Navigating Google Sheets - Google Sheets Tutorial

- [Illustrator] Let's take a quick tour of Google Sheets and get comfortable navigating the interface. I'll show you where things are located in Google Sheets, using this solar company's spreadsheet that shows cost and payback periods for solar products. This file is called Navigating and you'll find it in the Exercise Files Chapter One folder. First, let's look at the layout of the spreadsheet itself. The title of the spreadsheet is in the upper left corner in large letters. The title of this spreadsheet is Navigating. The contents of the spreadsheet are organized in columns, labeled with lettered column headers, A, B, C, and so on, and rows labeled with numbered row headers one, two, three, and so on. For example, this is column C, and this is row 11. Each cell in the spreadsheet is represented by a column letter and a row number. For example, the cell I have highlighted right now, is called cell C 11. When a cell is selected the column letter, and the row number will highlight, and you can edit the contents of the cell. Also notice that when I click on a cell, I can see and edit the contents of the cell in the formula bar in the upper left I can click these tabs at the bottom to move to different sheets within the spreadsheet. Each tab sheet has a sheet menu available by clicking the small down arrow to the right of the sheet tab name. I can add a new sheet by clicking this plus icon, or see a full list of sheets and navigate between sheets using the sheet list icon. Now that we've looked at the basic parts of the spreadsheet, let's take a look at the tools available to us in Google Sheets starting in the top left corner of the screen, we have the sheet's Home icon. If I click on that sheets Home icon, the sheets home screen will open. I can click on the title of the spreadsheet I was just working on, to return to that spreadsheet. Clicking on this star icon to the right of the title, will make it available as a starred file in a folder called Stars on Google Drive. I like to use the star for files that I want to find quickly and easily. To the right of the star, use this Move icon to move your spreadsheet to a different folder in Google Drive. To the right of the Move icon, there's a cloud icon that shows you at a glance, the status of the save changes to your sheet. I can see that all changes to this sheet have been saved in my Google Drive. Directly below the spreadsheet title, you'll see several dropdown menus, which contained features and commands organized by category. Understand that many of these commands have shortcuts and other alternate ways of taking these actions, but you can find nearly every action available in Google Sheets using these menus. Let's take a quick peek. Under the file menu, you can find actions for sharing, creating a new spreadsheet, making a copy, and other actions you'd take with the file itself. Under the Edit menu, you'll find various actions like undo, copy, paste, and find replace. Click the View menu, you'll find tools for freezing rows and columns, and adjusting the main grid lines and controls up here. Under the insert menu, you'll find tools for inserting sheets, comments, graphs and charts, drawings, and more into your spreadsheet. Under the format column, you can use various tools to customize the appearance of this spreadsheet. Click the Data menu, and you'll find tools to sort, filter, analyze, and protect the data in your spreadsheet. Under Tools, find a few add-on tools, including Google Forms, and a Google Script Editor that you can use in conjunction with Google Sheets. You can also protect your sheets to keep them from being edited. You can search for more add-on tools from Google here in the add-ons menu. And you'll find Google Sheets help support, and keyboard shortcuts under the Help menu. Right under those menus is the Google Sheets Toolbar. The toolbar gives you one click access to many of the most popular commands under the menus. You can undo or redo recent changes, you can print your file, you can copy and paint an existing format from run range of cells to another with the Paint format icon, you can change the zoom level. The next row of icons involved number formatting, including currency, percentage, decimal place, increase in decrease decimal place, and other formats. Use the next group of icons to change text formatting, including the font type and size, bold, italic, strike-through, and text color. In the next group, you'll see options for formatting cells. Field color can be adjusted with this paint tool, and the borders can be formatted with this tool. You can merge or unmerge cells with this tool. You can adjust the position of text within a cell by clicking the horizontal line, vertical line, or text wrapping tool, you can even rotate the text in a cell. The final section of the toolbar, gives you the ability to insert a hyperlink, a comment, a chart, a filter, or a function to a cell. In the upper right corner, open the comments thread with the comments button, and you can share the sheet with other people using the share button. You'll also see your login photo or initials. Finally here in the bottom, right, you can open the Explorer tool. With the Explorer tool, you can ask questions about the data in your spreadsheet. Based on your data, you'll get suggestions for formatting, charts, and analysis. Take the time to log in and get comfortable with Google Sheets. Once you know your way around Google Sheets, you'll be able to do more with your spreadsheets in less time.