The Ultimate Guide to Google Sheets Everything You Need to Build Powerful Spreadsheet Workflows in Google Sheets
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The Ultimate Guide to Google Sheets Everything you need to build powerful spreadsheet workflows in Google Sheets. Zapier © 2016 Zapier Inc. Tweet This Book! Please help Zapier by spreading the word about this book on Twitter! The suggested tweet for this book is: Learn everything you need to become a spreadsheet expert with @zapier’s Ultimate Guide to Google Sheets: http://zpr.io/uBw4 It’s easy enough to list your expenses in a spreadsheet, use =sum(A1:A20) to see how much you spent, and add a graph to compare your expenses. It’s also easy to use a spreadsheet to deeply analyze your numbers, assist in research, and automate your work—but it seems a lot more tricky. Google Sheets, the free spreadsheet companion app to Google Docs, is a great tool to start out with spreadsheets. It’s free, easy to use, comes packed with hundreds of functions and the core tools you need, and lets you share spreadsheets and collaborate on them with others. But where do you start if you’ve never used a spreadsheet—or if you’re a spreadsheet professional, where do you dig in to create advanced workflows and build macros to automate your work? Here’s the guide for you. We’ll take you from beginner to expert, show you how to get started with spreadsheets, create advanced spreadsheet-powered dashboard, use spreadsheets for more than numbers, build powerful macros to automate your work, and more. You’ll also find tutorials on Google Sheets’ unique features that are only possible in an online spreadsheet, like built-in forms and survey tools and add-ons that can pull in research from the web or send emails right from your spreadsheet. Contents Chapter 1: Google Sheets 101—The Beginner’s Guide to Online Spreadsheets ............ 1 Getting Started with Google Sheets .................................. 3 1. Create a Spreadsheet and Fill It With Data ............................. 3 2. Format Data for Easy Viewing .................................... 8 3. Add, Average, and Filter Data with Formulas ............................ 12 4. Share, Protect, and Move Your Data ................................. 17 That’s All For Now ........................................... 23 Chapter 2: Google Forms Guide—Everything You Need to Make Great Forms for Free ....... 25 A Tour of Google Forms ........................................ 26 Building Your First Google Form .................................... 27 Google Forms Field Options ...................................... 29 Form Sections and Logic ........................................ 35 Design Your Form ............................................ 39 Store Form Responses in a Spreadsheet ................................ 41 Share Your Form ............................................. 43 Google Forms Add-ons ......................................... 50 Integrate Google Forms with MailChimp, Salesforce, Trello, and More . 53 Chapter 3: Spreadsheet CRM—How to Create a Customizable CRM with Google Sheets ...... 57 Tools to Build Your Google Sheets CRM ................................ 57 How To Build a CRM in Google Sheets: ................................ 58 Add a Form to Your Spreadsheet .................................... 58 Create a Contact Management System ................................. 64 Qualify Contacts with Web Scraping .................................. 69 Build an Outreach System with Social Media and Email ....................... 78 Chapter 4: Write Faster with Spreadsheets—10 Shortcuts for Composing Outlines, Research, HTML Tables and More ........................................ 89 Maintain an Editorial Calendar ..................................... 90 Build Detailed Outlines ......................................... 92 Import Data From Websites and Feeds ................................. 93 Identify and Translate Text ....................................... 97 Format Text Automatically ....................................... 98 Combine Text from Cells ........................................ 99 Create Linked Text ........................................... 100 CONTENTS Display Images From a URL ...................................... 101 Create HTML Tables For Your Blog Posts ............................... 103 Publish Your Spreadsheets ....................................... 105 Chapter 5: How to Create a Custom Business Analytics Dashboard with Google Sheets ...... 107 The Tools to Build a Customizable Dashboard ............................. 107 Decide What to Include in the Dashboard ............................... 108 Get Data For Your Dashboard ..................................... 109 Build a Reporting Dashboard in Google Sheets ............................ 109 Add Additional Metrics to Your Dashboard .............................. 