum of the numbers will automatically be updated.
5. Format Text Cells
As shown above when your text in a cell exceeds the width of the cell it will spill over into the next cell IF that cell is empty. Utilize the options in the toolbar to control how the information in the cell is presented.
Utilize the Toolbar
Click on a cell, or highlight a range of cells, to apply formatting in the toolbar in Google Sheets. You may not see all of the icons in the toolbar depending on your screen width. If your window is too short to display all the icons you will see a 3 dots icon at the end of the toolbar. Click on this to reveal the additional hidden icons.
As of October 2024 here are the icons in the toolbar.
- Search for spreadsheet actions
- Format the data as a table
- Undo
- Redo
- Format Painter
- Zoom
- Format as money
- Format as a percentage
- Decrease the number of visible decimal points
- Increase the number of visible decimal points
- Format as a number
- Change the font style
- Change the font size
- Bold
- Italics
- Strikethrough
- Change font color
- Fill cell background
- Add table borders
- Merge cells
- Horizontal centering
- Vertical centering
- WORD WRAP OPTIONS
- Rotate text
- Hyperlink cell text
- Insert a comment
- Insert a chart
- Filter data
- Create custom filter views
- Insert a formula
