4 clever Google Sheets tricks I use to boost my organization

Over the past four to five years, I’ve made a concerted effort to try and become more organized. This doesn’t just mean cleaning out my desk drawers — I’m trying to be more organized digitally. My old email inboxes were completely chaotic, and searching for an email among thousands felt like an absolute chore. Plus, I could never do it quickly, making my team annoyed when I needed one on the spot during a meeting.

I haven’t always been the best with spreadsheets, but I’ve found them incredibly useful for certain areas of my life. These days, I track a lot in Google Sheets — my monthly budget lives in a Sheet, and my wife and I even use one to store our Christmas card invitation list. While I’m not an accountant and don’t use spreadsheets every day for work, I’ve found ways to incorporate them into my routine.

Some people may not want to deal with spreadsheets in their personal life, but I’ve found them incredibly helpful for mine. Listing things out in columns and rows and tracking against formulas has proven worthwhile. Over the years, I’ve picked up a few handy Sheets tips and tricks that have made logging different aspects of life a lot easier. Let me share a few.

Add in a Sparkline to make things more picture-worthy

This speaks to me as a visual learner

Credit: Google / Pocket-lint

A Sparkline can help you uncover patterns in your data and bring them to life in the form of a chart or graph. If you stare at spreadsheets all day, it can either make your eyes gloss over or feel incredibly tired. But, if you’re trying to diagnose data from looking at a chart or graph, it can be a lot easier to digest. This is incredibly important for me as I like to track my spending month over month. This can take the data from one month to the other and show me how well I’ve been doing over a set period of time.

To enter a Sparkline, you can just go to the Insert dropdown menu, click on Function, and then go to Sparkline under the All subset. You can also just type in =SPARKLINE() and fill in the range of cells in between the parentheses. It will take that data and generate a graph or chart. You can choose between a line graph, a bar chart, and more, as well as give them different colors to better differentiate which ones speak to which data. It’s a fun way to spice up how your data is speaking to you.

Hyperlink to an external site

Clean up your hyperlinks and make them look pretty

Credit: Google / Pocket-lint

As a writer, I like to keep track of all the stories I write. I have a massive Sheet where I store all the titles of my stories as well as the links. Rather than just pasting the large link with many characters in a cell, I insert a hyperlink to an external site. It’s a quick and easy way to make my Sheet look more presentable. Seeing “Pocket-lint” rather than a long web address keeps the table tighter and cleaner.

You can go to Insert > Function > Hyperlink in the All subset again if you want. But you can also just type in =HYPERLINK(“url”,”label”). I generally type in the URL and then add a label like “Pocket-lint” so that my Sheet displays the story title cleanly and lets me easily click through. Since I’ve freelanced for a number of different sites, my Sheet includes quite a few outlets. By labeling each link, I can also sort them based on the site name rather than trying to sort by the full URL itself.

Filter things by the Slicer

Get through massive datasets quickly

Credit: Google / Pocket-lint

I’ve collected a lot of data over the years. As a freelancer, I have to track all of my finances to pay quarterly taxes (obviously I keep track of everything anyway, but it’s especially important for tax season). Because of this, I have some pretty large datasets in Google Sheets. One feature that’s helped me move through them more quickly is Slicer.

Slicer can analyze the data and find common filters. So, I don’t have to stick with the preset filters that Sheets has. Instead, it pulls from the actual data in your Sheet to offer relevant filtering options. To insert a Slicer, you need to select some data first — I usually just hit Command + A to select everything.

Then, in the Data dropdown menu, you can click Add a slicer. It then lets you choose specific data areas within your larger area to slice through and choose what you want to filter for. It’s a massive help to minimize the time I spend doing a Control + F to find things.

Show the formulas to add to them

This is a personal preference

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Since I frequently change up the data in my Sheets and often need to adjust which cells and columns my functions are referencing, I like to use the Show Formulas view. Before making any changes, I tap the View dropdown menu and click Show Formulas. It transforms the numbers in the cells to show the formula, rather than the outcome.

For example, if I want to add a couple more cells to a running total in my budget, I’ll click Show Formulas and then adjust the cell range directly. This way, I don’t have to click into the cell, then go to the top bar and manually type in the change of cells and press Return on my keyboard. This way, it’s much easier to keep track of my formulas — since Sheets highlights the data included in the formula I’m editing.

This isn’t a must-do for everyone, but I like it because I can quickly enter the new cells and be done with it.