120 Beyond Google Analytics: How to Pull Data from Any App into Your Dashboard . 124 Create Your Own Spreadsheet Dashboards .............................. 127 Chapter 6: 50 Google Sheets Add-Ons to Supercharge Your Spreadsheets .............. 128 Getting Started with Google Sheets Add-Ons ............................. 129 Forms .................................................. 132 Data Gathering ............................................. 134 Text Tools ................................................ 139 Formatting ................................................ 144 Number Crunching ........................................... 148 Sharing and Publishing ......................................... 151 Email and Communication ....................................... 154 Build Your Own Google Sheets Add-ons ................................ 157 How to Work Offline in Google Sheets ................................ 160 Go Make Google Sheets Your Own! .................................. 161 Chapter 7: Automate Google Sheets—An Introduction to Google Apps Script ............ 162 Getting Started with Google Apps Script ................................ 162 Building your First Script ........................................ 163 Exploring the Power of Google Apps .................................. 168 What else can you do with Google Apps Script? . 173 Chapter 8: Extra Resources to Manage Your Spreadsheets ....................... 174 Google Sheets’ Getting Started Guide ................................. 174 Google Sheets’ Functions List ...................................... 175 Google Sheets’ Add-ons Guide ..................................... 176 Find Alternate Spreadsheet Apps .................................... 177 Create Templates for Your Most-Used Spreadsheets . 178 Effectively Organize Your Files and Folders .............................. 178 Back up All Your Files .......................................... 179 Learn how to Build Great Forms and Surveys ............................. 180 Chapter 1: Google Sheets 101—The Beginner’s Guide to Online Spreadsheets Humans are great at processing images, making connections between words and concepts, and remembering obscure trivia. But we’re bad—really bad—at mentally processing and storing accurate, easy-to-use data sets. Data Tables—more commonly known today as spreadsheets—were invented to organize arrays of information that our brains can’t recall. Spreadsheets help us sort and label in a way that makes sense, so we can reference it and perform calculations later. The practice actually dates back thousands of years, to the papyrus spreadsheets in the diary of Merrer, an Egyptian Old Kingdom official involved in the construction of the Great Pyramid of Kufu. 1 Chapter 1: Google Sheets 101—The Beginner’s Guide to Online Spreadsheets 2 Back then, paper was one of your only options for cataloguing huge amounts of data. Now, we’ve got computers to do the work for us. When VisiCalc, the first digital spreadsheet, was released in 1979, it eliminated the need to physically write data, calculate values, and store paper spreadsheets. As our tools evolved, programs like Excel (the most popular spreadsheet software of the last 30 years) made digital spreadsheets one of the most popular uses of computers. There was only one problem: these spreadsheets were tied to a single machine, which made it difficult to share data. Plus, if your sheet was accidentally erased or lost due to computer failure, it was gone for good. And so, as the next evolution of the papyrus scratchpad, Google brought spreadsheets online in 2006 with their Google Docs suite. Now in Google Sheets, you can create spreadsheets together with others online, and crunch numbers from any internet-connected device. Google Sheets is a spreadsheet app on steroids. It looks and functions much like any other spreadsheet tool, but because it’s an online app, it offers much more than most spreadsheet tools. Here are some of the things that make it so much better: • It’s a web-based spreadsheet that you can use anywhere—no more forgetting your spreadsheet files at home. • It works from any device, with mobile apps for iOS and Android along with its web-based core app. • Google Sheets is free, and it’s bundled with Google Drive, Docs, and Slides to share files, documents, and presentations online. • It includes almost all of the same spreadsheet functions—if you know how to use Excel, you’ll feel at home in Google Sheets. • You can download add-ons, create your own, and write custom code. • It’s online, so you can gather data with your spreadsheet automatically and do almost anything you want, even when your spreadsheet isn’t open. Whether you’re a spreadsheet novice or an Excel veteran looking for a better way to collaborate, this book will help you get the most out of Google Sheets.